Source: Libertarian Institute
by Alan Mosley
“Ralph Raico was an American historian and libertarian public intellectual who devoted his life to recovering the liberal tradition and exposing the predatory nature of state power. Teaching European history at Buffalo State College and serving as a senior fellow of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, he specialized in the history of liberty, the liberal tradition in Europe, and the relation between war and the rise of the state. Raico combined classical erudition with polemical sharpness. He insisted that a genuine liberalism is rooted in private property and voluntary exchange, that society can organize itself without a tutelary state, and that war is the chief means by which governments expand their authority. These convictions shaped his scholarship and activism over five decades.” (10/30/25)
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/ralph-raico-historian-of-liberty-and-revisionist-of-war