This speech by Lew Rockwell was delivered at the Heritage Foundation, and even at the time was regarded as the best single overview of the teachings of the Austrian school, its contribution to the history of ideas, and the political implications of Austrian economic theory.
Economics, wrote Joseph Schumpeter, is “a big omnibus which contains many passengers of incommensurable interests and abilities.” That is, economists are an incoherent and ineffectual lot, and their reputation reflects it. Yet it need not be so, for the economist attempts to answer the most profound question regarding the material world.
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Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.
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Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., is founder and chairman of the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, and editor of LewRockwell.com.
You can line up 100 professional war historians and political scientists to talk about the 20th century, and not one is likely to mention the role of the Fed in funding US militarism. And yet the story of central banking is one step removed from the story of atom bombs and death camps. It is the most important priority of the state to keep its money machine hidden behind a curtain. Anyone who dares pull the curtain back is accused of every manner of intellectual crime. We must end the conspiracy of silence on this issue.
In American culture, public schools are praised in public and criticized in private, which is roughly the opposite of how we tend to treat large-scale enterprises like Walmart. In public, everyone...
Some libertarians argue that libertarianism requires support for “open borders,” but this is a mistake. “Open borders” is the view in the existing world of states, the state ought to admit as many...
