Among the key men involved in the American Revolution and the following periods, we find an oft-repeated concern that may seem foreign to us today—the threat of standing armies. This was a heritage of British legal thought and history, and it became an underappreciated part of American political thought and experience.
Why were peacetime standing armies viewed as such a threat?
On May 14, Mises Institute opened its doors to a brand-new program developed in honor of Murray Rothbard’s 100th birthday: Rothbard University. The objective was simple: to recreate the magic of our summer student program Mises University in a format specifically for professionals.
On Saturday, April 25, 2026, the Mises Institute met at the San Diego Mission Bay Resort for California’s Decline: A Warning to America. For much of its history, California stood out, not only as a land of remarkable natural beauty and extensive natural resources, but as a place with institutions that fueled extraordinary wealth creation.
That is what makes its decline so important to understand. The central question of the day was how a state with so much going for it has been driven into such serious dysfunction, and how the rest of the country can avoid following the same path.
