The Empire Has No Clothes

The Trump administration insists its actions against Cuba are justified because of Cuba’s communist government. Murray Rothbard, an enemy of communism, had harsh words against this kind of US interventionism. Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/economic-sanctions-state-power-and-cuba-rothbardian-critique-us-interventionism

John C. Calhoun often is misquoted and misinterpreted by modern historians. David Gordon and Wanjiru Njoya look to help set the record straight. Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/murray-rothbard-john-c-calhoun

Thanks to hard working American taxpayers, savers, and entrepreneurs, the experiences of American military personnel are increasingly defined by jobs like "drone pilot" that are nothing like the cannon-fodder jobs of old. Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/veterans-day-thank-taxpayer

The government’s 988 line was created as a hot line to prevent suicides. While the intentions behind it might be good, there is no evidence that it actually succeeds in reducing the number of people who take their own lives. Original article: https://mises.org/mises-wire/988-may-be-government-experiment-no-exit-plan

Veterans Day grew out of the relief that a devastating war was finally over. Today, politicians use it to praise the kind of sacrifice they continue to demand in wars that do not need to be fought. Read the article here: https://mises.org/mises-wire/cruel-irony-veterans-day 2026 is the Year of Rothbard—Murray’s 100th birthday—and we’re celebrating by giving away free copies of War Collectivism: Power, Business, and the Intellectual Class in World War I through November 30. Grab yours today at https://mises.org/gabfreebook Be sure to follow the Guns and Butter podcast at https://Mises.org/GB

Mises distinguishes the older pacifism of dreamers appealing to the high-mindedness of kings—which history simply left off its agenda—from the pacifism grounded in natural law, economic liberalism and democracy. He then turns on Wilson’s League of Nations, reading it as a new Holy Alliance: another division of the world presuming to be final.

Why the war’s economic character was unique: a particular stage of the division of labor, a particular state of military technique, and a particular geography of the belligerents. Mises argues no war will be fought again under these conditions, and examines the attack doctrine—Bernhardi’s claim that only attack achieves positive results—that assumed a short war.

Mises asks why the modern ideas of freedom and self-government prevailed almost everywhere on earth except Germany, Austria and Russia. The answer he develops runs through Brandenburg-Prussia: a state no better than the others, but purposeful, steady and power-seeking—and therefore impossible to overlook, drawing even non-Prussian German political thought toward it.

How scattered tribal dialects were drawn together by trade, conquest and religion into standard languages. Mises’s striking illustration: a Low German speaker can assimilate toward German or toward Dutch, and nothing in linguistics or ancestry decides which—only political, economic and social facts do.

Mises’s summation argues for rational utilitarianism as the standpoint from which social orders can be compared—a standpoint that rules out resentment, sentiment and mysticism, whether in racial dress or any other gospel of salvation. His closing warning is about modern technique: the rotary press is easy to fetter, and whoever controls it need not fear the spoken word.