History
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What the 1619 Project’s Critics Get Wrong about Lincoln
Since its publication last August, the New York Times’ 1619 Project has come under a barrage of withering critiques. Historians took it to task for exaggerating the role of slavery as a motivating factor behind the Revolutionary War, while economists quickly dissected its empirically suspect…
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Is Bernie Right about Education in Cuba?
What explains the rising literacy rates and rising levels of educational achievements is also what explains the regime’s ability to continually repress Cuban people.
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Enough of this Idea of Presidential Greatness
What constitutes a great president? Every presidential election, pundits and commentators opine on the characteristics of presidents that made them great. Starting in 1948, at the impulse of Arthur Schlesinger Sr. of Harvard University, historians have weighted in by providing their rankings of the presidents according to greatness. Ever since, the surveys of presidential performance…
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Happy 90th Birthday, Professor Israel Kirzner!
Even in an era when modern medicine and technologies are adding to people’s lifetimes, along with the gains in general human economic betterment, it still stands as a notable event when someone marks their 90th birthday. On February 13th, renowned “Austrian” economist, Israel M. Kirzner, celebrated his reaching of that important milestone. It is difficult…
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The Case for Retracting Matthew Desmond’s 1619 Project Essay
Since the outset of the 1619 Project controversy, I have consistently argued that the overwhelming majority of the project’s problems derive from a single featured essay: Matthew Desmond’s piece on capitalism and slavery. This essay advances an explicit anti-capitalist political message that’s rooted in a fundamental misreading of economic history. Although he repurposes the concept…
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How America Became Rich, According to a Historian in 1802
For the last quarter century, I have tried to explain the causes of economic growth to my fellow historians. A few have caught on but not the ones whose publications garner the most attention. New Historians of Capitalism/Slavery are the worst offenders, as I showed in The Poverty of Slavery: How Unfree Labor Pollutes the…
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FDR and Stalin Planned the Future of the World
For the establishment of the UN, Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave Joseph Stalin virtually everything the tyrant wanted.
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The Overuse of the “Roaring Twenties”
The problem is that this image is a fiction. In no way does the evidence from the field of economic history support it. Maybe it is politically useful to use it, but it is not historically nor economically accurate.
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John Stuart Mill on Slavery and the American Civil War
In the heated and sometimes angry exchanges over the history of slavery and the place of liberalism in the great contest between freedom and bondage in the 19th century, we should appreciate how determined, dedicated, and publicly demanding were many of those classical liberal thinkers.
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The Essence of Bastiat: David Hart’s Farewell Tour of the U.S. (Video)
As the home of the Bastiat Society, the work of Frederic Bastiat is especially meaningful to AIER. As such, we were overjoyed to welcome David M. Hart, one of the world’s foremost scholars on Bastiat, to speak on the life and times of our favorite Frenchman. Check out David Hart’s website for lectures, book…
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•
What the 1619 Project’s Critics Get Wrong about Lincoln
Since its publication last August, the New York Times’ 1619 Project has come under a barrage of withering critiques. Historians took it to task for exaggerating the role of slavery as a motivating factor behind the Revolutionary War, while economists quickly dissected its empirically suspect…
-
•
Is Bernie Right about Education in Cuba?
What explains the rising literacy rates and rising levels of educational achievements is also what explains the regime’s ability to continually repress Cuban people.
-
•
Enough of this Idea of Presidential Greatness
What constitutes a great president? Every presidential election, pundits and commentators opine on the characteristics of presidents that made them great. Starting in 1948, at the impulse of Arthur Schlesinger Sr. of Harvard University, historians have weighted in by providing their rankings of the presidents according to greatness. Ever since, the surveys of presidential performance…
-
•
Happy 90th Birthday, Professor Israel Kirzner!
Even in an era when modern medicine and technologies are adding to people’s lifetimes, along with the gains in general human economic betterment, it still stands as a notable event when someone marks their 90th birthday. On February 13th, renowned “Austrian” economist, Israel M. Kirzner, celebrated his reaching of that important milestone. It is difficult…
-
•
The Case for Retracting Matthew Desmond’s 1619 Project Essay
Since the outset of the 1619 Project controversy, I have consistently argued that the overwhelming majority of the project’s problems derive from a single featured essay: Matthew Desmond’s piece on capitalism and slavery. This essay advances an explicit anti-capitalist political message that’s rooted in a fundamental misreading of economic history. Although he repurposes the concept…
-
•
How America Became Rich, According to a Historian in 1802
For the last quarter century, I have tried to explain the causes of economic growth to my fellow historians. A few have caught on but not the ones whose publications garner the most attention. New Historians of Capitalism/Slavery are the worst offenders, as I showed in The Poverty of Slavery: How Unfree Labor Pollutes the…
-
•
FDR and Stalin Planned the Future of the World
For the establishment of the UN, Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave Joseph Stalin virtually everything the tyrant wanted.
-
•
The Overuse of the “Roaring Twenties”
The problem is that this image is a fiction. In no way does the evidence from the field of economic history support it. Maybe it is politically useful to use it, but it is not historically nor economically accurate.
-
•
John Stuart Mill on Slavery and the American Civil War
In the heated and sometimes angry exchanges over the history of slavery and the place of liberalism in the great contest between freedom and bondage in the 19th century, we should appreciate how determined, dedicated, and publicly demanding were many of those classical liberal thinkers.
-
•
The Essence of Bastiat: David Hart’s Farewell Tour of the U.S. (Video)
As the home of the Bastiat Society, the work of Frederic Bastiat is especially meaningful to AIER. As such, we were overjoyed to welcome David M. Hart, one of the world’s foremost scholars on Bastiat, to speak on the life and times of our favorite Frenchman. Check out David Hart’s website for lectures, book…