Many millions of Americans fall for the government propaganda that uses wars as excuses to eviscerate American freedoms, spend trillions of dollars and rack up gargantuan deficits that will impose a heavy financial burden for decades to come. In recent centuries, though, there have been many who were not quite so easily fooled. These were the defenders of liberty we now call “classical liberals” or “radical liberals” or “libertarians.” Indeed, the more radically these activists were opposed to state power, the more radically they opposed militarism and war. They understood, decades before Randolph Bourne coined the phrase “war is the health of the state,” that war is among every regime’s favorite tool in growing state power and destroying freedom.
For the radical liberals of that time, the fight for freedom was synonymous with the fight for peace. To fight for freedom meant to oppose imperialism, colonialism, standing armies, and the profligate spending that comes with it all.
The Mises Institute preserves this tradition in the 21st century.
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