This is a momentous year at the Mises Institute. The great Murray Rothbard would have been 100 years old on March 2. We have dedicated this year, the Year of Rothbard, to honoring his memory and championing his lifelong fight for liberty. The 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence is on July 4. We plan to remember this revolutionary document the right way—the Rothbardian way—reminding people how important it was in fighting for property rights and the right to secession.

In the final chapter of his excellent collection of essays, Classical Liberalism and the Austrian School, Ralph Raico turned to the worthy work of historian Arthur Ekirch to confront a question that should trouble anyone still inclined to think of the United States as a republic of limited government: how did a nation born in revolt against empire become the world’s greatest military machine and sole imperial power?

Since the ceasefire on April 8 and Trump’s apparent capitulation to Iran, it appears the Iranians will levy a toll on all oil passing through the Strait of Hormuz. The details are still unclear, but according to The Hill citing the Financial Times, the Iranian Republic will levy $1 per barrel of oil to be paid in bitcoin on all traffic out of the Persian Gulf.

In Herman Melville’s final novella, Billy Budd, a ship’s captain named Edward Vere orders the hanging of a sailor he knows to be morally innocent. Billy Budd struck a superior officer and killed him, but only because he was falsely accused of mutiny and could not speak in his own defense. Vere is not confused about any of this. He tells the drumhead court exactly what he believes: that Billy is innocent in the eyes of God and nature. Then he argues for the death sentence anyway, on the grounds that the Mutiny Act—the law of the British crown—demands it.

“I want to say I’m sorry for misleading people, and it was not intentional. That’s all I’ll say.”

The US’s non-Israel Middle Eastern allies (i.e., the Gulf dictatorship states) apparently still are not concerned that an all-out US attack would be bad news for the Gulf states.