U.S. History

Gold and silver are international commodities, and, when not prohibited by government decree, foreign coins are perfectly capable of serving as standard moneys.

Thaddeus Russell’s A Renegade History of the United States is an important new book: a demonstration that rebels and renegades are society’s benefactors. In this revisionist view of American history, you see, there is “an enduring civil war” between these two factions — the “renegades” and the “moral guardians,” whom he also calls the “disciplinarians.”

Higgs's book is that rare and wondrous combination: scholarly and hard-hitting, lucidly written and libertarian as well.

The trouble lies in the fact that people do not have an object — one thing to which they stick, letting all else go.

During his eight years in office, Reagan increased federal spending by 53 percent, added a quarter of a million new civilian government employees, escalated the War on Drugs, created the “drug czar’s office,” and lowered the value of your 1980 dollar to 73 cents.

[Free Life: The Journal of the Libertarian Alliance, Vol. 4, No. 1 (1984)]

A curious thing is happening in this extraordinary election year. The liberals are beginning to adjust to Ronald Reagan. After all, they claim, he's getting more moderate, he'll have to shift to the center to win the election, and he was a moderate and "flexible" governor of California for eight years. Maybe he won't be that bad, certainly not as erratic as Carter.

Long before interventionism became a fixed policy of the government, American students went to Europe to complete their education, and immigrants introduced their exotic foods to the American table. But these were voluntary adoptions.

You must know basic economics in order to understand historic events. Human Action is the basic book. Economic laws determine the way people cooperate by exchanging property rights, by dividing their labor, and by subjectively calculating prices.

 

Richard Henry Lee is best known for the June 7, 1776, motion calling for the colonies' independence from Great Britain, which led to the Declaration of Independence. As a consistent advocate of liberty, he also opposed the Constitution.