I should have known Murray Rothbard was something special the first night of class when I noticed a fellow student, James Philbin, following behind Murray as he entered the classroom carrying a stool for Murray to sit on as he lectured.
In 1902, writes George Leef, those who aspired to enter the legal profession could take several different routes. One was simply to study law individually. A second route was to apprentice yourself into a law firm and learn what you needed to know in that environment--as Clarence Darrow did. The third option was to go to law school.
When intellectuals teach the children of nonintellectuals to hate their own civilization, and regard its achievements as acts of villainy, writes Steven Yates, they only invite waves of understandable anti-intellectual reaction.
Uncle Sam wants you, even if you are still in diapers. Incredible as it may sound, the Washington, DC, city council is considering a bill that would extend mandatory school attendance laws to very young children—even some 2-year-olds. Bill 14-261 requires all children who turn three before December 31 of an academic school year to be schooled.
This year's Nobel prize laureates in economics may have unwittingly laid the foundation for a retardation rather than an advancement of the economics discipline. There is not the slightest analogy between playing games and the conduct of business within a market society.
The Austrian School was born in a liberal-arts environment of the high middle ages, writes Jeffrey Herbener. In that tradition, what is needed is for the independence and devotion to the truth so evident in the the work of the Mises Institute to become the model for mainstream educational enterprises in which students receive their under-graduate degrees.
Most academics in the social sciences assume that civilization is saved by attacking such antiquated and anti-egalitarian notions as property rights and freedom of association, writes Chris Westley. This is notable because universities used to be concerned with the business of discovering and teaching the truth.
From admissions through prelims to dissertation, Art Carden recounts his own experience and mistakes, so far, on his way to obtaining an economics PhD. He offers advice for anyone interested in doing so while pursuing an Austrian-style research program.
Those who have written in favor of distributism on moral grounds appear to revel in their ignorance of economics--as if a discipline devoted to the application of human reason to the problems of scarcity in the world could actually in itself be antagonistic to ethics and faith.
Robert Murphy on the Pledge controversy: Those truly concerned about protecting individual dissenters from the tyranny of the majority should lobby for the removal of the word "indivisible" from the pledge. The classical liberal doctrine of self-determination is the only way to achieve limited government and lasting social peace.
