With each published interview, Ron Paul only seems to become more articulate, more persuasive and compelling, more to the pedagogical point in explaining the meaning and priority of liberty as the central political principle. Those of us who understand can only cheer. Those who hold contradictory opinions — favoring liberty in some areas and
[This article originally appeared in The American Conservative (2011).] Eisenhower’s farewell speech was a long and nearly hysterical argument for the Cold War. He presented it as more than a military policy against Russia, but rather as a grand metaphysical struggle that should take over our minds and souls, as bizarre as that must sound to the
“As in 1989, the one demand is that the dictator go.” Those of the young generation, people too young to remember the collapse of Soviet bloc and other socialist states in 1989 and 1990, are fortunate to be living through another thrilling example of a seemingly impenetrable state edifice reduced to impotence when faced with crowds demanding
When the Egyptian protests first broke out, most Americans celebrated. Though Mubarak’s military must still be circumvented or overthrown, the revolt has spread, like a cleansing fire, to Bahrain, Libya, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Jordan, and beyond. What is all this all about? Thanks to Western rule since WWI, this is a region of dictators and
We are living in an Orwell novel, so it is not expected that anyone would remember President Ronald Reagan’s war on Libya in 1986. Both Reagan and his vice president, Bush, were on television daily to decry Libya as a terror state ruled by a wicked dictator, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. The US bombing campaign was supposedly in retaliation for the
Austrian School economists have often explained the business cycle using the metaphor of liquor or drugs. The expansion of paper money and credit gives a sense of exuberance, an economic high that leads to excessive risk taking and balloons of production. But it can’t be sustained. There is a morning after. Then what? There is a choice: more drugs
Following the US-lobbied UN authorization of military death dealing in Libya, the murderous regime of Colonel Gaddafi said immediately that it would stop all killing. That put Obama’s war on hold, for now. It seems that the crazy colonel has learned a thing or two about American foreign policy. If you pretend to favor the stated goals of the
The worst effect of the state is intellectual. It puts our brains in a prison, simply by defining the terms in which we are permitted to think and speak. The one nonnegotiable point becomes the state itself. You are permitted to argue about what the state’s priorities ought to be (bombs or butter), but not to question the fundamental model of a
Look up the phrase “a unique form of domestic terrorism” on a search engine and you will turn up a story about a man whom the US government is trying to cage from now until the time of his death. And his crime? His unique form of terrorism? He minted silver and copper coins and sold them. In other words, he did what innumerable entrepreneurs from
Watching the public debate on the budget, we are reminded of two boys on the floor playing with toys. One has a bear and the other has a dinosaur. They are forever threatening the other kid with taking the toy away. One warns he will take away the dinosaur (military spending) and the other says he will grab the bear (domestic spending). They pull
What is the Mises Institute?
The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.
Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.