Ralph Raico
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Ralph Raico delivering a lecture at the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, AL
Ralph Raico is an American historian, libertarian, and specialist in European classical liberalism and Austrian Economics. He is currently a professor of history at Buffalo State College and a senior faculty member of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. Raico was a student of Ludwig von Mises and learned German at Mises' suggestion. Raico translated Mises' Liberalismus into English.
Raico was the editor of the New Individualist Review, along with Ronald Hamowy, a journal initially sponsored by the University of Chicago chapter of the Intercollegiate Society of Individualists. It declared itself "founded in a commitment to liberty." The first article of the first edition was titled "Capitalism and Freedom." Milton Friedman, F. A. Hayek, and Richard M. Weaver were the first faculty advisors, later to be joined by George Stigler and Benjamin Rogge. Between 1961 and 1968, seventeen issues were published including articles by Russell Kirk, William F. Buckley, Jr., Ludwig von Mises, and Murray N. Rothbard.
The complete run of the magazine is available from Liberty Fund. In his introduction to this reprint edition, Milton Friedman—one of the magazine's faculty advisors—writes that the Review set "an intellectual standard that has not yet, I believe, been matched by any of the more recent publications in the same philosophical tradition."
Raico was also a founding member of the Circle Bastiat, and was considered its poet laureate.
In 1999, Raico wrote Die Partei der Freiheit: Studien zur Geschichte des deutschen Liberalismus, a German-language book discussing the liberal tradition in Germany.
In 2000, Raico was awarded the "Gary G. Schlarbaum Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Cause of Liberty" by the Mises Institute.[1]
In 2006, Raico became one of the charter members of the Property and Freedom Society, which was founded at the instigation of Hans-Hermann Hoppe as a more radical counterpart to the Mont Pelerin Society.
