[Editors note: Recently the Mises Institute received a box of documents belonging to Murray Rothbard from our friend Justin Raimondo. We will make new material available online as we work through the collection. The following is an autobiographical essay written while Murray was still a high school student. Fans of Rothbard will not only appreciate some of the personal details about his parents and upbringing, but also how his formative years clearly influenced his later work, including his critiques of public education.

If you want to understand Murray Rothbard, you need to keep one principle in mind. If you remember this, you will have the key to grasping his thought. And you should want to understand Murray Rothbard, because he was the greatest American defender of liberty in the twentieth century.

The federal government is in the midst of a partial “shutdown.” Don’t worry, there’s still plenty of money flowing to a great many government departments. And even those workers who experience deferred salaries during the shutdown will almost certainly get their back pay paid in full.

But as always occurs during these so-called shutdowns, many of the most popular amenities offered by the federal government are being shut down. This includes the national parks such as Yosemite and Rocky Mountain National Park.

When Attorney General Robert Kennedy was defending his Wire Act before the Senate, he scarcely would have imagined that this bill which he sold as a federal supplement to the enforcement of state laws would be used half a century later to trample upon them, but rumors emanating from the Department of Justice suggest that is their intention.

While Congress and the president fight over funding a border wall, they continue to ignore the coming economic tsunami caused by the approximately 22 trillion dollars (and rapidly increasing) federal debt. President Trump may not be troubled by the debt’s effect on the economy because he believes he will be out of office before it becomes a major problem. However, the crisis may come sooner than he, or most people in DC, expects.

It is easy to conclude the EU, and the Eurozone in particular, is a financial and systemic time-bomb waiting to happen. Most commentary has focused on problems that are routinely patched over, such as Greece, Italy, or the impending rescue of Deutsche Bank. This is a mistake. The European Central Bank and the EU machine are adept in dealing with issues of this sort, mostly by brazening them out, while buying everything off. As Mario Draghi famously said, “whatever it takes.”

Ever since Dick’s Sporting Goods and banks such as Citigroup made business decisions in line with the mainstream media’s push for gun control, some opponents of gun control have debated whether private companies pose a bigger threat to gun rights than government does.

For the third year in a row, Dan Mitchell offers his list of things he “Hopes and Fears” from the new year. Topics include Trump, Latin America, and the resolution of Brexit. 

We’ll start with things I hope will happen in the coming year.

Ketones are everywhere. And so are associated high fat, low carbohydrate diets, as well as eating patterns that include intermittent fasting – all championed as solutions to obesity, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, etc. While the diets have existed for some time, the addition of intermittent fasting is new, though ubiquitous. So much so that I took notice and considered modifying my eating patterns. Then it hit me ...