Here is one example of a million. It occurred to us the other day that it would be useful to have Robert Taft’s book A Foreign Policy for Americans (1951) in print. It is not a great book but an important one for American political history because it establishes the essential non-interventionism of the old Republican tradition. You can buy the book on bookfinder now. There are four copies available, ranging in price from $10 to $30. So putting it out is not a priority for the Mises Institute in any way, but, still, it would be nice.

Murray Rothbard discusses a turning point in American ideological history, through events in his own life:

The work cumbersomely entitled, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, now commonly abbreviated as “The General Theory,” was published in 1936.

Probably no other book has ever produced in so little time a comparable effect, writes Garet Garrett. It has tinctured, modified, and conditioned economic thinking in the whole world. Upon it has been founded a new economic church, completely furnished with all the properties proper to a church, such as a revelation of its own, a rigid doctrine, a symbolic language, a propaganda, a priestcraft, and a demonology.

The revelation, although brilliantly written, was nevertheless obscure and hard to read, but where one might have expected this fact to hinder the spread of the doctrine, it had a contrary result and served the ends of publicity by giving rise to schools of exegesis and to controversies that were interminable because nothing could be settled. There was no existing state of society in which the theory could be either proved or disproved by demonstration — nor is there one yet.

The Bush administration wants subprime price controls. So does Hillary.

Too many anecdotes have come my way that suggest a serious social-cultural crisis is brewing. The symptoms include feeling overwhelmed and behind the times; friends and family offended by one person’s unresponsiveness; tasks dropped or not completed; seething anger brewing over your or someone’s irresponsibility. You or someone you know is developing a reputation for uncharacteristic flakiness or a tendency to forget. You or someone you know doesn’t do what he says he will do.

Economists of the Austrian School of economics define inflation differently than much of the mainstream of the economics profession, writes By Gary Danelishen. The typical mainstream intermediate macroeconomics textbook defines inflation as “an increase in the overall level of prices.” Ludwig von Mises, suggested otherwise. A recent exchange between Congressman Ron Paul and Ben Bernanke took place during Bernanke’s testimony before the Congressional Joint Economic Committee on November 8, 2007.