HL Mencken is the writer you need to read immediately. He was savagely brilliant, caustic, and witty, but also prolific across genres in ways almost unthinkable of journalists today. His skill with the English language was virtually unmatched in the 20th century, as was his deep and abiding contempt for utopian statism in any form. And his
Wall Street Journal and USA Today writer James Bovard joins Jeff Deist to diagnose what’s wrong with our body politic today. From relentlessly tribal voting to rank hypocrisy and “whataboutism,” Americans are an angry bunch. And their credulous belief in the sanctity of authorities like the FBI is almost entirely determined by whether their party
Jim Bovard talks with Jeff Deist about his incendiary career as a journalist, the American people as Mencken’s “Booboisie”, and why the Nanny State has him stocking-up on cigars.
The Free Market 17, no. 6 (June 1999) At the American Revolution, the founders clearly recognized the defects of representative government. Pamphleteer John Cartwright in 1776 derided “that poor consolatory word, representation, with the mere sound of which we have so long contented ourselves.” “Slavery by Parliament” was the phrase commonly
The Washington Times Shaking out your banking secrets? Internet activists, conservatives, libertarians, civil liberties groups, and others trounced federal banking agencies last month. The proposed expansion of the “Know Your Customer” banking regulations were defeated by hundreds of thousands of Americans who took to their keyboards.
No matter who wins the presidential election next month, the media and the political class will whoop up the result as another triumph of American democracy. Regardless that the winning candidate’s path to power was paved with lies and shenanigans, we will be assured that “the system works.” But the only certainty at this point is that America
In Iraq and Afghanistan, US military officers routinely handed bundles of cash to local residents to buy influence and undermine resistance to the American occupation. Such payments came in especially handy after US troops inadvertently killed innocent civilians or sheep. Billions of dollars were shoveled out with little or no oversight as part of
I was born in Iowa, raised in the mountains of Virginia, and attended Virginia Tech sporadically from 1974 to 1976 before dropping out to try my luck writing. At some point in the late 1970s, individual liberty became my highest political value and I resolved to do what I could to defend it. I had seen the federal government sabotage the currency,
Nací en Iowa, me crié en las montañas de Virginia, y asistí a Virginia Tech esporádicamente de 1974 a 1976 antes de abandonar para probar mi suerte escribiendo. En algún momento a finales de los 70, la libertad individual se convirtió en mi mayor valor político y decidí hacer lo que pudiera para defenderla. Había visto al gobierno federal sabotear
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.