Alan Mosley | The Libertarian Institute

Leonard Read, Still Educating Today

by Alan Mosley | Sep 26, 2025 | Featured Articles, Libertarianism

Few twentieth‑century champions of laissez‑faire economics have cast a longer shadow than Leonard Edward Read. Born in Hubbardston, Michigan in 1898, Read founded the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) and wrote nearly thirty books and hundreds of essays. He forged a link between nineteenth‑century classical liberals like Frédéric Bastiat and the modern libertarian movement. For Read, the cause of liberty was a moral calling as much as an economic doctrine; he believed that free markets required virtuous citizens and that the greatest work an individual can perform for society is to...

Promises Made, Promises Betrayed

by Alan Mosley | Sep 22, 2025 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy, Politics

In his polemical essay Vision of the Anointed, economist Thomas Sowell argues that grand political visions seldom survive contact with reality. Politicians promise to banish war and debt, only to preside over more of both. The bigger the promises, the easier it is to forget that policies must be judged not by intentions but by consequences. Donald Trump’s return to the White House in January 2025 came wrapped in a flurry of pledges: he would end America’s “forever wars,” rein in runaway deficits, usher in mass deportations, expose the Epstein files, and side with “the people” against...

H.L. Mencken at 145: Proverbs from the Sage of Baltimore

by Alan Mosley | Sep 12, 2025 | Featured Articles

Henry Louis Mencken was born in Baltimore on September 12, 1880. After completing only a few years of formal schooling, he taught himself the craft of journalism and, by the age of eighteen, was working as a reporter for the Baltimore Herald. Over the next four decades Mencken produced millions of words in newspapers, magazines, and books. He cut his teeth as a critic in the six‑volume series Prejudices, edited the literary magazine The Smart Set, and founded The American Mercury. While he admired the energy of American speech, he refused to flatter his countrymen. “Boobus Americanus,” he...

Afternoon Special: Happy Birthday Hans-Hermann Hoppe

by Alan Mosley | Sep 2, 2025 | Featured Articles

Hans‑Hermann Hoppe, born September 2, 1949, has carved a singular niche in libertarian thought. After earning a doctorate in philosophy in Germany, he moved to the United States in the 1980s to study under economist Murray Rothbard. His books A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism, The Economics and Ethics of Private Property, and Democracy: The God That Failed argue that the modern state is predatory and that a free society rests on private property, voluntary exchange, and decentralized order. In celebrating his seventy‑sixth birthday we can revisit a handful of themes that illustrate why...

John Locke and the Libertarian Tradition

by Alan Mosley | Aug 28, 2025 | Featured Articles, History, Libertarianism

The Enlightenment produced many innovators, but few have left a legacy as contentious and influential as John Locke. Born in Wrington, Somerset on August 29, 1632, Locke wrote the political treatises that shaped England’s Glorious Revolution and later guided the American Revolution. Libertarians still appeal to Locke when debating self‑ownership, property rights, consent, and the scope of government. To celebrate his birthday tomorrow, let’s trace how Locke’s writings help to lay the groundwork for American libertarianism. Locke’s outlook was forged by experience rather than aristocratic...

My Fabric, My Choice: On Trump’s EO Banning Flag Burning

by Alan Mosley | Aug 25, 2025 | Blog, Criminal Justice

On August 25, 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order aimed at people who burn or desecrate the American flag. The order instructs the U.S. attorney general to “vigorously prosecute” offenders, imposes a mandatory one‑year jail sentence for anyone who sets fire to the flag, and commands federal officials to refer cases to state authorities and to cancel visas and naturalization proceedings for foreigners who take part. Trump justified the directive by describing the flag as a sacred national symbol and by claiming that flag burning is “uniquely offensive” conduct likely to...

Ron Paul: Defender of the Powerless, Critic of the Powerful

by Alan Mosley | Aug 20, 2025 | Featured Articles, Politics

In a political age that prizes charisma over conviction, Ron Paul's career stands out as a long series of principled noes. The Texas physician–turned–congressman won his first seat in 1976, lost it a few months later, then returned repeatedly to the House, always as an outsider and always carrying the same simple message: the federal government must be bound by the Constitution, money must be sound, markets must be free, and peace is a moral imperative. As he turns ninety today, it is worth revisiting how a soft‑spoken obstetrician came to inspire a movement that outlived his political...

The Constitution, Foreign Wars, and the Tenth Amendment

by Alan Mosley | Aug 4, 2025 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

When a sitting U.S. president decides to commit tens of billions of dollars’ worth of weapons to foreign conflicts, ordinary citizens seldom ask whether such largesse has a constitutional basis. Yet America was founded on the principle that the federal government is one of limited and enumerated powers. Those powers were carefully listed in Article I of the Constitution, and the Tenth Amendment reserves all powers not delegated to the United States to the states or to the people. The Constitution demands that any action taken by the federal government—including funding and arming foreign...

« Older Entries