The Mises Institute will have a conference in Vienna this September. Vienna — the capital of Austria — has been home to perhaps more truly creative people than other major cities in the world. I looked up just a few of them: Beethoven, Alfred Adler, Johann Strauss (I and II), Freud, Konrad Lorenz, Gustav Mahler and Alma Mahler, Mozart, Arnold Schönberg, Schubert, Haydn, Viktor Frankl, Leopold Kohr, Max Weber, Paul Feyerabend, Ludwig Boltzmann, Joseph Schumpeter, Karl Popper, Bruno Walter, Franz Werfel, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Erwin Schrodinger and, of particular interest to devotees of the Austrian school of economics: von Mises, Hayek, Böhm-Bawerk, and Menger. From the field of entertainment came such names as Lotte Lenya, Fritz Lang, Hedy Lamarr, Oskar Werner, and Erich von Stroheim. All of this is just a partial listing, of course.
There is another Vienna, one located in Virginia right outside Washington, D.C. If the capital of a relatively small country such as Austria can produce so many truly creative geniuses and contributors to Western Civilization, I thought I should let the defenders of Washington — America’s capital city — have an opportunity to respond. Any comparable names that come to mind?
