Listen to the Audio Mises Wire version of this article. As we approach the calendar turn to 2021, many Americans’ thoughts will turn to New Year’s resolutions. Those I hear about from others typically revolve around things like getting in shape, quitting smoking, consuming fewer intoxicants, spending more time with family, etc. Of course, I
Americans are coming into the home stretch of the 2020 election campaigns. The constant media drumbeat of why we must vote has begun, but without any noticeable mention that voting without being informed cannot advance what our Constitution called the “General Welfare.” And the campaigns themselves have largely been filled with promises of using
As we near November, Americans hear political partisans arguing more and more intensely that if we would just vote for them and their coconspirators that would put us in the best of all possible worlds. It reminds me of Will Rogers’s quip that “if we got one-tenth of what was promised to usthere wouldn’t be any inducement to go to heaven.” Such
As has become typical for years divisible by four, we are well into the high-intensity portion of the various “must vote” campaigns. Both parties push that as a bipartisan narrative, even though each side focuses their message mainly toward getting more of “their people” to vote. But while that pattern has become “same old, same old,” there has
One of the most striking things about electioneering is that every politician and sycophant claims to be a benefactor to Americans, ever more stridently as the election approaches. But every one of them seeks to help Pauls out of the pockets of Peters, which is being a thief when both sides of that equation are counted rather than being a
In the lead-up to this November’s election, democracy has been increasingly held up by many as the touchstone of American greatness. But I have noticed that very few making such claims make reference to Alexis de Tocqueville, whose 1835 Democracy in America has been termed “one of the wisest works of modern thought” and which for understanding and
Listen to the Audio Mises Wire version of this article. As Americans approach a date with their polling places and “get out the vote” campaigns crescendo, there is plenty of rhetoric that all but deifies democracy. Unfortunately, while democratically determining who will be entrusted with the reins of government may generally represent the best
Most Americans probably thought they would know who the President will be shortly after the ballot boxes closed. But after three weeks, the results are still somewhat in doubt. That has thrown a wrinkle into the usual pundit calendar, focused on what the loser should have done, what the winner did well and now should do, and other lessons to be
Walter E. William, who many consider one of greatest modern economists, has just passed on at age 84. My connections with Walter go back to UCLA, where we both got our doctorates (though I was a bit later, and it was my misfortunate we did not overlap). Then I started writing popular articles in defense of Americans’ liberty not too long after he
December 7 has “lived in infamy” since Pearl Harbor. But that date was already infamous before America was a country. In 1683, Algernon Sydney, who opposed Charles II for overstepping his powers, was executed for treason on that date, after a trial blatantly violating his rights (so blatantly that Parliament overturned his conviction in 1689). The
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.