Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992) was one of the most influential defenders of market liberalism in the twentieth century. His work is best known for demonstrating why central planning fails not merely for incentive reasons, but because of a deeper epistemic constraint: the impossibility of centralizing dispersed knowledge.

Senator Lindsey Graham died seemingly out of the blue over the weekend after a tear in his aorta. He was 71 years old.

The news was shocking, in part because Graham was a very active senator—he was just returning from a trip to Ukraine—and because he was seemingly at the height of his power, having built one of the most influential relationships with President Donald Trump of any politician.

Editor’s Note: Judge Napolitano’s preface below speaks to why the Progressive Era is so key to our understanding of modern America. This is the first of many selections from the book we will be offering at mises.org in the future. 

Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics 19, no. 3 (Fall 2016): 297–301

[Private Governance: Creating Order in Economic and Social Life by Edward P. Stringham]

John Prince Smith was the creator of the German free trade movement and its leader from the 1840s until his death in 1874.1 He was born in London in 1809, and, after leaving Eton prematurely, on account of the death of his father, began working at the age of thirteen for a London commercial firm, later turning to journalism.

George Washington took office as president in 1789 with an asset of inestimable value. People viewed him as the hero of the American Revolution who, disdaining power, had like the Roman general Cincinnatus returned home to his farm. When he allowed himself, with great reluctance, to be nominated as chief executive, his prestige was unparalleled. Indeed, his reputation was worldwide. When he died,

The thing we now call “conservatism” in the West largely comes out of a reaction against the French Revolution and other revolutionary movements inspired by it. The Continental conservatives—e.g., Joseph de Maistre, Friedrich von Gentz, Klemens von Metternich, and Juan Donoso Cortés—embraced monarchism, often including its more authoritarian and absolutist varieties, in an effort to avoid repeating the excesses of the French revolution.