Most people on the Left and the Right misunderstand the essence of libertarianism. This should come as no surprise since even some libertarians misunderstand the essence of libertarianism.

On Thursday, the Senate HELP Committee is set to vote on the nomination of Lori Chavez-DeRemer, Trump’s pick for Labor Secretary. Chavez-DeRemer was a Republican representative from Oregon who made a name for herself for being very pro-labor union compared to other members of her party.

Ludwig von Mises called the universities of his day “nurseries of socialism” because of the inevitable socialist bias of all government-funded universities. He also said that there is always a remnant of students, however, that does not buy into the endless drumbeat about the alleged wonders of socialism and the “imperfections” of free-market capitalism. It is this remnant that the Mises Institute devotes so much effort to educating and inspiring in the Misesian/Rothbardian tradition. 

Sunday, March 2 would have been Murray Rothbard’s 99th birthday!

President Trump and Defense Secretary Hegseth have recently been critical of NATO, calling for the European NATO countries to pay for their own defense. This is all to the good, though it does not go far enough. As the great Dr. Ron Paul has pointed out, “We also need a change in policy. Americans are beginning to understand the economic costs of maintaining a global military empire. US taxpayers are forced to cover more than half of the entire NATO budget while European countries rattle sabers at Russia and threaten war.

[Editor’s Note: In 2011, Congressman Ron Paul sponsored legislation to audit the gold reserves of the United States and publish the results of that audit for public scrutiny. Thanks to opposition from the usual opponents of transparency and decent monetary policy in both parties, the bill was never passed. Below is the text of Congressman Paul’s opening statement on the legislation at the House Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy and Technology. Paul was chairman of the committee.

An issue which not long ago had only the support of Ron Paul has now become a priority for the Trump Administration: the auditing of Fort Knox. At CPAC last week, Donald Trump took time out of speech to boast that he and Elon Musk were soon to be traveling to America’s largest gold depository “to see if the gold is there. Because maybe somebody stole the gold. Tons of gold.”

Over the past five years, 33 counties in Illinois have voted to secede from the state, presumably to either form a new state or join another state. In most of these counties, the voters were given the option to vote yes or no on  a ballot question that looked generally like this: 

Next month, we will host the Austrian Economics Research Conference (AERC), one of our most important programs. We’ll have 32 students attending, and 26 students will deliver papers of their own. How encouraging!