The New Leviathans: Thoughts after Liberalism
by John Gray
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023; 192 pp.

The Failure of the ‘New Economics’ thoroughly demolished the Keynesian system. Unfortunately, this “economic demolition” as Rothbard called it (Hazlitt 2007 [1959], xvi), went ignored by the mainstream despite it carrying implications that would have prevented the decline in theoretical vigor of mainstream economics that was Keynesianism. Hazlitt’s argument against Keynesianism was more than a mere theoretical critique; it was a robust argument fortified by sound economic theory and history.

Conservatives are upset that the U.S. Military Academy—West Point—has removed the phrase “Duty, Honor, and Country” from its mission statement.

The phrase comes from a farewell address that retired general Douglas MacArthur—who attended West Point from 1899 to 1903—delivered to West Point cadets in 1962. The old mission statement was first formally adopted by the Academy in 1998.

The is the second of two lectures I recently gave for the Free Enterprise Society at Oklahoma State University. In this talk, I examine origins of the Second Amendment in the English Civil Wars and how English opponents of absolutism preferred local militias to a national standing army. I look at how the Second Amendment was supposed to serve a similar purpose and ensure that each state possessed enough independent military power to counterbalance federal military power.

Human prosperity, contrary to the beliefs of those fanatically obsessed with viewing the government as a savior of humanity, is not guaranteed. For the vast majority of its existence, mankind was impoverished, only recently experiencing unprecedented levels of prosperity and flourishing. This recent state of affairs is not guaranteed to go on forever; its growth could be halted or it could regress the world back to widespread impoverishment if given the right circumstances.

Ludwig von Mises begins his book Bureaucracy by declaring that the main issue facing the West in his time was whether man should surrender his liberty to the “gigantic apparatus of compulsion and coercion, the socialist state.” He rephrases: “Should [man] be deprived of his most precious privilege to choose means and ends and to shape his own life?”

Money supply growth fell again in January, remaining deep in negative territory after turning negative in November 2022 for the first time in twenty-eight years. January’s drop continues a steep downward trend from the unprecedented highs experienced during much of the past three years.