[An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought (1995)]

[An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought (1995)]

Friedrich August’s great-great-grandfather, Josef Hayek, on account of his commercial success, was knighted by Emperor Josef II a few weeks before the French Revolution in 1789. He had risen to estate administrator and had founded two textile factories near Brünn and Vienna. The family fortune was largely lost during the course of the nineteenth century, but the family in turn produced a high school principal, an ornithologist, a botanist, a chemist, a beetle specialist and three physicians.

[Man, Economy, and State (1962)]

Those of us who spent our younger years living in the coldest of the 50 states remember fondly those afternoons spent at play just after a fresh coat of snow blanketed the ground. We’d grab our jackets and gloves, run out of the house, and convene at the nearest large field (perhaps the backyard) and bask in the winter wonderland presented to us only sporadically during those very cold months.

Snowball fights, snowmen, and creating igloos were among some of the activities we’d all partake in; merrily disregarding frostbite to salvage one more minute outside.

Toward the end of his State of the Union speech, President Obama said “I believe what Republican Abraham Lincoln believed: That government should do for people only what they cannot do better by themselves, and no more.” Apparently, he didn’t note the immense irony of those words on the lips of one of American history’s most aggressive expanders of the scope and reach of the federal government, or the cognitive dissonance between that claim and the preceding substantial laundry list of things he wanted to do for (and to) Americans.