In my research into Leonard Read’s writing, I recently came across his “Look to the Miracle!” in the May 1963 Notes from FEE . It struck me that what he had to say almost half a century ago about how his Foundation for Economic Education worked to advance liberty and how it resisted pigeon-holing in traditional ways is at least as relevant today.
Leonard Read, founder of the Foundation for Economic Education, had very clear views about the legitimate role of laws—solely to restrain harms to individuals’ and their rights, since going farther than that “night watchman” role necessarily violated some citizens’ rights. In fact, in his October 1, 1969, “ Read’s Law ” article in The Freeman , he
With Associate Justice Stephen Breyer’s impending retirement from the Supreme Court, President Biden jumped at the chance to deliver on his 2020 pledge to nominate its first Female Black Justice. And he defended the seeming affirmative action pick by saying “The person I will nominate will be someone with extraordinary qualifications, character,
February 15 marks the 1887 birth of Frank Chodorov , who Aaron Steelman described as offering an “unwavering defense of individualism” in the “intellectual war against the omnipotent state.” Born Fishel Chodorowsky, Chodorov was a “ lifelong individualist .” Early in his career, he described his position as “unashamedly accepting the doctrine of
Leonard Read was an important leader in the libertarian movement from the time he started the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) in 1946 until his death. What primarily put him in that role was his unwavering commitment to liberty. But it was also due to his concern with the fact that not all forms of leadership and education were effective
Changes often induce fear--including the fear that some aspect of our current well-being will be eroded due to changes that could take place in markets. For instance, the invention of a lower cost way of providing a service I now offer could lower what I now earn. The potential that we might be harmed by such changes can make us very risk averse.
2021 may have seen the greatest proliferation in American government command and control, with its corresponding constriction in liberty, in my lifetime. Power has become dramatically more centralized in the federal government--at the expense of individuals and their voluntary arrangements--with trillions of dollars of new programs and proposals
In 2016, I published a book titled Lines of Liberty , which featured great quotations about liberty from those who had been active and important in promoting it. To this day, one of my favorite quotes in that book is from John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty : “The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so
In my day-to-day interactions with others, I generally find myself, as a libertarian, far closer to those who would call themselves conservatives than those on the left. It is probably because those I know are far less likely to openly and baldly advocate for invading others’ “life, liberty and estates,” as John Locke phrased it, than the left.
François-Marie Arouet (1694-1778), who took on the name Voltaire after one of his imprisonments for running afoul of French authorities, was a poet, writer, philosopher and historian of the French enlightenment. In fact, libertarianism.org called him “almost certainly the most important figure of the French Enlightenment,” to the extent that “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.