The Trump administration has shown no interest in pursuing a policy of peaceful engagement with Cuba based on respect for national sovereignty and the principle of self-determination, during either his first term in office or his current presidency. In fact, on both occasions, the US government has implemented coercive economic measures designed to increase pressure on the Cuban government, with the broader objective of weakening the existing political system and encouraging political change without direct military intervention.

In the classical liberal tradition, and particularly in the thought of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard, the concepts of the nation and the state are neither identical nor necessarily inseparable. The existence of a national and cultural community does not logically require the establishment of a centralized state possessing a territorial monopoly of political authority.

Grove City College will host the annual Austrian Student Scholars Conference on February 12-13, 2027. Open to undergraduates and graduate students in any academic discipline, the ASSC will bring together students from colleges and universities across the country and around the world to present their own research papers written in the tradition of Austrian School intellectuals such as Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek, Murray Rothbard, and Hans Sennholz. Accepted papers will be presented in a regular conference format to an audience of students and faculty.

In his book, The Confederate Negro: Virginia’s Craftsmen and Military Laborers, 1861-1865, the historian James H. Brewer describes the black Confederate as “a historical enigma,” ignored by historians who are uncertain what to make of him. Black Southerners did not fare well in what Brewer calls “the rugged contest for meaningful identification in a nation’s history.” He is concerned that,

Every generation produces its slew of mouthpieces for state power at the expense of freedom. Statist economists are some of the most sophisticated of these, for three reasons.

In the 1964 film The Pawnbroker, Rod Steiger plays Sol Nazerman, a Holocaust survivor who operates a pawnshop in Harlem. In one memorable scene, his young assistant asks him what he believes in. “Money,” he answers. Money has extraordinary powers. It can buy comfort, luxury, relief from pain, sometimes even life itself. Then he adds, his anger driving him: