I expected better of John Milbank. He is a theologian of great distinction, the leading theorist of the influential Radical Orthodoxy movement. Would not so profound a thinker offer us illuminating ideas on economics?
Our age is dominated by the state and its errors. The state has given us recession and war, while liberty has given us prosperity and peace. Which of the two paths prevails in the end depends on the ideas we hold about freedom, capitalism, and ourselves. May we never forget the great truth: tyranny destroys, while liberty is the mother of all that is beautiful and true in our world.
"War... is harmful, not only to the conquered but to the conqueror... Peace and not war is the father of all things. Only economic action has created the wealth around us; labor, not the profession of arms, brings happiness. Peace builds, war destroys."
A contributing problem of the 1990s economic boom was ideological, and it is one that still persists in the aftermath, writes Christopher Mayer. It was a cultural error that made a hero out of a Fed Chairman and that put so much faith in the Fed to begin with, at the expense of sound economics.
When some left-wing acti-vists recently began their What Would Jesus Drive? campaign against sport utility vehicles, the first reaction of most folks—and especially libertarians—was a simple, "Are these people really serious?"
It is slowly dawning on people that to understand George W., one must understand his religious impulses, which all evidence suggests are intensely important to him. His views are no different from that of the typical evangelical who absorbed his faith from the American Baptist culture. But they merit closer attention when they are held by an arrogant man with his finger on the button and who is contemplating total war.
Cobden saw that free trade was the key to peace and material prosperity, as evidenced by England's economic growth and rise to world leadership in virtually all aspects of trade—finance, insurance, shipping, etc.—after the Corn Law repeal. But more than this, Cobden emphasized the injustice of protectionism.
People frequently refer to government policies as paternalistic—either to justify or criticize them. But there is no analogy between a family and government.
If the pundits and politicians ever succeed in imposing the draft again on American citizens, for purposes of bolstering the military empire or doing social work, writes Jeffrey Tucker, they will have to look for support outside the libertarian tradition. Mises is not enlisted in this cause.
