In a 2007 interview, Lew Rockwell was asked if he considered himself to be a libertarian. The context of the questions was the same then as it would be today for the same question. The question is really this: do you still call yourself a libertarian in spite of all the beltway, pro-government, pro-state intellectuals and activists who also call themselves libertarians? Rockwell answers “yes” because, of the reasons that he states below. 

It is always encouraging to find Rothbard receiving scholarly attention at institutions other than Mises today, particularly his writings on war and foreign policy. While Rothbard is, of course, remembered primarily as an economist, historian, and political theorist, foreign policy was never peripheral to these areas of study, nor indeed beyond his expertise.

Alex Chalmers and Rob Wiblin’s “Just bury your trash” challenges a durable assumption of modern environmentalism: that recycling is intrinsically virtuous while landfill represents failure. Their evidence supports a more selective view. Recycling metals often makes excellent sense, and some clean plastics can be worth recovering. But many other materials require more labor, energy, water, transport, and capital to recycle than to replace and dispose of safely.

The early Austrians such as F. A. Hayek and Ludwig von Mises were skeptical of intellectual property. Although there has been a plethora of classical liberals who have portrayed intellectual property as a guarantee for social mobility to occur, government manipulation of market opportunity has created a problematic power concentration that has been granted and executed by the politicians in Brussels.

America is in a populist moment. Or at least, that’s what we’ve been hearing for the last decade. 

Ever since Donald Trump shocked the legacy press, “expert” pollsters, and the political establishment more broadly in November of 2016, we’ve seen endless attempts to explain what was, at the time, seen as a perennial sea change in American politics.

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Ludwig von Mises led an extraordinary life, shaped by the turbulent political shifts of the early nineteenth century. Born to a noble family in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, he published The Theory of Money and Credit by the age of 31. By age 33, he was on the front line in a war that resulted in the collapse of a regime that had held power for centuries.

One of the most important and aspects of Murray Rothbard’s work on the American Revolution is his framing of the Constitutional Convention as a counterrevolution against the radicalism of the 1770s. In bringing this interpretation of the Revolution to his audience, Rothbard drew upon the work of several historians, especially those of the 1960s and 1970s who challenged older narratives about the allegedly non-radical nature of the Revolution. 

Most indicators suggest that the Republicans in the House and Senate are going to face a brutal backlash from the American people in November. Polling with generic ballots suggest a big win for the Democrats and likely the loss of Republican control of both houses of Congress.

There is little reason to cheer a Democratic party victory, however Republicans in charge have for the most part earned what is coming to them. They have refused to uphold their Constitutional obligation to take leading responsibility for war powers.

In 1927, the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises published a short book titled Liberalism: The Classical Tradition. It was a time when free market capitalism was under attack from all sides. Socialism had been implemented in the Soviet Union. The Bolshevik leaders Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin were finding admirers even among Western intellectuals.