In a 2007 interview, retired General Wesley Clark revealed that the Pentagon had a plan to “take out seven countries in five years”—Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran. Over the following two decades, the first six were bombed, destabilized, or collapsed into civil war.

One of the more entertaining political stories of the last few months has been the Democratic Party’s ongoing efforts to determine why it lost the 2024 election and what it needs to do differently to avoid similar failures in the future. After losing the presidency and both houses of Congress, it’s, of course, reasonable for the party to explore what they could have done better. What’s entertaining, though, is how bad they’ve been at it.

What would sociology look like if its practitioners took Mises, Hayek, and Rothbard seriously?

In “Toward an Austro-Libertarian Sociology”—recently published in the American Journal of Economics and Sociology (March 2025)—I lay the groundwork for an alternative to the prevailing sociological orthodoxy—one that rejects collectivist assumptions and re-centers human action, voluntary cooperation, and spontaneous order.