Political Theory

This is the last formal lecture by Ludwig von Mises delivered May 2, 1970 at an economic seminar in Seattle, Washington.

Brazil, which is so blessed by nature and by an entrepreneurial population with one of the highest rates of self-employment in the world, has been kept down by a misleading ideology. Antony Mueller explains the political effects of embracing Auguste Comte, an embrace which no financial bailout can fix.

Henry Louis (H.L.) Mencken was perhaps America's most outspoken defender of liberty in the first half of the 20th Century.  And a major theme of his writings was that "Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under." Gary Galles examines Mencken's thought.

D.W. MacKenzie contrasts economic methodologies to show how Austrian economists employ sound theoretical concepts that guard against the wiles of political and ideological fashion. Data alone will not keep us grounded, while indulging in socialist fantasies end only in our sinking to the worst depths of poverty and despotism.

As soon as Abraham Lincoln and the new Republican Party gained power, the average tariff rate was quickly raised from a nominal 15 percent to 47 percent and higher, and remained at such levels for decades after the war. South Carolinian John C. Calhoun's free-trade arguments, as eloquent and advanced as they were, were no match for a federal military arsenal.

The Myth of Ownership stands out from most works of analytic philosophy. Usually, works by eminent philosophers cannot easily be dismissed. You may, for example, disagree with Rawls’s A Theory of Justice,

The anthology collects a number of influential articles about equality, by such eminent philosophers as John Rawls, T.M. Scanlon, Derek Parfit, and G.A. Cohen. 

Libertarianism favors the political ideals set forth in the early republic, writes Adam Young: an order of peace, free trade and individual self-government, where the state was restricted in its interference in the life of the churches, and the state was largely irrelevant to the economy and to the daily lives of the average American citizen.

What's the difference between the cultures of the private sector and the public sector? Consider the difference between Arthur Andersen, which has no future, and the U.S. Forest Service, which will live forever. The answer can be traced to property rights, and it explains why market outcomes are always held to a much higher standard than public-sector outcomes.

 

Pat Buchanan’s remarkable book expresses a distinctively nationalist thesis; and, as a conscientious reviewer in good standing, I shall of course say something about it.