I’m not joking: if I had not had certain influences in my life, I genuinely fear I would have wound up a run-of-the-mill leftist, with conventional and superficial views on everything.
My first secret weapon was my father, who died 20 years ago this month. Dad was a forklift operator in a warehouse of a grocery store chain that no longer exists. (Purity Supreme, for my Massachusetts readers old enough to remember; the warehouse was in Billerica.) He gave me my basic political instincts: communism is evil, the left can’t be trusted, and low taxes — even for “the rich” — are better than high taxes.
My second secret weapon: the Mises Institute.
I didn’t quite know what I was ideologically when I first attended a Mises Institute event as a college junior in 1993.
After that week-long experience, I knew one thing for sure: Austrian economics was true, and I wanted to learn everything I could about it. The Mises Institute made that easy.
Meltdown: A Free-Marke...
Best Price: $0.25
Buy New $20.00
(as of 02:20 UTC - Details)
In fact, thanks to the training the Institute gave me, when the financial crisis hit in 2008 and progressives were blaming it — in their usual fact-free way — on nonexistent “deregulation,” I was able to churn out the Austrian/free-market response in just four weeks. I’m referring to my book Meltdown, the first book to appear on the financial crisis. It spent ten weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, and attracted a bunch of new people to our ideas.
At Mises.org you can find a seemingly endless supply of videos and articles on every topic under the sun, not to mention the entire print runs of many libertarian periodicals (from the Journal of Libertarian Studies and the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics to more obscure ones like Left and Right and the Libertarian Forum). If there’s a classic libertarian book you’re interested in, chances are you can get the eBook version for free at Mises.org.
I got to learn from Murray Rothbard himself at the Institute’s programs, where thousands of students have been trained in Austrian economics.
(After I’d met him a third time and he asked me to call him Murray, I was convinced I was on hidden camera.)
I would not be doing what I do today without the Mises Institute.
And Mises.org is truly second to none in terms of the sheer volume of free resources it makes available to people like you and me, who are fascinated by the cause and science of liberty.
This week the Institute is holding its fall campaign.
Being tough and uncompromising, the Mises Institute doesn’t receive a whole lot of Establishment money. No billionaire donors for Mises.
The Mises Institute has flourished on the basis of normal-size donations from people like you and me.
We often say: in a free society, people will voluntarily fund those causes they believe in.
Time to put our money where our mouths are.
When I won a major book prize, my first move was to send a fat check to the Mises Institute.
Would you guys consider a donation of $5?
The Mises Institute doesn’t pay me to send out an email like this, obviously: I’m doing it because I deeply believe in and appreciate what they do, and I know you do, too.
To those who genuinely can’t participate because of financial constraints, help the Mises Institute by sharing its articles on social media.
As for the rest of us: let the voice of conscience carry you to this link —
https://mises.org/giving/campaigns/fall-campaign
Tom Woods
12:55 pm on September 29, 2016
