IMMIGRATION AND THE AMERICAN IDENTITY: SELECTIONS FROM CHRONICLES, 1985–1995
The Rockford Institute, 1995, 232 pgs.
The twenty-three contributors to this anthology do not share a uniform point of view. Nevertheless, a distinctive Chronicles approach to immigration emerges from the volume.
“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.
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.
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.
A REPUBLIC, NOT AN EMPIRE: RECLAIMING AMERICA’S DESTINY
Patrick J. Buchanan
Regnery, 1999, xiii + 437 pgs.
LUXURY FEVER: WHY MONEY FAILS TO SATISFY IN AN ERA OF EXCESS
Robert H. Frank
The Free Press, 1999, ix + 326 pgs.
BRENNAN AND DEMOCRACY
Frank I. Michelman
Princeton University Press, 1999, xii + 148 pgs.
JOHN STUART MILL ON LIBERTY AND CONTROL
Joseph Hamburger
Princeton University Press, 1999, xx + 239 pgs.
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.
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.
