Our Ancient Faith: Lincoln, Democracy, and the American Experiment by Allen C. Guelzo Alfred A. Knopf, 2024; 247 pp. Allen Guelzo has been carried away by Abraham Lincoln’s magniloquent rhetoric. Guelzo, a historian who has written a number of books about Lincoln, would like very much to believe that his hero was a champion of individual rights
Abundance, Generosity, and the State: An Inquiry into Economic Principles by Jörg Guido Hülsmann Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2024; 452 pp. It is rare to encounter a book that has the potential to reshape the way we look at economics, but Guido Hülsmann has done exactly that in Abundance, Generosity, and the State . Hülsmann is one of the leading
In this week’s column, I’d like to raise two questions suggested by David Beito’s excellent book The New Deal’s War on the Bill of Rights , which I reviewed last week. First, how can it be that Franklin Roosevelt has acquired a reputation among leftist historians as a champion of liberty, with his internment of Japanese Americans during World War
The nineteenth-century English philosopher Thomas Hill Green was one of the key figures in the transition from classical liberalism to “modern” liberalism, in which the state, no longer a mere “night watchman,” if it ever was that, takes on a much more active role. The state in Green’s view ought to aid people in realizing their “real selves,” and
Visions of Inequality: From the French Revolution to the End of the Cold War by Branko Milanovic Harvard Univerity Press, 2023; 359 pp. Branko Milanovic’s Visions of Inequality contains one of the most misleading statements I have ever encountered by an author about the contents of his own book. Milanovic, an eminent economist who teaches at the
Economics in America: An Immigrant Economist Explores the Land of Inequality by Angus Deaton Princeton University Press, 2023; xiii + 273 pp. Economics in America disappointed me, but I have only myself to blame. As you would expect from a Nobel laureate, Angus Deaton is very smart and erudite, but what you might not expect is that he is funny as
In his important book The Failure of American Conservatism (2023), the political theorist and philosopher Claes G. Ryn offers some criticisms of libertarianism and free-market capitalism, and in this week’s column, I’d like to examine these. Ryn is not an opponent of all forms of the free market, but he fears an extreme version of it can be
The philosopher Terrance Tomkow (1950-2024) passed away last Friday night, January 12, 2024. He was best known as a philosopher of language and made important contributions to metaphysics, the philosophy of science, and the free will problem. For most readers of the Mises page, though, what will probably be of most interest are his posts about
Socialism: A Logical Introduction Scott R. Sehon Oxford University Press, 2024; 268 pp. This is a better book than I expected it to be, but it is not without its problems. Scott Sehon, a philosophy professor at Bowdoin College, is strongly inclined to believe that socialism is better than capitalism, but in the book, his main aim is to set forward
Limitarianism: The Case against Extreme Wealth by Ingrid RobeynsAstra House, 2022; 301 pp. Some people have vastly more income and wealth than others, and this situation greatly disturbs Ingrid Robeyns, who teaches ethics at Utrecht University. She does not want to replace the market economy with central planning, but no one should be
What is the Mises Institute?
The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.
Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.