America’s Fatal Leap, 1991–2016
By Paul W. Schroeder
Verso, 2025; 298 pp.
In this issue of The Misesian, we pay tribute to the great libertarian historian Ralph Raico, and in this review, I would like to discuss the views of another historian, one who was most definitely not a libertarian, but whose work Raico knew and respected.
This article is a transcript of Tom Woods’s opening lecture at the 2025 Mises University at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama
This article is a transcript of Ryan McMaken’s lecture at the 2025 Mises University at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama.
In 2004, the late historian Ralph Raico, a longtime senior fellow at the Mises Institute, presented a ten-hour lecture series here at the Institute on the history of political thought. He called it “History: The Struggle for Liberty” and attempted to present his students with a concise summary of the more than 400 years of political thought that underlies the political ideology of laissez-faire.
Summertime at the Mises Institute is a big deal. Every year from May to August, our top faculty convenes to lead our research fellowship programs and student seminars. The summer ends with our biggest event, Mises University, in which we host more than a hundred college students here at the Mises Institute campus. These young students have the opportunity to spend a full week learning all the basics of Austrian economics, freedom, and peace directly from our senior fellows and other scholars, many of whom are Mises University alumni themselves.
A recent survey has caused quite a stir in France, highlighting a new reality facing a changing Europe: the brain drain and expatriation of its most productive individuals. “Brain drain is a phenomenon that Europe generally attributes to the African continent. Now, France is fully affected.”
Murray Rothbard’s view of the origins of World War II has an important lesson for us today. Many people today think that a non-interventionist foreign policy is unrealistic. Neocons always cry out “Hitler!” if you resist their demands for all-out war. “Hitler openly avowed his plan to conquer the world in Mein Kampf! How can you ‘isolationists’ ignore that!” Rothbard had a simple answer to this.
