History

Don’t Say the Word ‘Tornado’

The circus was packing up when the dark clouds...

John Adams and the Boston Massacre Trials

This was now Adams’ quandary: Would he—a patriot who railed against British oppression, and whose cousin Samuel Adams ran the Sons of Liberty—defend the British soldiers?

A Biased Court Destroyed Families in Colonial Salem

Imagine you are a young child living in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692. You are brought into a crowded meetinghouse where two magistrates—both commanding older men who serve on the council of Massachusetts Bay Colony—are waiting to interrogate you in front of an angry audience.

The Justice Who Warned the Supreme Court About ‘Administrative Authoritarianism’

Jackson had been a U.S. Supreme Court Justice since 1941. But at the end of World War II, President Harry S. Truman asked Jackson to take a leave of absence from the Court to serve as chief U.S. prosecutor in the Nuremberg trials of Nazi leaders

The Frontier Girl v. The New Deal

It was a cold afternoon in October 1933, and Isabel Paterson was locked inside a New York City bank vault.

Earth, Wind, and Water: 1970s Activists and the Administrative State

In the late 1970s, two sociologists asked: Where had all the 1960s radical activists—the countercultural voices who clamored for a revolution—ended up in the seventies?

GLUTTONY: Louisiana Legislators Demand Meatpacking Monopoly

It was the late 1860s, and the city of New Orleans had a gruesome problem: Animal intestines clogged the city’s water pipes.

Prohibition for Thee, Not for Me

“I have a searing memory of a day in my childhood.” William Leuchtenburg was a boy living with his family in New Jersey during Prohibition. His father, a postal worker, commuted into Manhattan to work at a post office near Penn Station. But Mr. Leuchtenburg’s salary was modest, so he supplemented the family income by running a small still in the basement of the family home and selling his liquor locally.

A Court-Packing Scheme

America is suffering through a crisis for which there is no easy fix. The president is frustrated: The Supreme Court keeps knocking down his initiatives, dismissing them as unconstitutional expansions of federal power.

A Hundred-Year-Old Dissent Haunts Today’s Judiciary

When the Supreme Court blocked President Biden’s OSHA vaccine mandate in January, Justices Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor joined together in a firmly worded dissent. At issue, they said, was a “single, simple question”

Rejecting Rutledge: The Supreme Court’s First Political Scandal

Born in 1739 to an Irish immigrant doctor and a blue blood South Carolinian mother, Rutledge was strong-willed and proud.

Béton Brut

Can society be designed? Can an expert engineer alleviate people’s pains and struggles with a good-enough central plan and blueprint?

The Setup

In 1902, William Warley was getting ready to graduate from Central High School in Louisville, Kentucky. Warley, as one of the top students at Central and a leader of his class, was a bright, charismatic young Black man looking to make his mark on a country that didn’t yet value your intellect—or your rights—if you were the wrong color.

The Brain Trust

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was inaugurated when the Great Depression was in full swing. Many Americans felt as if the country was months—if not days—away from breaking under the weight.

Birth of the Leviathan

In 1917, Vladimir Lenin—the Russian revolutionary who led an overthrow of the Russian government—was trying to hold his country together.

The Visionary

Woodrow Wilson spent most of his life in academia penning books about public administration.

Evaluating The 1619 Project: A Conversation with Phil Magness

In recent years, Americans are paying renewed attention and having new discussions on race, racism, and discrimination.

The New Deal, Still a Bad Idea

It must have pained Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr. to utter those words when he testified before the House Ways and Means Committee in 1939.

Creative Destruction: The Inventions Born Out of Crisis

When Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter coined the phrase “creative destruction,” he described it as “the essential fact about capitalism.”

The Overton Window: How Crises Alter Our Perceptions of Appropriate Government Action

In 1942, the Los Angeles Times took to its editorial page to argue for the imprisonment of American citizens who looked a certain way. A racist editor hadn’t suddenly taken over the paper, and it wasn’t a commentary on crime or law and order. The remains of Pearl Harbor were still smoldering and anyone who looked Japanese was a suspect.

The Unlikely Rise of the Pro-Liberty Legal Movement, Explained

Vince Lombardi once said, “The achievements of an organization are the results of the combined effort of each individual.”

How Rock-and-Roll Killed Communism

Behind the Iron Curtain, Western-loving youths embraced American pop culture and fashion with feverish enthusiasm.

Where in the World Can We Find Karl Marx?

When the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed, most political observers saw it as socialism’s swan song.

Venezuela: The Aftermath

In The 1950s, massive oil reserves made Venezuela the fourth-richest country in the world. But that wealth wasn’t enough to pay for socialism’s false promise to the country.

Britain’s Socialist Experiment and Margaret Thatcher’s Capitalist Solution

When I was growing up in a single-parent family in 1980s Britain, my mother and I were proud of our flat.

Luxury in a Socialist Hotel

Despite its increasing popularity, many people remain unaware of what socialism really entails, and of its inevitable economic consequences.

But That’s Not Real Socialism…

In politician discussions, it’s important to define terminology carefully—that can be difficult when it comes to the differences between capitalism and socialism. The broad definition of capitalism is the economic, political, and social system where the means of production (e.g., businesses, factories, farms) are privately owned. The distribution and exchange of goods are coordinated primarily through the free market. But the latter term in this pairing, “socialism,” is more complex. Socialism is a broad umbrella term for a variety of political, economic, and social philosophies—all related but differing in sometimes subtle ways. The following glossary clarifies the different varieties of socialism that come up in this discussion.

Interview with a CEO: How Capitalism Got Blamed for the Fiscal Crisis

The market crash of 2008 was the worst financial crisis in a generation. Millions of people lost their jobs, their homes, and their livelihood.

The Road from Serfdom: How Geza Karakas Escaped Socialism and Thrived Under Capitalism

Growing up in 1950s Hungary, Geza Karakas developed a unique pair of exceptional skills: bicycle riding and troubleshooting.

Innovation: A Modern-Day Miracle

People alive today are, on average, the richest that have ever lived.

The Morality of Capitalism

Socialism is popular again. The rise of politicians such as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez shows how the promises of socialism are once again influencing our political debate

Where Are These Better Angels?

In 1979, Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman appeared on The Phil Donahue Show and gave his most memorable interview about the nature of greed. Today, there are over 100 clips of the interview uploaded to YouTube. Some have hundreds of thousands of views; others, millions. Phil Donahue: When you see around the globe, the maldistribution of wealth, a desperate plight of millions of people in underdeveloped countries. When you see so few “haves” and so many “have-nots.” When you see the greed and the concentration of power. Did you ever have a moment of doubt about capitalism and whether greed is a good idea to run on?

One Best Way

Frederick Winslow Taylor was a business consultant obsessed with scientific precision in everything he did, whether it was a friendly game of tennis or the operation of a steel lathe.

The Defense of Liberty Requires an Engaged Judiciary

Prior to the Fourteenth Amendment, the Bill of Rights checked only the abuses of individual rights by the federal government, and even after the Civil War there were few federal restraints on state powers. Individuals could look only to state courts and their constitutions to check abuses by state legislatures.

The Forgotten Man of the Regulatory State

The regulatory state began last century during the New Deal, inspired by earlier Progressives who believed that individualism, capitalism, and the Constitution were obstacles to prosperity.

What We Get Wrong About Marx

If you're baffled by reports of surging enthusiasm for socialism in America and by the confusion that the term engenders, it helps to look closer at the works of socialism’s most prominent proponent: the German theorist Karl Marx.