Friday Philosophy

David Gordon reviews Paul C. Graham’s Nonsense on Stilts: The Gettysburg Address and Lincoln’s Imaginary Nation, examining Lincoln's logic and finding it wanting.

According to John Kekes, “reclaiming” the political center means coming to an understanding that rights are not natural but are simple social conventions.

Princeton “historian” Allen C. Guelzo’s newest hagiography of Abraham Lincoln focuses on Lincoln’s supposed love affair with commerce, albeit “commerce” based upon protectionism and government tariffs. As David Gordon notes, Guelzo has a problem getting his economic history correct.

While the German HIstorical School might not have the intellectual influence it once did, its doctrines caused enough damage to alter the direction of world history. And not in a good way.

Continuing his examination of Scott Sehon's book on socialism, David Gordon asks if socialism violates people's rights. Gordon concludes that it does.

Scott R. Sehon tries to be intellectually honest in his critique of capitalism and his endorsement of socialism, but David Gordon writes that Sehon needs to better know the arguments favoring capitalism.

In his review of Claes G. Ryn's The Failure of American Conservatism, David Gordon points out that Austrian economic methodology is not a value-laden Jacobin experiment, but rather a workable explanation of how a successful economy works.

Thomas Hill Green, an eighteenth-century English philosopher, didn't believe it was possible to have a good society without a powerful state. David Gordon explains why Green’s argument fails to impress.

Continuing his review of David Beito's The New Deal’s War on the Bill of Rights, David Gordon shows how Franklin D. Roosevelt and his administration repeatedly eviscerated American constitutional rights.

No president receives a free pass for tyrannical conduct more than does Franklin D. Roosevelt. Historian David Beito looks behind the curtain.