On July 4th, Americans celebrate our Declaration of Independence. But we often give little thought to the uniqueness and importance of our country’s founding. To revisit those issues, we might turn to Calvin Coolidge — the only president born on the 4th of July. He honored the Declaration’s commitment to life and the liberty to pursue one’s
While many of America’s founders are justifiably famous, others have received too little attention. St. George Tucker is one. Born in Bermuda on July 10, 1752, Tucker was a militia colonel in the American Revolution, who even wrote Liberty: a Poem, on the Independence of America (my favorite line being “Freedom! thy joys alone are riches to the
John Calhoun, among the most influential of America’s nineteenth-century statesmen, was born on March 18. As someone who served as a congressman, senator, secretary of war, secretary of state, and vice-president to two presidents with whom he strongly disagreed (and with whom he sometimes fought as president of the senate), he deserves attention.
Americans, finally facing the prospect of the mano-a-mano portion of the 2020 presidential campaign, have already learned that previous complainers about the negativity, underhandedness, and attack-dog nature of politics didn’t know how good they had it. Abetted by technologies that increase the reach and power of smear campaigns and by mechanisms
In addition to providing crucial insights into the cleavages between social organization based on freedom and social organization based on coercion, Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom provided many other insights. Many of them dealt with the morality of collectivism. In honor of the books 75 th anniversary this year, please consider Part 2 of
While much of Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom focused on correcting erroneous ideas and sloppy thinking that misled (and still mislead) many to support socialistic expansions of government power, that is not all it did. It also reiterated the case for individualism and its economic manifestation—free markets. Since convincing careful
Virtue is widely preached and admired. Most consider themselves virtuous. Yet in our society, virtue is being progressively crowded out by coercion. That suggests a need to give more consideration to the differences between social coordination based on virtue, which is voluntary, and that based on coercion, which actually degrades what we consider
From the time I was an undergraduate, I can remember reading many articles by Leonard Read, founder of the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE). I found his insights valuable enough that I eventually wrote a book, The Apostle of Peace , about what I considered were his best sustained arguments. Many of his shorter arguments were not included.
In the free-for-all that has been the 2020 presidential campaign so far, there has been a notable absence of serious concern for liberty. The idea that gave birth to our country has been largely crowded out by spirited efforts to outdo rivals in what H.L. Mencken called an “advance auction of stolen goods.” But those who prize liberty have a great
Even though huge issues are still in doubt, Americans have largely survived an election full of serious ill will, hypocrisy, and ominous implications. However, in the process, we have accumulated a deficit of self-reflection and humor. That provides an excellent excuse to turn to someone many Americans have fond memories of—Mark Twain. After all,
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.