+ All Categories
Home > Documents > 1993 Mises Institute Accomplishments

1993 Mises Institute Accomplishments

Date post: 08-Apr-2018
Category:
Upload: miseswasright
View: 220 times
Download: 0 times
Share this document with a friend
24
In 1993, r h c cencRal goveRnmenr employed neai merhods oF expansion, concRol, a n d tuealrh conFiscarion. I r Raised a n aRRoganr aRmy oF academ i c s a n d pu&lic inrellecruals in c h e cause oF collecrivism. A n d i r s au?c- iliaRies, media, sang hymns r o envy a n d egaliraRianism. (JndeR r h e suRFace, hoaieveR, a counreRRevolurion aias &Reuiing. CjROiuing Resenrmenr againsr sra- rism a n d RedisrRi&urionism FoRced a neai de&ace, o n campus a n d among r h e AmeRican people, and allocued r h e ideas oF r he Ludaiig von CDises Insrirure r o 6e heaRd cuirh sraRrling eFFecr.
Transcript
Page 1: 1993 Mises Institute Accomplishments

8/7/2019 1993 Mises Institute Accomplishments

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/1993-mises-institute-accomplishments 1/23

In 1993, rhc cencRal goveRnmenremployed neai merhods oF expansion,

concRol, and tuealrh conFiscarion. Ir

Raised an aRRoganr aRmy oF academ

ics and pu&lic inrellecruals in checause oF collecrivism. And irs au?c-

iliaRies, rhe media, sang hymns ro

envy and egaliraRianism.

(JndeR rhe suRFace, hoaieveR, a

counreRRevolurion aias &Reuiing.

CjROiuing Resenrmenr againsr sra-

r i sm and Redis rRi&ur ion i sm FoRced a

neai de&ace, on campus and among

rhe AmeRican people, and allocued

rhe ideas oF rhe Ludaiig von CDises

Insrirure ro 6e heaRd cuirh sraRrling

eFFecr .

Page 2: 1993 Mises Institute Accomplishments

8/7/2019 1993 Mises Institute Accomplishments

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/1993-mises-institute-accomplishments 2/23

F rom th e P re sid en t

We confront the greatest challenge in 50 years. Not

since the New Deal has th ere been such an assaul t

on our liberties and property. The central state is swelling be

yond imagination. ANewer Deal is being piled on the old

New Deal and the Great Society, to engineer a Great Leap For

ward in s ta t i sm.

Like the commissars of old, our rulers believe they havethe mental equipment to make the economy conform to their

idea of perfection. There is no inequality they cannot end, no

unfairness they cannot cure, no private inefficiency they can

not repair, and no public hostility they cannot overcome.

They are impervious to economic logic, the necessity of

private property, the needs of small business and the middle

class, or America's tradition of free enterprise.

Only a body of ideas, inculcated in the right people, can

stop this, which is why the Mises Institute is devoted entirely

and uncompromisingly to those ideas. In particular, we up

hold private property, free contract, free association, free en

terprise, and decentralized political institutions. The Aus

trian School of economics, our intellectual foundation, has

successfully battled statism for more than a century. It can do

so again, as it is renewed and strengthened through the Insti

t u t e .

In 1993, however, we lost two of freedom's greatest de

fenders, Margit von Mises (1890-1993) and Henry Hazlitt

(1894-1993). Mrs. Mises, her husband's strongest advo

cate and helpmate, and after his death a "one-womanMises industry," was an invaluable advisor and supporter

o f the Institute, which she called "a dream come true." We

3

Page 3: 1993 Mises Institute Accomplishments

8/7/2019 1993 Mises Institute Accomplishments

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/1993-mises-institute-accomplishments 3/23

4 The Ludwig von Mhos Institute

were honored to receive as a bequest her bronze bust of her

husband, and his personal copy of Human Action.

Hazlitt, a brilliant journalist, economist, and colleague of

Mises's, battled statism all his life. We were honored when he

made the Institute a principal heir. He thought this appropri

ate because we shared not only his ideas, but his spirit.

In a 1964 speech, Hazlitt addressed the disaster of Lyndon

Johnson's defeat of Barry Goldwater, and his words resonate

for us today. "None of us is yet on the torture rack. We arenot yet in jail. We're getting various harassments and annoy

ances, but what we mainly risk is merely our popularity, the

danger that we will be called nasty names."

Given this, we "have a duty to speak even more clearly and

courageously, to work hard, and to keep fighting this battle

while the strength is still in us... . Even those of us who havereached and passed our 70th birthdays cannot afford to rest

on our oars and spend the rest of our lives dozing in the Flor

id a sun .

"The times call for courage. The times call for hard work.

But if the demands are high, it is because the stakes are even

higher. They are nothing less than the future of human lib

erty, which means the future of civilization."

To that end, the Institute adopts a strategy that is princi

pled and diverse: we bridge academics and public affairs

without sacrificing either contemporary relevance or intellec

tual integrity.

Our student scholarships and book programs are in high

gear. Our academic journal, The Review ofAustrian Economics,is consulted by students and scholars in the world's great uni

versities and l ibraries. Our s tudent-edi ted Austrian Econ omics

Page 4: 1993 Mises Institute Accomplishments

8/7/2019 1993 Mises Institute Accomplishments

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/1993-mises-institute-accomplishments 4/23

The Ludzvig von Mises Institute 5

Nezusletter is the key source on news and views within the

Austrian School. And when The Free Market appears each

month, interviews and reprints quickly follow, which refutethe purveyors of fallacy and deception.

Our Essays in PoliticalEconomy give comprehensive over

views on topics from taxes to secessionism. And our op-ed pro

gram has penetrated major newspapers and magazines, a re

markable achievement given our admittedly radical perspec

t ive .

But the ever-growing demand for our product far exceeds

our resources. As you read through this essay, please con

sider making a substantial investment in our work. As

Hazlitt said, the future of f reedom and of civil ization itself is

a t s take .

Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.Auburn, Alabama

Dec embe r 1993

Page 5: 1993 Mises Institute Accomplishments

8/7/2019 1993 Mises Institute Accomplishments

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/1993-mises-institute-accomplishments 5/23

A Program for Liberty

The battle of ideas begins with the academic leaders of

tomorrow. That's why the highlight of our year is the

Mises University, our acclaimed annual program for serious

students of the Austrian School. Sponsored by our O.P.Al-

ford III Center, it took place in July at Claremont McKenna

College. Applications began to pour in by late 1992, and they

nearly flooded us two months before the program began.This high demand allows us to choose students who are

learned and creative, principled and hard working.

Throughout an extraordinary week, they learned from a

faculty of top Austrian economists, headed by Murray N.

Rothbard, the S. J. Hall distinguished professor of econom

ics at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and head of academic affairs for the Institute. The students choose many of

the classes they attend based on their level and interests.

After class, and at the s em inar s and meals and social

hours, they can talk with great scholars who share their

values. "I'd love to kidnap this faculty and take them back to

my university," said Tyler Welt, a student at the University of

Oregon.

Our first priority is always students. This year, we were

pleased to be able to teach them at 657 colleges and universi

ties. And for our scholarships, we selected only high-achiev

ing and committed students, and guided them through their

economic education. They in turn help steer academic opin

ion toward liberty when they become professors themselves.

Wealso sponsored seminars and publications to teach young

people the ideas that are shut out of their colleges and univer

s i t i e s .

Page 6: 1993 Mises Institute Accomplishments

8/7/2019 1993 Mises Institute Accomplishments

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/1993-mises-institute-accomplishments 6/23

The Ludwig von Mises Institute 7

Our senior fellows and adjunct scholars taught at our con

ferences and conducted workshops and colloquia devoted to

a careful reading of the classics and the presentation of new

ideas. They published widely, so that the economics profes

sion, as well as the other social sciences, know that we are a

force to con tend with .

For the fourth year, we held our Austrian Economics

Weekend at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. It's the best

popular introduction to the Austrian School for businessmen,reporters, homemakers, students, and others. This year, we

had a special emphasis on Austrian economics vs. Clin-

tonomics .

Will the we lf ar e s ta te e v er cease its r el ent le s s march? To

understand the social and economic mechanics behind it , we

assembled outstanding scholars in Chicago to discuss the

"Evils of the Welfare State," a conference attended by academ

ics and professionals. Adjunct scholar Professor Ralph Raico

of SUNY College at Buffalo spoke on the German origins of

welfarism, and Rockford Institute president Allan Carlson ex

plained the internal contradictions of mixed systems. Senior Fel

low Hans-Hermann Hoppe of the University of Nevada, Las

Vegas, distinguished insurance from welfare, as Hillary Clin

ton fails to do, and adjunct scholar Samuel Francis, syndicated

columnist for the Washington Times and adjunct scholar Paul

Gottfried of Elizabethtown College pointed to redistribution as a

source of illicit cultural and political therapy. Senior Fellow

Joseph Salerno of Pace University applied the Misesian theory

of calculation to the mixed economy, and Rothbard explored

the American origins of redistrubtion.

The economics of freedom requires not only sound theory,

but also a sense of history. That is why we are so pleased

Page 7: 1993 Mises Institute Accomplishments

8/7/2019 1993 Mises Institute Accomplishments

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/1993-mises-institute-accomplishments 7/23

8 The Lucking von Mises Institute

about the publication of volumes one and two of Rothbard's

massive history of economic thought. This year he signed the

contract with Edward Elgar, the premier English economic

publisher. Volumes one and twoalready finishedtake us

from the ancient Greeks to the laissez-faire thinkers of the la t

ter half of the 19th century. The third volume, now being writ

ten, will take us to the present.

This scholarly publication is a landmark for the Austrian

School, as is the two-volume set of classic Rothbard essaysalso published by Elgar in its prestigious "Economists of the

20th Century" series edited by Professor Mark Blaug of the

University of London. These two books include not only

Rothbard's seminal articles from the fifties and sixties, but the

scholarship that dramatically extended the Austrian School in

later decades. Best of all, these books will entrench Rothbard's

own high position in the history of economic thought. We arepleased to have helped bring this about.

Kluwer Academic Publishers brings out our highly re

spected Reviezu ofAustrian Economics, the only scholarly jour

nal in the world devoted to the Austrian School. Adjunct

scholar Larry Eshelman's article on Mises and natural law, ap

pearing in volume six, number two, shows why the RAE is soimportant. So too does Florida State University's professor

Bruce L. Benson, who writes on the origins of private prop

erty in the same issue. Former Mises Institute graduate stu

dent and current Clemson economics professor Donald

Boudreaux, together with our adjunct scholar and Loyola Col

lege professor Thomas DiLorenzo, write on anti-trust and

protectionism in the same issue.

The previous issue of the RAE was just as interesting, with

Salerno's demonstration that J. M. Keyneswas a millennialist,

Page 8: 1993 Mises Institute Accomplishments

8/7/2019 1993 Mises Institute Accomplishments

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/1993-mises-institute-accomplishments 8/23

The Ludwig von Mises Institute 9

and two pathbreaking pieces on dismantling socialism, one

by Washington and Jefferson College professor Jeffrey

Herbener, a member of the Mises University faculty, and

the other by Rothbard. Salerno, we should add, is also the

stellar advocate of the gold standard and 100% reserve

banking among young Austrians, and Herbener one of the

most adept exposers of the errors and pretenses of the main

s t re am .

As academic vice president and editor of the RAE, Rothbard has done more than enough for the Institute this year.

But we could also mention his articles and reviews in jour

nals of opinion all over the world, the thousands of reprints

that others make of his Free Market pieces, his monthly chroni

cling of world affairs in the Center for Libertarian Studies'

Rothbard-Rockzoell Report, his essays on New York politics for

Chronicles, the articles on him in major newspapers and magazines, and much more.

When Rothbard's Man, Economy and State appeared in

1962, it caused a sensation. It was the first economic treatise

in t he Aust ri an School s ince Mises' s Human Action, and it

helped define the School. Now we have brought it back into

print in a handsome new edition. Students again have access

to the most complete and integrated presentation of econom

ics written in the latter half of this century.

Another aspect of Rothbard is his willingness to speak

out fearlessly on current policy, as his total demolition of

"The Clinton Economic Plan" demonstrated. We printed

and distributed thousands of copies of his analysis, written

with the support of the American Cause Foundation, and

newspaper spinoffs and radio interviews were in the hun

dreds .

Page 9: 1993 Mises Institute Accomplishments

8/7/2019 1993 Mises Institute Accomplishments

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/1993-mises-institute-accomplishments 9/23

10 The Ludxvig von Mises Institute

Are moral philosophy and economics entirely separate?

No great economist has ever thought so, which is why we

are proud that Dr. David Gordon, one of the finest philoso

phers working today, is a senior fellow of the Institute.

And he is co-editor of an outstanding collection of essays on

The Morals ofMarkets. Gordon is also author of The Philosophi

calOrigins ofAustrian Economics, a monograph we published

this year to bolster the essential foundations of Misesian eco

nomi c s .

Hoppe islike Misesan economist who deals with

philosophical issues. His new book, The Economics and Eth

ics of Private Property, published this year by Kluwer in our

Studies in Austrian Economics Series, delves into morality

and efficiency, the sociology of taxation, Marxian class

analysis, and much more. And his paper on immigration,

secessionism, and democracy in Europe is one of our Essays

in Political Economy. He also wrote an article on the subject

for Chronicles. And his paper was translated into German

and French, and caused quite a stir in those countries.

Speaking of translations, a Russian edition of one of our

books was in preparation as soon as ours rolled off the press.

The book is Requiem forMarx, edited by our senior fellow andCarthage College economics professor Yuri N. Maltsev.

The book features Gordon on Marxist philosophy, Hoppe

on the class struggle, the American Bureau of Economic Re

search's Gary North on the shocking private life of Marx, the

late Professor David Osterfeld of St. Joseph's College on

Marx and mercantilism, Raico on the roots of Marxist

thought, and, finally, Rothbard on communism as a heretical

religion. It is a tour de force, with Maltsev's riveting introduc

tion on his years as an economist under Gorbachev, and it is

Page 10: 1993 Mises Institute Accomplishments

8/7/2019 1993 Mises Institute Accomplishments

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/1993-mises-institute-accomplishments 10/23

The Ludwig von Mises Institute 11

already in classroom use in this country, like all Institute pub

l icat ions .

As the last notable Soviet defector, Maltsev is frequently

called upon to comment on Russian affairs. He also deserves

a medal for all the work he does, speaking on behalf of the In

sti tute and Misesian economics all over the Midwest , and

writing for newspapers all over the country through our op

ed program.

We also need reference books, and one of the more useful

is The Fortune Encyclopedia of Economics, which now has Roth

bard as a contributor. Not everything is in this encyclopedia,

of course, so when the Nobel Prize in economics was an

nounced this year, many editors called on us to explain

what it meant . Within hou rs , Ma rk Thornton, our Auburn

University academic coordinator and O.P. Alford III assis

tant professor sent off an article on prize winners Robert

Fogel and Douglas North, which appeared in a number of

newspapers including the Washington Times and Mobile Press

Register.

Last year's Nobel Prize went to Gary S. Becker, and our

senior fellow, executive editor of the RAE, and professor Wal

ter Block of Holy Cross College wrote about him in the AustrianEconomics Newsletter.The AEN is edited by our student

Peter Klein, the top economics graduate s tudent at Berkeley,

who also writes a beautiful tribute to F.A. Hayek in a recent

i s sue .

Thomas Jefferson's 250th birthday was in 1993, and we

celebrated it at the Institute. Almost everywhere else, the day

passed with little comment, except for politically correct slan

ders, but Thornton had an outstanding essay in several major

papers, including the DallasMorning News.

Page 11: 1993 Mises Institute Accomplishments

8/7/2019 1993 Mises Institute Accomplishments

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/1993-mises-institute-accomplishments 11/23

12 The Ludwig von Mises Institute

Thornton, in addition to teaching a course on Austrian

economics, straightens out popular myths on drugs, crime,

and jail sentencing. His book The Economics of Prohibition,

based on his Institute-sponsored PhD dissertation, estab

lished him as a national expert.

The Modern Guide to Macroeconomics, due out soon from El

gar, covers the Austrian School along with the others, and

our adjunct scholar Roger Garrison of the Auburn University

economics department wrote the section showing that the

Fede ra l Reserve is to b lame fo r booms and bus t s . O ne o f th e

most popular professors at Auburn, Garrison is a mentor to

our students and an active participant in our Auburn pro

grams and the Mises University.

Hazlitt was right when he said we should never retire in

tellectually, and he never did (see Institute president Lew Rockwell's article in the Journal ofCommerce for details). As proof, we

are publishing TFM editor Jeffrey Tucker's 6,000-entry bibliog

raphy of Hazlitt's work, featuring annotations by Rothbard

and an essay on Hazlitt by Rockwell.

If you're coming through Auburn, Ala., on a Wednes

day, attend our "Brown Bag Seminar." These weekly discus

sions at lunchtime, directed by Thornton and held in our li

brary, include students, professors, and supporters. Also, un

der Thornton's direction, we taught two groups of professors

and businessmen about monetary economics. Our Auburn

graduate students lectured.

We are proud of Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost

Legacyof the Conservative Movement by our media fellowJustin Raimondo. Pat ri ck J. Buchanan called it "thor

oughly researched, beautifully written, passionately ar

gued," a "veritable Iliad of the American Right." It tells the

Page 12: 1993 Mises Institute Accomplishments

8/7/2019 1993 Mises Institute Accomplishments

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/1993-mises-institute-accomplishments 12/23

The Ludwig von Mises Institute 13

story of our intellectual ancestors, the heroic men and

wom en w ho batt led the New Deal.

The Conservative Movement by Gottfried tells the

story of decline, compromise, and betrayal since World War

II, and of those few who stand out from the miasma.

Gottfried speaks at our conferences and writes for our publi

ca t i ons .

Attorney John V. Denson's "Democracy and the Free Mar

ket," appearing in our Essays in Political Economy series,

shows that political and economic freedom are mutually sus

taining. He also draws on the Vanderbilt Agrarians to show

the importance of rightly ordered values in a free society.

Back in the fifties, Cliches of Socialism, published by the

Foundation for Economic Education, changed people's minds

on subjects ranging from unions to central banking. We arepleased that FEE is issuing a new edition, and that Rockwell

was asked to refute some of the new cliches. Congratulations,

by the way, to FEE on securing the great Misesian economist

Hans F. Sennholz as president, and on the publication of our

Senior Mises Scholar (and FEE senior s taffer) Bet tina Bien

Greaves's stunning Mises: An AnnotatedBibliography.

Our adjunct scholar Roy Cordato now teaches at Camp

bell University, replacing Institute adjunct scholar and former

Mises student William Peterson, who retired to write a book

on democracy.

On unemployment, the media fails to point out how the

cost of labor, driven through the roof by government inter

ventions from civil rights to family leave, is the culprit. Pro

fessor Francois Melese of the Defense Resources Manage

ment Institute wrote an attack on "civil rights," published

in TFM. And our adjunct scholars Richard K. Vedder and

Page 13: 1993 Mises Institute Accomplishments

8/7/2019 1993 Mises Institute Accomplishments

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/1993-mises-institute-accomplishments 13/23

14 The Ludzvig von Mises Institute

Lowell Gallaway of Ohio University produced a masterful

demonstration of the effects of government intervention in

their book Out of Work: Unemployment and Government in Twen

tieth-Century America. They credit the Review ofAustrian Eco

nomics for running early chapters of the book, and Garrison

for h is invaluable advice .

Academic panels allow colleagues to learn from each

other, and panels on the Austrian School are growing more

common. For example, Salerno organized one at the EasternEconomics Assoc ia t ion with Institute-affiliated scholars.

We are always proud of the achievements of our former

students. For example, there is the new book on free banking

by Sul Ross's Larry Sechrest. Part of it was previously pub

l ished in the R A E .

The Austrian view on bankingmoney should be hardand loans should be based on real savingsmay sound old

fashioned, but Rush Limbaugh was persuaded by our mate

rial and promoted the Austrian theory of prices and the gold

standard on the air. On several occasions, he mentioned the

Institute, and each time, our phones lit up.

We also get calls from publications such as National Review

and Chronicles asking us to suggest book reviewers, and in sev

eral cases, Rockwell has reviewed books for these publications.

As a result of an essay on two books for NR, investment writer

Richard Band said Rockwell did "the best commentary of any

body on the Right since the young Pat Buchanan." For his

"outstanding commentary," the Birmingham News made Rock

wel l a membe r of i ts Board of Contr ibutors .

When Washington, D.C., announces a new policy, we be

lieve in giving it a gimlet-eyed review while assuming that

the government is guilty until proven innocent. Case in

Page 14: 1993 Mises Institute Accomplishments

8/7/2019 1993 Mises Institute Accomplishments

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/1993-mises-institute-accomplishments 14/23

The Ludzvig von Mises Institute 15

point: a "free trade" agreement that is actually a cover for

trade blocs and transnational taxation and regulation.

Rather than take someone's word about Nafta , the North

American Free Trade Agreement, we got the documents and

assembled a coalition of institutions, journalists, and schol

ars to provide an objective readingone not tainted by la

bor unions, government-Subsidized industries, the Clinton

administration, or foreign governments. In short, we

looked at Nafta as Mises would have, asking: does it reduce or increase government entanglement in international

t rade? We discovered that Nafta was not free trade at all,

but a trade bloc that cartelizes taxes and regulations across

borders and costs billions in new taxes and foreign aid.

The demand for our point of view increased as the ad

ministration became more strident in its support for this men

acing agreement. When it was difficult for anyone to be

heard, the Institute had articles in the Los Angeles Times, Hu

man Events, the Christian ScienceMonitor, the influential Capi

tol Hill newspaper Roll Call, and dozens of others. One par

ticular argument struck George Will as persuasivethat

Nafta enlarges the dictatorial executive over the legislature

and he cal led to tell us so.

We collected some of our best articles on the subject, as

well as relevant documents from the Competitive Enterprise

Institute and the Heritage Foundation, and printed up a Nafta

Reader, acclaimed as the best research tool on the subject.

Rockwell was kept busy with all the radio stations and news

sourcesfrom Investor's Business Daily to the London Daily

Telegraphasking for interviews.

Obse rv e r s s a id w e had an e no rmou s effec t . R e a s o n

magazine and pro-Nafta think tanks conceded that Nafta

Page 15: 1993 Mises Institute Accomplishments

8/7/2019 1993 Mises Institute Accomplishments

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/1993-mises-institute-accomplishments 15/23

16 The Ludwig von Mises Institute

represented managed, and not free, trade. And though we're

not in the business of lobbying Congress, our arguments

added considerable pressure, especially Rockwell's Washing

ton Times articles on Nafta's dangerous side agreements and

infringements on states' rights. These and his other publica

tions led Sennholz to call Rockwell a "one-person Austrian

army in the U.S." In the Nafta connection, you might have

h eard th e Insti tute ment ioned a number of t imes on the Cable

NewsNetwork, on the Today Show, and, if you looked closely,seen Rockwell's photo in the New York Times at an anti-Nafta

press conference.

If Nafta teaches us anything, it is that things are seldom

what the politicians and national media say they are. No

where is th at mo re tru e than in educat ion reform. Our idea l is

a decentralized and diverse system of privately funded, com

petitive schools. That means the public school monopoly

needs to be broken up, and the power of unions destroyed,

for th e sa ke o f ou r chi ldren 's educat ion .

Massive tax cuts and the concomitant economic growth

would give families more discretionary income to choose

private over declining public schools. But when we looked

at various voucher initiatives, we found that they actually

meant more government spending, more regulation of pri

vate schools, and more centralized control of local public

schools. We made avai lable a ser ies of a rti cl es i n fav or o f rea l

privatization and against new state controls by Professors

Dwight Lee and Robert Sexton (of the University of Georgia

and PepperdineUniversity), Gottfried, DiLorenzo, Tucker,

Rockwell, Rothbard, and others. They appeared in publica

tions from the Los Angeles Times and Human Events to National

R e v i e w an d T he W an de re r.

Page 16: 1993 Mises Institute Accomplishments

8/7/2019 1993 Mises Institute Accomplishments

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/1993-mises-institute-accomplishments 16/23

The Ludwig von Mises Institute + 17

The New Republic makes you want to tear your hair out

(and some of us don ' t have much left), but it watches our

scholars, and our work on vouchers prompted them to write

on "conservatives against school choice." Insight magazine

did the same, pointing to the dangers we had identified.

Part of our strategy is to use every possible occasion to

make a free-market point. When the new Catholic catechism

came out, Rockwell published articles on the old teaching

that any taxation beyond the minimal is akin to theft, andprominent secular and religious publications ran his

thoughts.

Does a year go by when Ralph Nader doesn't make

trouble? It was inevitable that he would complain about "rac

ist" lending patterns. But after his press conference announc

ing a new study, he was hardly out of the National Press

Building when the Institute ruined his day. All the major wire

services called Rockwell for interviews, and he explained

that Nader's problem is with a free market in credit alloca

tion, not "discrimination." And many newspapers, includ

ing the Houston Chronicle and the Washington Times, publish

ed Rockwel l ' s refu ta t ion of Nader .

Let's back up. For about 20 years, liberals have complained about mortgage lending and race. Rockwell had a

long article in National Review refuting a malicious Washing

ton Post series on this subject, and another piece in Forbes de

fending the rationality of credit markets. Tucker and

DiLorenzo have also cri ticized, in the Christian Science Mo n i

torand through the Capital Research Center, racially moti

vated i n te r ven ti on i n the c red i t ma rket s.

The Washington Times has published five articles on race

and mortgages from the Mises Institute, and others have run

Page 17: 1993 Mises Institute Accomplishments

8/7/2019 1993 Mises Institute Accomplishments

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/1993-mises-institute-accomplishments 17/23

28 TheLudwigvonMisesInstitute

in the Montgomery Advertiser. A reader saw one of Rockwell's

articles in the Cleveland PlainDealer and wrote "I appreciate

the determination and courage you showed. Undoubtedly

you will be attacked by the usual pressure groups, but I en

courage you to stand up to them."

We will indeed, as we confront the Clinton administra

tion's plan to force mutual funds to put investors' savings

into shaky businesses owned by the politically correct.

It's hard to imagine that once upon a time, American

businessmen were free to hire and fire as they saw fit, and

famil ies were f ree of bureaucra t i c in te r fe rence . I ns ti tu te m e

d ia fe l low Bill Kau ffm a n d emo lis he d th e f irs t in te rven t ions

in to these f r e edoms in "T he C hild Labo r Amendmen t De

bate of the 1920s" for our Essays in Political Economy series.

Later came civil rights, which trampled on freedom of associat ion. And now we have the Americans With Disabili t ies

Act, which forbids discrimination even on the ground of

mental incompetence. Rockwell talked about the swarm of

anti-business lawsuits generated by this law in a long Na

tional Review article, "Wheelchairs at Third Base." It drove the

ADA bureaucrats crazy (now a protected disability), and they

denounc ed h imas a "Communis t " ! A

shor ter v ers io n o fhis

article hit the op-ed pages (Washington Times, Houston

Chronicle, Human Events, etc.) just after the government's Na

tional Council on Disability bragged about all the lawsuits.

In another series of art ic les on the disabilities act, Rai-

mondo pointed out that the ADAeven defends mass murder

ers from discrimination, and editors in California, New York,

and Nebraska gobbled up our analysis.

Civil rights may be the main infringement on work free

dom today, but it is far from the only one. We got word that

Page 18: 1993 Mises Institute Accomplishments

8/7/2019 1993 Mises Institute Accomplishments

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/1993-mises-institute-accomplishments 18/23

The Ludwig von MisesInstitute 29

the Clinton Labor Department planned to crack down on the

temporary agencies that help people get short-term jobs. In

the Journal of Commerce, in an article reprinted all over, Rock

well defended temp agencies as a market response to govern

men t i n t e r ven t i on .

There w as also a t ime when famil ies cou ld hand dow n

property without inheritance taxes. When we learned that

Clinton planned to raise these taxes, we asked one of our top

graduate students, Alexander Tabarroknow a holder of anew PhD from George Mason Universityto look at the is

sue, and the result was "The Inheritance Tangle" for our Es

says in Political Economy.

As with so many other issues, we were the only ones who

seemed to be doing work on the subject. So when we publish

ed a shorter version in The Free Market, and sent out another

version to newspapers around the country, they ran it promi

nently. The publication Philanthropy called attention to it as

wel l .

Higher inheritance taxes have long been a favorite of

Alicia Munnell, Clinton's head of economic policy at the

Treasury. She also advocates other dangerous policies,

from credit redistributionism to taxing pensions. Wewere among the first to oppose her ideas, and when writ

ing on them for the Journal of Commerce, Rockwell noted that

the present pension system is precarious because it did not

develop as an authentic free-market institution.

Clinton 's cha irman of the Council of Economic Advisors,

Laura Tyson, had praised the economics of Communist Ro

man ia unde r N iko la i C e au se sc u. Wh e n Rockwel l cr i t ic ized

this in a series of articles, a reporter for Fox Television

Morning News confronted her. But she lied, denying she

Page 19: 1993 Mises Institute Accomplishments

8/7/2019 1993 Mises Institute Accomplishments

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/1993-mises-institute-accomplishments 19/23

20 The Ludzuig von MisesInstitute

had ever wri t ten on Romania . National Review th en to ok her

to task and defended Rockwell. In an opening editorial, the

magazine quoted Tyson's public denial, and then her book

praising Ceausescu's policies.

Clinton's pick to head the civil rights police, Lani Guinier

of anti-white fame, ended up as they all should have: leaving

town. Human Eventswas first in print on Guinier's paper trail

when the weekly published Rockwell's expose. The Jewish

Daily Forward, the Wall Street Journal, and others followed,and she was through.

The Institute even helped drive a Marxist from the Com

merce Department. When our adjunct scholars and Rockwell

went to press exposing Derek Shearer's past associations

with far-left causes, the heat was on. After serving a few

weeks as deputy undersecretary for economic affairs, he quit

and dropped out of sight.

Unfortunately, Roberta Achtenberg is still around as head

of civil rights at HUD. As Raimondo revealed in The Free

Market and elsewhere, Achtenberg's politics are virtually

Leni nis t. Bu t ou r ar t ic les d id cause h er tr ou ble a t he r Sen

ate confirmation hearings, and are on the record for future

ac t i on .

Why the focus on personnel? It's important to put pres

sure on the people who are imposing the Newer Deal, just as

the Old Right railed against Harry Hopkins and FDR's

other red appointees. To further understand our present dif

ficulties, we published Grove City College's economics pro

fessor Tom Rose's outstanding essay on how Roosevelt de

stroyed the gold standard.

One consequence of government intervention that

most everyone ignores is the creation of the underground

Page 20: 1993 Mises Institute Accomplishments

8/7/2019 1993 Mises Institute Accomplishments

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/1993-mises-institute-accomplishments 20/23

The Ludwig von Mises Institute 22

economy. It is huge, as Tucker pointed out in a probing es

say in Policy Review. Health nationalizationto which the

year's final Free Market was devotedwill dramatically ex

pand this sector.

We would be remiss if we did not report the criticism we

get. For example, the New Yorker said Rothbard's call for "full-

scale abolition of the New Deal" is "positively frightening."

And we received hate mail for Rockwell's post-election arti

cle in theLos

AngelesTimes

predicting thatClinton would

raise our taxes, attack gun ownership, socialize medicine,

and promote euthanasia.

La P r e n s a of Buenos Aire s h as a new con t r ibu to r in Roth

bard, and Rockwell has long appeared in its pages. Our arti

cles run in papers in El Salvador, Mexico, Guatemala, and

Peru, thanks to Carlos Ball, president of the Agenda Intera-

mericana de Prensa Economica, who translates The Free Mar

ket. Augustin Navarro of Mexico City's "Centro Mises"an

opponent of Naftais also a great help in promotion and

translation. The ideas of liberty are what this region needs,

not government-managed trade.

We fear for Cuba 's fate after Castro, because the IMF and

World Bank are circling like vultures to prevent a free mar

ket, as they did in Russia and Eastern Europe. But Rockwell's

call for rejecting those plans has circulated widely within the

anti-Castro Cuban community.

As early as 1927, Mises argued that the only foreign pol

icy compatible with a free market was what is today de

nounced as "isolationism." This was also the foreign policy of

the Founding Fathers, as outlined in George Washington'sFarewell Address. In this tradition, our distinguished coun

se lo r R on Pau l warned in the H o u s t o n C h r o n i c l e tha t the

Page 21: 1993 Mises Institute Accomplishments

8/7/2019 1993 Mises Institute Accomplishments

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/1993-mises-institute-accomplishments 21/23

22 The Ludwig von MisesInstitute

"humani t a r i an" miss ion in Somal ia would lead t o d i sa st er .

"We must stop spending our liberty and property on for

eign nations. No matter the excuse, it only engorges our

government, equipping it for more depredations at home

and abroad." Paul speaks at our annual Supporters Sum

mitheld this year in Palm Springsand continues to help

lead the cause of liberty, as he did in Congress, as chairman

of the National Endowment for Liberty.

Everyone who has been interviewed knows the risks of be

ing misquoted, which is why some people avoid interviews. We

always take the risk, and this year we had quite a few suc

cesses, in friendly magazines like Insight and more hostile fo

rums l ike the Associa ted Press and Federa l News Service.

It's always a pleasure to help those who share our ideals,

and in 1993 both Rothbard and Rockwell served on advisory

commit te e s o f the American Cause and the Rock fo rd Ins ti

tute, and the boards of the Center for Libertarian Studies and

the John Randolph Club.

The Randolph Club, an intellectual society for pro-liberty

writers, scholars, and activists, was co-founded by the Mises

Institute, and with Rothbard as president this year, the club

met to discuss the "W ar on the Real America"and how we

can win it. Attendance was the highest ever.

Rockwell also made many speeches, including at the Na

tional ReviewSummit on "Economy and Enterprise in the

Age of Clinton," at a Claremont Institute conferenceon mid

dle-class welfare, at a Claremont panel at the American

Political Science Association, where he debated global-

democrat Joshua Muravchik, at FEE on taxes with Sennholz

and Paul, and at the American Cause, where he defended

free t rade .

Page 22: 1993 Mises Institute Accomplishments

8/7/2019 1993 Mises Institute Accomplishments

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/1993-mises-institute-accomplishments 22/23

The Ludwig vonMises Institute 23

Among the speakers at the Randolph Club was Greg

Pavlik, a student at the University of Pennsylvania. His anti-

PC. columns for the student newspaper led leftist black students to steal the entire print run of 14,000copies. The univer

sity administration responded by punishing the campus cops

who tried to stop the theft. The administration also tried to

kick Pavlik out of school in a kangaroo-court proceeding. But

with our help and Gottfried's, Pavlik triumphed. The Insti

tute and its people were his intellectual influences.

Speaking of campus wars, David Felton of the University

of Maryland got sick of seeing students with Karl Marx but

tons, so he had a local company make up Ludwig von

Mises buttons. He and his fellow students wore them in op

position and protest, and the resulting campus-wide com

ment was a great occasion for teaching our ideas.

Collectivism will swamp us unless we reestablish, in large

and small ways, the ideas of liberty in our institutions of higher

learning, and in the hearts of our people. Thanks to our sup

porters, the Mises Institute reached students on more than 600

campuses in 1993, and influenced the national debate in a

host of unprecedented and unexpected ways.

For 1994, with your help, we will redouble our efforts. As

Hazlitt said, "if the demands are high, it is because the stakesare even higher. They are nothing less than the future of hu

man liberty, which means the future of civilization."

Page 23: 1993 Mises Institute Accomplishments

8/7/2019 1993 Mises Institute Accomplishments

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/1993-mises-institute-accomplishments 23/23

IWIGlistsINSTITUTE

TheLudwigvonMisesInstitute

Auburn,Alabama36849-5301

(205)844-2500;fax(205)844-2583

Non-ProfitOrg.

U.S.POSTAGE

PAID

LudwigvonMisesInstitute


Recommended