A new poll shows 18–29 year olds turning against Bush, with 58 percent believing that the country is on the wrong track. This, however, doesn’t translate into support for Kerry. In fact the margin of difference between support for either major candidate is negligible. What does seem clear is that the wave of student enthusiasm for the GOP that
William F. Buckley and Irving Kristol recently explained why they are not drawn to consistent free-market logic, and why they have never been shy to advocate various forms of statism: they find market thinking rather dull. The psychology of the anti-market left can be a puzzle, but even more confounding is the mentality of the anti-market right.
Freedom can stand or fall on issues large (wars, depressions, natural disasters) or small (a hundred thousand regulations that manage our daily life). Regulations on food labeling count among the small issues. It is a tricky issue for market advocates because bad labeling might actually count as breach of contract and thereby require legal
Are you already fed up with hearing about the “ Ownership Society “ that Mr. Bush wants to create? Without television and the web, it took years for the phrase “New Deal” to become tiresome. But at some point, even FDR stopped using it. The “Great Society” had an even shorter shelf life and became a phrase of derision, uttered with a snarl rather
Let’s think about the word security, which has been in the news lately because the Bush administration seeks a major shift in the way funds are spent in Iraq . It wants $3 billion moved from spending on reconstruction to spending on “security.” There’s a political science lesson in that usage. The reason for the shift, of course, is the obvious
If socialists of old resented Pravda for giving them a bad name, free enterprisers ought to feel the same about the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page. Its defenses of profit, capitalism, and privatization often cry out for correction, if only to save the good name of free markets from being invoked to protect capitalists from careful moral
Hans F. Sennholz is one of the handful of economists who dared defend free markets and sound money during the dark years before the Misesian revival, and to do so with eloquence, precision, and brilliance. From his post at Grove City College, and his lectures around the world, he has produced untold numbers of students who look to him as the
This talk was delivered at the Mises Institute’s Supporters Summit on Radical Scholarship : the Guerrilla Movement for Liberty, on October 15, 2004, in San Mateo, California. You can learn so much about human nature, the workings of society, and the functioning of markets by looking at the aftermath of a natural disaster. It is a fascinating
Not for the first time in world history, US voters on November 2 faced a choice between two varieties of statism, two forms of central planning, two types of duplicity, two approaches to rule by government. One won, one lost, and liberty awaits another day for victory. In this, our times are not unlike the 1930s, when during a crisis just about
The movement to privatize Social Security (fully or partially) may be the most ideologically duplicitous and fiscally irresponsible I’ve seen in my lifetime. It was proposed by Clinton and now by Bush. Whether it dies in the next few months or generates some monstrosity of a bill to be voted on, don’t believe that there is anything in the works
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.