[Editor’s note: In this selection from The Struggle for Liberty: A Libertarian History of Political Thought, Ralph Raico introduces the idea that western Europe was unique in how it approached the power of civil government and sought to limit it. As we will find later in this chapter, Raico sets the origins of the West’s embrace of freedom in the Middle Ages a period characterized by political decentralization and a salutary conflict between civil governments and church power.]Now, the first thing to say about liberalism is that it arose in Europe, specifically in Western Christendom. This is the Europe that grew up in communion with the Bishop of Rome, at one time or another, so that the history of Europe and the history of liberalism are intimately intertwined. The question of why this

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.

“Speaking truth to power” is not easy when you support that power. Perhaps this is the reason why so few Western historians are willing to tell the whole truth about state crimes during this century.Last fall the Moscow News reported the discovery by two archaeologist-historians of mass graves at Kuropaty, near Minsk, in the Soviet republic of Byelorussia.  The scholars at first estimated that the victims numbered around 102,000, a figure that was later revised to 250–300,000.  Interviews with older inhabitants of the village revealed that, from 1937 until June 1941, when the Germans invaded, the killings never stopped. “For five years, we couldn’t sleep at night because of all the shooting,” one witness said.Then in March, a Soviet commission finally conceded that the mass graves at

Part 1: Early YearsAs we approach the end of the 20th century, the figure of Franklin Roosevelt looms ever more imposing in the minds of Americans. In the two centuries or so of our history, it has happened that a few of our leaders—a very few—became symbols of some powerful idea, one that left a permanent imprint on the life of our country. Thomas Jefferson is one such symbol. With Jefferson, it is the idea of a free, self-governing people, dedicated to the enjoyment of their God-given natural rights, in their work, their communities, and the bosom of their families. Abraham Lincoln symbolizes a rather different idea—of America as a great centralized nation-state, supposedly dedicated to individual freedom, but founded on the unquestioned authority and power of the national government in

With the end of the twentieth century rapidly approaching, this is a time to look back and gain some perspective on where we stand as a nation. Were the Founding Fathers somehow to return, they would find it impossible to recognize our political system. The major cause of this transformation has been America’s involvement in war and preparation for war over the past hundred years. War has warped our constitutional order, the course of our national development, and the very mentality of our people.The process of distortion started about a century ago, when certain fateful steps were taken that in time altered fundamentally the character of our republic. One idea of America was abandoned and another took its place, although no conscious, deliberate decision was ever made. Eventually, this

Few ideas are as closely associated with Marxism as the concepts of class and class conflict. It is, for instance, impossible to imagine what a Marxist philosophy of history or a Marxist revolutionary theory would be in their absence. Yet, as with much else in Marxism, these concepts remain ambiguous and contradictory. For instance, while Marxist doctrine supposedly grounds classes in the process of production, The Communist Manifesto asserts in its famous opening lines:The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another…On examination these opposed pairs turn out to be, either wholly or in part,

In 1900 Churchill began the career he was evidently fated for. His background—the grandson of a duke and son of a famous Tory politician—got him into the House of Commons as a Conservative. At first he seemed to be distinguished only by his restless ambition, remarkable even in parliamentary ranks. But in 1904, he crossed the floor to the Liberals, supposedly on account of his free-trade convictions. However, Robert Rhodes James, one of Churchill’s admirers, wrote: "It was believed [at the time], probably rightly, that if Arthur Balfour had given him office in 1902, Churchill would not have developed such a burning interest in free trade and joined the Liberals." Clive Ponting notes that: "as he had already admitted to Rosebery, he was looking for an excuse to defect from a party that

Recorded at the 2003 Supporters Summit: Prosperty, War, and Depression. Ralph Raico discusses how from Jefferson to Madison, and on to Bastiat, Molinari, and Spencer, the "classical" liberals routinely denounced war as the enemy of freedom, prudence, and natural rights. Instead, militarism and imperialism have long been the domain of the enemies of private property and other apologists for the state.

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It is not disputed that the popular meaning of liberal has changed drastically over time. It is a well-known story how, around 1900, in English-speaking countries and elsewhere, the term was captured by writers who were essentially social democrats.

Understandably enough, the current disfavor into which socialism has fallen has spurred what Raimondo Cubeddu (1997: 138) refers to as “the frenzy to proclaim oneself a liberal.” Many writers today have recourse to the stratagem of “inventing for oneself a ‘liberalism’ according to one’s own tastes” and passing it off as an “evolution” from past ideas.