Liberalism

There are two uses of the word liberalism that are heartbreaking, even disgusting. The first occurs when a self-described liberal pushes government power as the solution to all our economic and social woes. Government is not liberal! Government is the robber, the coercer, the taser, the jailer!

Another is when a self-described conservative condemns liberalism as the cancer that is killing society. What? Thomas Jefferson was a liberal. So was John Locke. So was Alexis de Tocqueville. Their ideas built the world we love.

Most of all, there was Ludwig von Mises, who proudly called himself a liberal. He was the 20th century’s great defender of capitalism and the free society. He decided to settle the issue about what is liberalism once at for all.

Liberalism is Ludwig von Mises’s classic statement in defense of a free society, one of the last statements of the old liberal school and a text from which we can continue to learn. It has been the conscience of a global movement for liberty for 80 years.