Modern Historians Confront the American Revolution

Murray N. Rothbard

I. Basic Causes of the Revolution

The historian must be more than a chronicler, a mere lister of events. For his real task is discovering and setting forth the causal connections between events in human history, the complex chain of human purposes, choices, and consequences over time that have shaped the fate of mankind. Investigating the causes of such a portentous event as the American Revolution is more than a mere listing of preceding occurrences; for the historian must weigh the causal significance of these factors, and select those of overriding importance.

Why Censorship Advocates Are Obsessed with Stories about Yelling “Fire!” in a Theater

Joshua Mawhorter

If one boldly asserts the importance of the right of freedom of speech, it is almost inevitable that another will respond with one of the most common apologetic arguments for the government limitation of speech, “But you can’t yell ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theater.” The non sequitur argument is supposed to humble the right of free speech in favor of some government restriction. This argument fails logically because it does not follow that because a theater may restrict speech of those it admits through sale of a ticket that government must be empowered to legally restrict the speech of its citizens in general.

We’re Living in a Chaos Economy. Here’s How to End It.

Mark Thornton

The Federal Reserve has been increasing the money supply at an explosive rate. The federal budget, deficits, and the trade deficit are record levels. Governments, both foreign and domestic, have locked down people, restricting production and consumption. How should this be viewed by an economist?

Why Nazism Was Socialism and Why Socialism Is Totalitarian

George Reisman
My purpose today is to make just two main points: (1) To show why Nazi Germany was a socialist state, not a capitalist one. And (2) to show why socialism, understood as an economic system based on government ownership of the means of production, positively requires a totalitarian dictatorship.

How the “Respectable” Media Serves the Political Elite

Murray N. Rothbard

[Editor’s note: Two interviews from August 1992 given by Murray Rothbard to the Swedish student publication Svensk Linje (continuously published since 1942) were recently discovered in the Rothbard Archives and translated by Sven Thommesen for the first time. In this interview, Rothbard offers his thoughts on the 1992 election and the role of the “respectable” media in promoting the campaign of Bill Clinton.]

“The Great Reset” Is the Road to Socialism Mises Warned Us About

Tho Bishop

Through the sheer power of his intellectual output, Ludwig von Mises established himself as one of the most important intellectuals of the twentieth century. His work Human Action remains a foundational text of the Austrian school. His critique outlining the impracticality of socialism was vindicated with the fall of the Soviet Union and remains without a serious intellectual challenge today.

Currency Debasement and Social Collapse

Ludwig von Mises

(Originally posted on Mises.org)

Knowledge of the effects of government interference with market prices makes us comprehend the economic causes of a momentous historical event, the decline of ancient civilization.

The 1787 Constitution Was a Radical Assault on the Spirit of the Revolution

Murray N. Rothbard

(Originally posted on Mises.org)

It was a bloodless coup d’état against an unresisting Confederation Congress. The original structure of the new Constitution was now complete. The Federalists, by use of propaganda, chicanery, fraud, malapportionment of delegates, blackmail threats of secession, and even coercive laws, had managed to sustain enough delegates to defy the wishes of the majority of the American people and create a new Constitution. The drive was managed by a corps of brilliant members and representatives of the financial and landed oligarchy. These wealthy merchants and large landowners were joined by the urban artisans of the large cities in their drive to create a strong overriding central government—a supreme government with its own absolute power to tax, regulate commerce, and raise armies. These powers were sought eagerly as a method of handing out special privileges to commercial groups: navigation acts to subsidize shipping, tariffs to protect inefficient artisans stampeded by national depression from foreign manufactured goods, and a strong army and navy to pursue an aggressive foreign policy designed to force the opening of West Indies ports, the Mississippi River, and the Northwest. And, to pay for all of these bounties, a central taxing power would be harnessed that could also assume and pay the public debt held by wealthy speculators. But government, by its nature, cannot supply bounties and privileges without taking them from others, and these others were to be largely the hapless bulk of the nation’s citizens, the inland subsistence farmers. In western Massachusetts, taxes to pay a heavy public debt owned by wealthy men in the East had produced Shays’ Rebellion. Now, a new super government was emerging and carrying out on a national scale the mercantilist principle of taxation, regulation, and special privilege for the benefit of favored groups (“the few”) at the expense of the bulk of producers and consumers in the country (“the many”). And while to acquire sufficient support they had to purchase allies among the mass of the people (e.g., urban artisans), the major concentration of benefits and privileges would undoubtedly accrue to America’s aristocracy.

The Public Health Officials Say “Trust Us.” The Data Says Otherwise.

Anthony Rozmajzl

(Originally posted on Mises.org)

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, Ben Shapiro, but feelings trump facts when it comes to covid-19. This is thanks entirely to the love triangle forged between the corporate press, government officials, and tech giants whose sinister and divisive campaign of fear and censorship spawned a reaction so virulent that society was upended in a matter of weeks for a virus with a 99 percent plus survival rate.

Before a Bust, There Is Always a Boom (and Malinvestment)

Frank Shostak

(Originally posted on Mises.org)

For most commentators lending is associated with money. However, is this the case? When a saver lends money, what he/she in fact lends to a borrower is final consumer goods that he/she did not consume. Therefore, what a lender lends to a borrower is savings and not money as such. 

9/11 Was a Day of Unforgivable Government Failure

Ryan McMaken

(Originally posted on Mises.org)

Perhaps more than anything else, the rationale given for the necessity of the state—and the necessity of supporting the regime at any given time—is that it “keeps us safe.” This permeates thinking about government institutions at all levels, from “thin blue line” sloganeering at the local level, all the way up to jingoism surrounding the  Pentagon.

Recession and Recovery: W.H. Hutt’s View

Robert Blumen

(Originally posted on Mises.org)

There is a considerable Austrian literature on the unsustainable boom driven by credit expansion. When the boom ends, a depression begins. The depression is a transitional period of reduced production that lasts until entrepreneurs restructure capital and labor into sustainable uses. During the depression, there is unavoidable unemployment of both people and productive assets. The recovery is marked by an increase in production and the employment of resources that were idle during the bust.

Why Progressives Will Never Accept Market-Based Medical Care

William L. Anderson

(Originally posted on Mises.org)

A recent article on this page highlighted a stunning situation in which a surgery clinic in Oklahoma City was able to offer outpatient procedures at less than one-tenth of what local hospitals were charging to third-party payment systems such as insurance companies and Medicare. This was a significant article in many ways, in that it presented what truly is a shocking picture of what really happens in the medical care systems in this country.

Democracy’s Road to Tyranny

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

(Originally posted on Mises.org)

Plato, in his Republic, tells us that tyranny arises, as a rule, from democracy. Historically, this process has occurred in three quite different ways. Before describing these several patterns of social change, let us state precisely what we mean by “democracy.”

Portrait of an Evil Man: Karl Marx

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

(Originally posted on Mises.org)

In the “German Democratic Republic” they tell the story about a weary old man who tries to gain entrance into the Red Paradise. A Communist Archangel holds him up at the gate and severely cross-questions him:

Fiat Money Economies Are Built on Lies

Thorsten Polleit

(Originally posted on Mises.org)

Now and then, it pays to take a step back to get a broader perspective on things, to look beyond the daily financial news, to see through the short-term ups and downs in the market to find out what is really at the heart of the matter. If we do that, we will not miss the fact that we are living in the age of fiat currencies, a world in which basically everything bears their fingerprints: the economic and financial system, politics—even people’s cultural norms, values, and morals will not escape the broader consequences of fiat currencies.

The Roots of “Anticapitalism”

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

(Originally posted on Mises.org)

In many minds, “capitalism” has come to be a bad word, nor does “free enterprise” sound much better. I remember seeing posters in Russia in the early nineteen-thirties depicting capitalists as Frankenstein monsters, as men with yellow-green faces, crocodile teeth, dressed in cutaways and adorned by top hats. What is the reason for this widespread hatred for capitalists and capitalism despite the overwhelming evidence that the system has truly “delivered the goods”? In its mature stage it indeed is providing, not just for a select few but for the masses, a standard of living cordially envied by those bound under other politico-economic arrangements. There are historic, psychological and moral reasons for this state of affairs. Once we recognize them, we might come to better understanding the largely irrational resentment and desire to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.

The Electoral College as a Restraint on American Democracy: Its Evolution from Washington to Jackson

Randall G. Holcombe

(Originally posted on Mises.org)

When the American colonies declared their independence from Britain in 1776, the fundamental principle underlying the new government they created was the principle of liberty. To the Founders, liberty meant freedom from government oppression, because at that time, government was the primary threat to the liberty of individuals. The Declaration of Independence contains a long list of grievances that the colonists had against the Bang of England to document how King George had infringed upon the liberty of the colonists, and those grievances provided their justification for creating a new government, independent of Britain. At that time, the concept of liberty was a relatively new and truly revolutionary idea, and it provided the fundamental principle for the design of the new American government. Two centuries later, the principle of liberty has been replaced by the principle of democracy, and most Americans at the end of the twentieth century surely would view the fundamental principle of American government to be democracy, not liberty.

Classical Natural Law and Libertarian Theory

Carlo Lottieri

(Originally posted on Mises.org)

If libertarianism wishes to give up modern political categories, it has to think about law in a different way. Murray N. Rothbard, the most important exponent of the radical libertarian school, is right when he rejects the historicism and relativism of legal realism and when—for the same reasons—he criticizes Hayek and Leoni.

The Not So Wild, Wild West

Terry Anderson & P.J. Hill

(Originally posted on Mises.org)

The growth of government during this century has attracted the attention of many scholars interested in explaining that growth and in proposing ways to limit it. As a result of this attention, the public-choice literature has experienced an upsurge in the interest in anarchy and its implications for social organization.