By the middle of the nineteenth century, anti-Catholic sentiment was raging. After a flood of Catholic immigrants came into the country — largely due the Irish potato famine — nativist sentiment turned against Catholics to such a degree that the first Republican presidential candidate, John C. Frémont, was (falsely) smeared as a Catholic by his
Over the past several weeks of Historical Controversies , I’ve discussed the role of American filibustering expeditions as they related to the antebellum conflicts preceding the American Civil War. Because the current series is exploring the conflicts that led to disunion, the focus of the recent episodes was on the two major filibusters of the
When Karl Marx put forth his theory of history, one of the primary characteristics of the mechanical historical actors was their “class consciousness.” In Marxist doctrine, the whole of humanity in a capitalist society can be divided cleanly into two classes: the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. The proletariat was the exploited working class, and
The standard justification for patent protection is that without this government-granted monopoly, innovations will come to an abrupt halt. People only innovate with the expectation that they will make money, and this form of economic protectionism is therefore necessary in a capitalist economy. So say the great expositors of crony capitalism,
In the first episode of the new season of Historical Controversies , which will focus on the sectional crises that led to the Civil War, I gave a brief explanation of my problem with the “Tariff Thesis” for the cause of southern secession. My arguments on the subject were the primary subject of criticism for the episode, and I feel it may be worth
In 1992, Mark Young was sentenced to life in prison for trafficking marijuana. His conviction came from the testimonies of two other convicted marijuana dealers who turned on Young in order to get their own sentences reduced. The two informants, Ernest Montgomery and Claude Atkinson, depicted Young as a marijuana kingpin — the primary broker of a
In 1868, a young Henry George wrote an editorial on the nearly completed Pacific Railroad that was soon to connect his state of California with the rest of the country. This editorial, “ What the Railroad Will Bring Us ,” acknowledged the progress that railroads would signify in the industrializing economy of the Gilded Age, but George saw this as
When I was fourteen years old, my family took a trip to Germany which was my first excursion outside of the United States. At that age, Dr. Pepper was all I drank, and my parents accommodated this by buying me a large case of Dr. Pepper to help me survive. German Dr. Pepper, though, tasted slightly different than what we bought in the United
It is well-known trivia that the original formula for Coca-Cola contained cocaine, but the lesser known history of Coca-Cola has other interesting components involving the government, cronyism, and the War on Drugs. The first federal drug law was the Harrison Narcotics Act passed in 1914, which criminalized the unlicensed sale of cocaine and opium
In a 1991 interview with Randy Paige about why drugs should be legalized, Milton Friedman said that the “main thing that bothers me about crack is not [that it’s addictive], it’s the crack babies, because that’s the real tragedy.” Paige responded by saying, “as you know, we are already experiencing epidemic proportions of that. One out of every
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.