Daily Articles

Book Review: Forbidden Grounds

by Richard M. Ebeling November 1, 1992

Forbidden Grounds: The Case Against Employment Discrimination Laws by Richard A. Epstein (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1992); 530 pages; $39.95. In the 1960s, many conservatives opposed the civil-rights acts and forced-integration laws that were passed. Some of these conservatives may have been racists who ...

The Crisis in Conservatism

by Jacob G. Hornberger October 1, 1992

The end of the Cold War has brought a deep crisis to the conservative movement in America. For over four decades, the communist threat was the glue that bound conservatives together. However, now that communism no longer poses a direct threat to the United States, deep cracks have appeared in the conservative movement. Why? The reason is that conservatives have ...

Forward to the Past: From Central Planning to the Redistributive State

by Richard M. Ebeling October 1, 1992

At the dawn of the 20th century, in 1899, the French social psychologist Gustave Le Bon looked into the future and described "the immediate fate of the nation which shall first see the triumph of Socialism....The people will of course commence by despoiling and then shooting a few thousands of employers, ...

The Rise, Fall, and Renaissance of Classical Liberalism, Part 2: Triumphs and Challenges

by Ralph Raico October 1, 1992

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 As the nineteenth century began, classical liberalism — or just liberalism as the philosophy of freedom was then known — was the specter haunting Europe — and the world. In every advanced country the liberal movement was active. Drawn mainly from the middle classes, it included people from widely contrasting religious ...

Book Review: The Development Frontier

by Richard M. Ebeling October 1, 1992

The Development Frontier: Essays in Applied Economics by Peter Bauer (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991); 241 pages; $24.95. Socialism has had two playgrounds on which to exercise its destructive force. One has been in the former Soviet-bloc countries, which now stand in disarray and which now are attempting to recover from ...

JFK, the CIA, and Conspiracies

by Jacob G. Hornberger September 1, 1992

The Oliver Stone movie JFK resulted in cries of indignation and outrage from many Americans. Why? Why do so many People consider it beyond the realm of reasonable political certainty that the president's assassination was planned by top-level United States governmental officials? I do not know who killed John F. Kennedy or who planned his murder. But I ...

The Predilection for Planning: National Industrial Policy, Again

by Richard M. Ebeling September 1, 1992

It seems that no matter how many times governmental planning is implemented and fails, the temptation to try to design the economic system through political means remains irresistible. One of the reasons for this was explained in the 1880s by the English economist Walter Bagehot, who warned, "All Governments like to interfere; it elevates their position to make out ...

The CIA

by Sheldon Richman September 1, 1992

In a 1954 speech to the Conservative Society of Yale Law School, Felix Morley, a founder of the conservative weekly newspaper Human Events, indicted United States foreign policy as "imperial." The U.S. policy, he said, "demands that concentration and centralization of power which has characterized every empire since the days of Nebuchadnezzar." The "enormous ...

Book Review: Two Essays by Ludwig Von Mises

by Richard M. Ebeling September 1, 1992

Two Essays by Ludwig Von Mises: Liberty and Property and Middle-of-the-Road Leads to Socialism (Auburn: The Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1991); 74 pages; $5.00. Ludwig von Mises's position as the 20th century's preeminent advocate of the market economy is based upon his seminal works on economic theory and policy. The Theory of Money and Credit (1912) and Monetary Stabilization ...

The Constitution and the Rule of Law

by Jacob G. Hornberger August 1, 1992

In 1944, Friedrich A. Hayek wrote one of the most thought-provoking books of our time — The Road to Serfdom. Hayek warned that Great Britain and the United States were abandoning their heritage of liberty and adopting the economic principles of the Nazis, fascists, and socialists. It was not a ...

Up from Serfdom: Friedrich A. Hayek and the Defense of Liberty

by Richard M. Ebeling August 1, 1992

Friedrich August von Hayek was one of the greatest economists and political philosophers of the 20th century. After Ludwig von Mises, Professor Hayek was the leading figure of the Austrian School of Economics during the last six decades. He also was one of the most profound defenders of liberty during the last two hundred years. With his death on ...

The Rise, Fall, and Renaissance of Classical Liberalism, Part 1

by Ralph Raico August 1, 1992

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 Classical liberalism — or simply liberalism, as it was called until around the turn of the century — is the signature political philosophy of Western civilization. Hints and suggestions of the liberal idea can be found in other great cultures. But it was the distinctive society produced in Europe — ...