Constitutional law is supposed to be different from other types of law. But the Obamacare litigation headed to the Supreme Court shows that liberal interpreters of the Constitution have forgotten the distinction. In common law, intended to maintain the continuity of legitimate expectations, later rulings carry more precedential weight than earlier
Toward the end of his State of the Union speech, President Obama said “I believe what Republican Abraham Lincoln believed: That government should do for people only what they cannot do better by themselves, and no more.” Apparently, he didn’t note the immense irony of those words on the lips of one of American history’s most aggressive expanders
Sir William Thompson, Lord Kelvin, once said, When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind. Kelvin’s statement is an important reminder that when magnitudes of
President Obama’s “you didn’t build that” statement to successful business owners has created a serious backlash. In rebuttal, his defenders point to his more complete statement for “clarification”: If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this
Samuel Johnson once wrote that “patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel,” criticizing adverse policies and proposals falsely claimed to be based in patriotism. This has been most recently illustrated by the political furor over “made-in-China” Team USA uniforms. Many politicians asserted that it was un-American, with Senate Majority Leader
We have just finished our quadrennial search for who is the very best in the world in a dizzying array of sports. We discovered who was absolutely the best at a given time, under the same circumstances, even if it was by a fraction of an inch or a hundredth of a second. But, especially in those photo finishes that provided audiences so many
I am a believer in the power of liberty — voluntary relationships — to bring out the best in individuals and, therefore, society. But that well-founded belief makes it painful to see markets (willing exchange) blamed for virtually everything someone can think to object to, in favor of coercion of some by others via government, inspired by some
Sir William Thompson, Lord Kelvin, dijo una vez: Cuando puedes medir aquello de lo que estás hablando y expresarlo con números, sabes algo de ello, pero cuando no puedes medirlo, cuando no puedes expresarlo con números, tus conocimientos son de un tipo magro e insatisfactorio. La declaración de Kelvin es un importante recordatorio de que cuando se
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.