The theater of the State of the Union Address is always the hardest part to stomach. The endless outbursts of applause, the parading up of guests with allegedly inspiring stories, and the calculated pauses all make me wish we could return to the days when Thomas Jefferson submitted his addresses to Congress in writing. Nevertheless,
“Don’t Blame Mental Illness for Mass Shootings” a recent headline at Politico begins, “ Blame Men .” To be fair to the author, Laura Kiesel, she probably didn’t choose that title. And to be doubly fair, she doesn’t blame men in general for mass shooting. She does — correctly — point out that the overwhelming majority of people who shoot other
In the early 1960s, Ronald Hamowy criticized the American conservative movement for degenerating into a movement defending “the rack, the thumbscrew, the whip, and the firing squad.” The movement had become, Hamowy concluded, a party of knee-jerk allegiance to the American state in the name of fighting foreign threats, both real and imagined.
As Ryan McMaken noted in a 2014 article : February 19 is the Day of Remembrance for those who wish to recall that on February 19, 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 authorizing military personnel to lock American of Japanese descent in concentration camps that are often euphemistically called “internment camps.” The
In Minnesota, the CBS 4 affiliate reports : “more people are carrying guns than ever before, but the crime rate remains low”: We took a hard look at the numbers, and found: Minnesota has a high rate of gun ownership, and a relatively low rate of violent crime. Minnesota’s violent crime rate hit a 50-year low in 2016, according to the FBI. And in
Minimum wage laws hurt the most unskilled and least experienced workers in society. They cut off the lower rungs of the ladder to that it becomes far more difficult to enter the workforce without substantial experience. After all, how many employers are willing to take the risk of hiring a workers at 8 dollars an hour when that workers has no
The Hill today reports that the US Supreme Court is refusing to hear a case challenging a California law prescribing a waiting period for gun purchases. In other words, the SCOTUS is allowing the California law to stand: The Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to hear a challenge to a California law that requires there be a 10-day waiting
For people who have spent little time in California, the metropolitan areas all look pretty much the same. Sure, they know that there are some rural areas of California that are unabashedly right-leaning, but the rest is all pretty much just like San Francisco. But, that’s not quite true, though. As recently, as 2008, we saw that California isn’t
With “Radio Rothbard” I’ll be doing short podcasts highlighting some of our columns and authors, while also providing audio versions of my own columns. But, I’ll also add just a little extra commentary and also read it the way I’d want it to sound in your head. This week’s edition is an audio version of “ Security Works at Disney — But Can’t Work
Listen to Ryan McMaken’s commentary on the Radio Rothbard podcast. 2017 may have been the worst year for homicide in Mexico since the government began keeping track in the 1990s. It’s a safe bet that the homicide rate isn’t coming anywhere near what it was in the years surrounding the revolution. But it may be the worst rate in several
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.