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...

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...