[Reinterpreting Libertarianism: New Directions in Libertarian Studies edited by Lukasz Dominiak, Igor Wysocki, Stanislaw Wotowicz, and Dawid Megger. (Routledge, 2026; x+ 245 pp.)]

In 1892, Carl Menger wrote On the Origins of Money—the original basis of Austrian monetary theory. This essential work lays out a theory as to how monies emerged through voluntary human action and exchanges on a free market. Menger also critiqued other monetary theories—money from social compact or civil edict—as unhistorical.

Self-defense and gun ownership are constantly being attacked in modern discourse and by the mainstream media, yet their legitimacy rests on principles far older than any constitution, preceding and transcending any political framework. The importance of self-defense lies in its role as a safeguard against both private and state aggression. Unlike modern states, which increasingly disarm their citizens and leave them defenseless, a private-law society would place no restrictions on the individual ownership of firearms or other weapons.

Public policies are rarely judged by the effects they produce. They are far more often evaluated by the intentions they declare. In The Vision of the Anointed, Thomas Sowell identifies this habit, not as a mere analytical error, but as a moral failure. Intentions have no causal power, results do.

Since the 1960s, when racial turmoil exploded in the United States, there have been reparations demands, with groups representing black Americans calling for massive wealth transfers from whites and other economically successful ethnic groups to account for black chattel slavery in the US and the policies of Jim Crow. For example, during their heyday in the 1960s, the Black Panthers in 1966 called for a number of measures, including reparations, to bring about what they saw as justice.