The phrase “equality of opportunity” is expressed by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as a nondiscrimination principle. There has been much debate on whether the nondiscrimination principle is a formal right to equality before the law, reflecting the principle that everyone has a right not to be discriminated against, or whether it is a substantive right vested in specified groups (e.g., blacks or women) to give them special legal protection that members of other groups (e.g., whites or men) do not enjoy.Many conservatives and left libertarians argue that the nondiscrimination principle of the 1964 Civil Rights Act merely denotes a right to formal equality protecting everyone and that those who see it as a law concerned with substantive outcomes for blacks or women

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.

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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.

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The libertarian argument against civil rights laws strikes many progressives as fundamentally wrong because they view civil rights as the best way to promote liberal values including individual liberty. But any so-called values that lead inexorably to the destruction of society are not “liberal” in the true sense. In “Liberalism,” Ludwig von Mises explains the importance of pursuing what is good for society as a whole, rather than what seems good for one particular group.This seems counterintuitive to progressives, who reason that since liberalism is concerned with individual rights, no attention needs to be paid to the common interest or what is good for society as a whole. They reason that if even one individual is offended or hampered in pursuit of his ideals,

A quotation from Die Transvaler in 1958, cited by Walter E. Williams in his book “South Africa’s War Against Capitalism,” illustrates a widespread misunderstanding about the nature and purpose of the laws of economics. The political choice to be made by Afrikaner nationalists during the apartheid years was whether to pay a price in terms of economic progress by rejecting free markets, freedom of association and contractual freedom as a trade-off necessary to safeguard white civilization as they saw it: “It is fortunate that under a Nationalist government these worshippers of economic laws have never had their way but that a higher and nobler goal has been strived after — the maintenance of white civilization.”This reference to “worshippers of economic laws”

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.

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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.

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In this age of relativism, where one often hears reference to “your truth” and “my truth,” there are so many varying interpretations of truth that the concept of truth itself seems devoid of meaning. It is fashionable to see the concept of truth as indistinguishable from opinions or preferences. For example, Mari Fitzduff writes thatfor many of us, far from our beliefs being “true,” they are actually born out of a particular social context, allied to physiological needs such as a differing neural sensitivity to threats and the greater certainty that a group can provide. Thus, beliefs are often what is termed “groupish” rather than necessarily true.The task of deciding which group has the “true” version of facts is then left to expert fact-checkers who will

Human behavior is, to a large extent, socially constructed. People often act based on social norms, expectations, or habits rather than by attempting to ascertain the nature of reality itself. In that context, it is true to say that people’s perceptions of reality are socially constructed, as explained by the Thomas theorem:Another way of looking at this concept is through W.I. Thomas’s notable Thomas theorem which states, “If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences” (Thomas and Thomas 1928). That is, people’s behavior can be determined by their subjective construction of reality rather than by objective reality.In “Praxeology: The Methodology of Austrian Economics,” Murray Rothbard defines praxeology as “the logical implications of the

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.

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Although Harry Frankfurt was not a libertarian, his critique of egalitarianism reflects the principles of liberty. Frankfurt argued that “economic equality is not, as such, of particular moral importance” and that “if everyone had enough, it would be of no moral consequence whether some had more than others.” This has been described by David Gordon asan argument that most people who read Mises Institute articles will know already. In brief, the argument is that what matters to someone is how well he himself is doing. So long as a person has enough to lead a satisfying life, why should it matter whether there are other people who have more?Another of Frankfurt’s essays—his critique of sophistry, deceit, lies, and other forms of humbug—is also helpful in

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.

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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.

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The culture wars are often depicted in the press as attacks launched by conservatives who are resistant to cultural change. The Guardian, for example, depicts culture wars as “wedge issues” that are “conjured up” by conservatives in a futile attempt to dictate opinions to voters but which only end up “turning young voters to the left in western countries.” In 2004, an interdisciplinary conference in Virginia gathered to discuss the theme “Countering Kulturkampf Politics Through Critique and Justice Pedagogy,” a theme that reflects the idea that people who oppose progressive politics are simply trying to turn everything into a culture war for some inexplicable reason.Liberals often say that they have no idea why conservatives want to fight culture wars. They claim

Those who have (wisely) not been following the “decolonization” debate may be surprised to learn that decolonizers characterize reason and rationality as cultural constructs that ought to be rejected, as these are said to be “based upon epistemological assumptions deeply rooted in the Western philosophical tradition” and therefore “perpetuate hegemonic thinking.” The decolonizers argue that reason and rationality ought to yield to “other ways of knowing” that are said to be derived from non-Western cultures.Bringing down the West is seen as an essential step in promoting “multiculturalism” and ultimately “social justice.” One of the most surprising features of this movement is that it attacks not only the humanities and social sciences, which might have been

When socialist schemes fail, as they inevitably do, our attention is immediately drawn away from the destruction they cause to the “good intentions” behind the schemes. They meant well. Their good intentions override their disastrous results. One reason why good intentions are important to both sides of the political divide is that good intentions play well to voters. A good example of this is the national debt crisis in the United States. The economist Samuel Gregg points out that while both parties pledge to resolve the growing national debt, both parties regard the measures necessary to resolve the situation as electoral suicide: “America’s National Debt challenge constitutes a political iron cage for Democrat and Republican legislators alike. While they can

In his 1949 book The Road Ahead: America’s Creeping Revolution, John T. Flynn warns about the “great tides of thought and appetite that run unseen deeply below the surface of society.” These unseen tides are political waves that shape the law and institutional policy, but because they are unseen, there is no widespread awareness of the danger they pose. They are barely debated in academic or policy circles. They are treated as an uncontroversial aspect of the political “consensus,” and their implementation is largely unopposed.Flynn is concerned with the surreptitious methods by which socialism takes over society. Socialists do not overtly promote socialist values—on the contrary, they often deny being socialists. They proceed by stealth, by purporting to be

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.

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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.

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The BBC recently slapped a “trigger warning” on its popular 1969 series Civilisation, warning that viewers may deem the series objectionable as it presents Eurocentric perspectives. The series is now deemed to be “problematic” because it tells a “European story,” focusing on the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. This is criticized by academics—for example, the classicist Mary Beard—for excluding other cultures and also for excluding women while showcasing the achievements of men in Greece, Rome, France, Italy, Germany, and Britain.This rejection of Eurocentricity by modern academics pervades the “decolonize” movement that has swept through all scholarly disciplines across the humanities and natural sciences. The science of economics has not been spared. Economic

Some philosophers, drawing upon Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, have questioned the nature and limits of reason. By contrast, human reason plays a central role in libertarian thought. In the ordinary dictionary sense, human reason means simply “the ability of a healthy mind to think and make judgments, especially based on practical facts.”In Human Action, Ludwig von Mises depicts reason as a universal quality common to all human beings, emphasizing that reason is “the mark that distinguishes man from animals and has brought about everything that is specifically human.” As all humans have the ability to reason, human logic can only proceed by reference to reason. Reason is the only basis on which we can conduct inquiry and endeavor to expand the frontiers

In this age of the “decolonized curriculum,” universities have set out to decolonize the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. By “decolonize,” they simply mean that all fields of knowledge should reflect all cultures and not just what they see as “Western” science. Epistemology, too, has been decolonized.In a field known as the “philosophy of race and racism,” it is argued that philosophy itself—how human beings reason and understand the world—is determined by race. For example, Charles W. Mills writes that philosophy as a discipline is “white,” arguing that “philosophy aspires to the universal, whereas race is necessarily local, so that the unraced (whites) become the norm.” Mills’s argument suggests that the essential idea of an objective search

Jeremy Bentham famously regarded natural rights as “nonsense on stilts” and taught that property rights are created by law and enforced by courts. Bentham’s view was that “before the laws, there was no property: take away the laws, all property ceases.” Lawyers in the Benthamite tradition accordingly set out to define the state-created nature of property rights and the boundaries of these rights as defined by the courts.The elusive nature of property has long confounded common lawyers who conceptualize ownership not as dominium in the Roman law sense but instead as a bundle of property rights created by the state. For example, Kevin Gray observes in the Cambridge Law Journal that “property is not a ‘thing’ . . . it is the ‘bundle of rights’ that comprises the

Many libertarians hold the view that state coercion is wrong, regardless of the ends to which that coercion is deployed. It is wrong for the state to force people apart in an apartheid system, and it is also wrong for the state to force people to engage in “inclusivity” under systems of equity and diversity which force people into contractual relations against their will for example in the context of employment or housing. This is what Lew Rockwell meant when he referred to civil rights laws as “involuntary servitude”:Like the right to housing or medical care, civil rights must trample on the freedoms of association, contract, and even speech. As Michael Oakeshott has pointed out, these are what distinguish the free man from the slave. Civil rights laws even

The ideal of individual liberty is perennially under attack not only from socialists, as one might logically expect, but also from conservatives who regard individualism as a form of selfishness. The ordinary meaning of selfishness is “caring only about what you want or need without any thought for the needs or wishes of other people,” and many conservatives see this as a major contributing factor in social decline. The conservative British journalist Nick Timothy attributes many social ills to selfishness, arguing that “our society has become more about ‘me’ than ‘we’,” leading to higher rates of crime, antisocial behavior, and a ballooning welfare state as selfish people try to take as much as possible from the public purse while contributing little or nothing

The classical liberal defense of contractual freedom is derived from the principle of individual autonomy. Freedom of contract entails the right to enter into or exit from contracts at will. As Richard Epstein argues in his defense of the contract at will:The first way to argue for the contract at will is to insist upon the importance of freedom of contract as an end in itself. Freedom of contract is an aspect of individual liberty, every bit as much as freedom of speech, or freedom in the selection of marriage partners or in the adoption of religious beliefs or affiliations (p. 953).Utilitarian classical liberals, like Epstein himself, who agree with him on the value of individual liberty therefore defend the widest possible scope for contractual freedom. They

In a 1964 article in the Yale Law Journal titled The New Property Charles Reich argued that “government largesse” is an increasingly important source of wealth and should thus be understood and regulated as a new form of property. Reich argued that “Property is a legal institution, the essence of which is the creation and protection of certain private rights in wealth of any kind” and that “Property is not a natural right but a deliberate construction by society.”Critical race theories build on this premise of property as a social construct, by asserting that racial identity is essential to the definition and regulation of property rights. They assert that any defense of property rights that does not explicitly mention race is unjust or at any rate incomplete.

The words of Lewis Carroll are often cited in reference to the culture wars and the redefinition of words whose meaning used to be regarded as plain.“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”This is the fate that befell the phrase “equal opportunities,” which has been used to justify all manner of “diversity, equity and inclusivity” (DEI) schemes. It will also be so with “colorblind equality,” a phrase now being championed by egalitarians as a counterpoint to DEI. Egalitarians are committed to promoting equality in

The “racial equality” debates are characterized by evolving concepts and terminology in a constant search for better ways to express the ideals and values of the protagonists. The mantras of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) are now under increasing attack as several states move to ban DEI programs. In search of an alternative conceptual foundation for their equality schemes, many liberals (both progressive and conservative) who wish to promote equality have proposed that a better alternative would be to unite around a concept of “colorblind equality,” which would reflect Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream.Does this pursuit of racial equality pass muster from a natural-rights libertarian perspective? To answer that question, this article draws upon lessons from

A strategy for liberty must be both optimistic and realistic.Perennial optimists are sometimes tempted to ignore or minimize hazards, their answer to every challenge being somewhat lackadaisical: “Don’t worry, it will be fine.” They make the mistake of supposing all that is needed to surmount any challenge is a good bout of optimism. They can be heard, for example, assuring us that simply pronouncing the slogan “go woke, go broke” will scatter the enemies of liberty. They believe the Civil Rights Act would work very well if we would only clarify the difference between “equal opportunities” and “equal outcomes.” As Lew Rockwell has observed:It’s conservatives, not liberals, who are naive about the real meaning of anti-discrimination law. They say they love the