Here is my review of Brian Patrick Mitchell’s 8 Ways to Run the Country: A New and Revealing Look at Left and Right.

Elisabeth Tamedly (Lenches), author of this wonderful treatise that we just posted, also contributed an interesting piece found here. She writes:

The spirit of speculation and adventure pervaded the entire community ... and crowds of individuals of every description—the credulous and the suspicious—the crafty and the bold—the raw and the inexperienced—the intelligent and the ignorant—politicians, lawyers, physicians, and divines, hastened to venture some portion of their property in schemes of which scarcely any thing was known except the name.

That description of U.S. business culture just prior to the Panic of 1837 is from Scott A.

[This article is Professor Reisman’s introduction to an excerpt from James Mill’s pamphlet Commerce Defended, available in the Study Guide.]

James Mill (1773–1836) is perhaps best known as the father and educator of John Stuart Mill. He deserves to be remembered for much more, however. Not only was he an influential popularizer of the ideas of his friend, David Ricardo, but also, as appears from the excerpt here presented, an important economist in his own right.

One of the strongest arguments in defense of large US trade deficits1 is to point out that they are the accounting flip side of a net capital inflow to the United States. This is quite effective rhetorically.

Most Americans say that understanding our founding is very important. However, we actually pay almost no attention to it, leaving us woefully unaware of many critical aspects of our heritage.

I find this book intriguing. First, I’m embarrassed to admit that I’ve never read it, or even heard of it until recently. Second, I don’t know who the author is, though she studied with Roepke and otherwise offers a massive bibliography, and is clearly an outstanding scholar. If anyone knows, please post.

Why does it always have to be California? New York? Massachusetts?

Why not New Hampshire?

New Hampshire: The Land of “Live Free or Die: Death is not the worst of evils.”

The home of Daniel Webster, Horace Greeley, Mary Baker Eddy, Franklin Pierce, Robert Frost, Maxfield Parrish, Alan B. Shepard Jr, J.D. Salinger, Ken Burns, and Dean Kamen.