Congress and the president have adopted many critically important policies in great haste during brief periods of perceived national emergency. During the first “hundred days” of the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration in the spring of 1933, for example, the government abandoned the gold standard, enacted a system of wide-ranging controls, taxes,
The Free Market 15, no. 3 (March 1997) My idea of a great president is one who acts in accordance with his oath of office to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Not since the presidency of Grover Cleveland has any president achieved greatness by this standard. Worse, the most admired have been those who failed
Volume 3, No. 4 (Winter 2000) Butler Shaffer’s well-written monograph, In Restraint of Trade , describes in extensive detail why and how most businessmen pleaded for the government to tame them between the end of World War I and the eve of World War II. Other scholars have plowed this field before; most notably John T. Flynn (to whose memory
Many years after the Great Depression and World War II, controversy continues to swirl as scholars, pundits, and ordinary citizens look back at the watershed events of the 1930s and 1940s. Economists and economic historians have assessed the economy’s condition during these momentous years primarily with reference to the usual macroeconomic
The Free Market 13, no. 2 (February 1995) Franklin Roosevelt “did bring us out of the Depression,” Newt Gingrich told a group of Republicans after the recent election, and that makes FDR “the greatest figure of the 20th century.” As political rhetoric, the statement is likely to come from someone who does not support a market economy. The New
My idea of a great president is one who acts in accordance with his oath of office to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Not since the presidency of Grover Cleveland has any president achieved greatness by this standard. Worse, the most admired have been those who failed most miserably. Evidently my standard
[An MP3 audio file of this article, read by Floy Lilley, is available for download .] “Anxiety,” Edvard Munch (1863–1944) Our predecessors dealt with their worries by relying on religious faith. For tangible assistance, they turned to kinfolk, neighbors, friends, coreligionists, and comrades in lodges, mutual-benefit societies, ethnic
I recently read a book titled Banking and the Business Cycle: A Study of the Great Depression in the United States , by C.A. Phillips, T.F. McManus, and R.W. Nelson. It was originally published by Macmillan in March 1937, later became a hard-to-find, almost-forgotten book, and in 2007 was reissued by the Mises Institute in an inexpensive paperback
[Excerpted from “ If Men Were Angels ,” Journal of Libertarian Studies , 2007.] In The Federalist No. 51, arguably the most important one of all, James Madison wrote in defense of a proposed national constitution that would establish a structure of “checks and balances between the different departments” of the government and, as a result,
[Foreword to Great Wars and Great Leaders by Ralph Raico (2010)] For many years, I have described Ralph Raico as “my favorite historian.” When David Theroux and I were making our plans in 1995 for the publication of a new scholarly quarterly, The Independent Review , and selecting the scholars we would ask to serve as associate editors, I knew
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.