The Culture Taboo

Mises Review 2, No. 1 (Spring 1996)

“BLOC BUSTERS”
Virginia I. Postrel
Reason, Volume 27, No. 9 (February 1996): 4, 6.
 

Virginia Postrel gets a lot of mileage from an elementary fallacy. She begins her piece, a plea for Republicans to stress the free market rather than cultural issues, in an odd way. She throws up her hands in horror over some critical articles about the Internet that appeared in a neoconservative journal whose name doesnt bear mention in polite company.

Fabrication

Mises Review 6, No. 1 (Spring 2000)

A NECESSARY EVIL
Garry Wills
Simon and Schuster, 1999, 365 pgs.
 

Garry Wills is a man with a mission. He wishes to expose for the falsehood that it is a myth that has bedeviled American history. Teachers of heresy such as Thomas Jefferson and John C. Calhoun have maintained that government, especially the U.S. federal government, is at best a necessary evil. Strict limits to its power must be imposed: otherwise, it will soon impose tyranny.

Wrestling Reality From Rawls

Mises Review 6, No. 1 (Spring 2000)

THE QUEST FOR COSMIC JUSTICE
Thomas Sowell
The Free Press, 1999, ix + 214 pgs.
 

Thomas Sowell is an excellent economist, but unfortunately this is not enough for him. He imagines himself a philosopher and an expert on foreign policy as well. As he strays farther and farther from the area he knows, he loses his footing. By the time he reaches his account of the origins of World War II, his book becomes useless.

The Revisionist Provocateur

Mises Review 6, No. 1 (Spring 2000)

A REPUBLIC, NOT AN EMPIRE: RECLAIMING AMERICA’S DESTINY
Patrick J. Buchanan
Regnery, 1999, xiii + 437 pgs.

Miscalculating Human Interest

Mises Review 6, No. 1 (Spring 2000)

LUXURY FEVER: WHY MONEY FAILS TO SATISFY IN AN ERA OF EXCESS
Robert H. Frank
The Free Press, 1999, ix + 326 pgs.

Logic of Law

Mises Review 6, No. 1 (Spring 2000)

BRENNAN AND DEMOCRACY
Frank I. Michelman
Princeton University Press, 1999, xii + 148 pgs.

A Case of Myth Taking Identity

Mises Review 6, No. 1 (Spring 2000)

JOHN STUART MILL ON LIBERTY AND CONTROL
Joseph Hamburger
Princeton University Press, 1999, xx + 239 pgs.
 

Quelling Jurists’ Imprudence

Mises Review 6, No. 1 (Spring 2000)

TAKING THE CONSTITUTION AWAY FROM THE COURTS
Mark Tushnet
Princeton University Press, 1999 xii + 242 pgs.

Like most readers of The Mises Review, Professor Tushnet is fed up with the Supreme Court. I doubt, though, that his complaint against the Court will have much resonance with most of my readers.

Up From Statism

Mises Review 2, No. 3 (Fall 1996)

Making Economic Sense
Murray N. Rothbard
Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1995, 439 pgs.

Murray Rothbard had a remarkable ability to ask fundamental questions that others, even those within his own free-market camp, missed. After Rothbard touched an issue, it could never remain the same. This quality emerges in the present outstanding collection of his articles for The Free Market, written between 1982 and 1999.

Deliverance

Mises Review 6, No. 2 (Summer 2000)

THE RISE AND DECLINE OF THE STATE
Martin van Creveld
Cambridge University Press, 1999, viii + 439 pgs.