Brad Stone recently delivered a lecture at the Mises Institute concerning the relevance of the work of Robert Nisbet to the libertarian movement (audio | video). He argued that it is important for libertarians to also be “communitarians,” defending traditional social institutions from the state.

At the Mises University this year, there will be another performance of “Mises: The Musical“ that will feature some changes from the last performance, though they won’t be as substantial as the ones made by Daniel D’Amico in this innovative version of the Mises Circle song: “Mr. Stonier and Mr. Sweezy.” The original in German tells the story of two socialists who visited the Mises circle. The English edition preserves the original melody (of course).

Anton Fekete, the leading advocate of the real-bills doctrine, responds to Robert Blumen’s close examination of their idiosyncracies. (Thanks Sean Corrigan)

Area Man Killed In Committee:

When I once went to visit a public sector electricity-generation plant in New Delhi, one of their top officers told me this: I dump the ash (the residue from burning coal) in the river, I do not pay the railways for delivery of the coal, I do not pay the coal company, and I will keep running it this way. 

Lew has a great article today, Regime Libertarians. The timing is appropriate because it helps crystallize some of my own thoughts on this—right at a time when I was discussing with another libertarian his critique of “contrarian” libertarians; I was pointing out that contrarians are not the problem; the problem is mainstream libertarians who go along with the state. Lew’s column makes a nice distinction in pointing out:

I’ve recently posted some links on federalism, Kelo, and related matters. One of them is the 1799 Kentucky Resolution (2), written by Thomas Jefferson. The meat of the final resolution adopted in 1799 is fairly short, and beautifully eloquent. Take a look at it—it’s not too hard to follow, even with the antiquated, flourishing English.