The Need to Be Whole: Patriotism and the History of Prejudice by Wendell Berry Shoemaker and Company, 2022; x + 513 pp. Wendell Berry, a poet, novelist, and philosopher well known for his protests against mechanized agriculture and for his defense of the “land ethic,” is not a thinker one would immediately associate with Ludwig von Mises, and
Aeon J. Skoble is an outstanding political philosopher, and, to my mind even better, he has honored me by contributing an excellent essay, “Anarchy, Nozick, and Gordon,” to my festschrift, Defending Liberty . In his essay, Skoble responds to my 2009 objection to his discussion of Robert Nozick’s minimal statism in Deleting the State (2008). He is
The Moral Foundations of Civil Society by William Röpke Transaction Publishers, (1948) 1996; xxxvii + 235 pp. In an earlier column , I discussed Wendell Berry’s stress on land and locality, and. among Austrian school economists, Wilhelm Röpke is most sympathetic to these themes. In The Moral Foundations of a Civil Society , first published three
I am sorry to have to report that Yuri Maltsev has passed away. He was a professor of economics at Carthage College in Wisconsin. He held various government and research positions in Moscow, Russia. Before defecting to the United States in 1989, he was a member of a senior economics team that worked on President Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms package
Forty years ago, I reviewed Leonard Peikoff’s Ominous Parallels very negatively, and with one exception, of which the less said, the better, this proved to be the most controversial review I have ever written. Perhaps it is time for a second look. In what follows, I’ll discuss some of the book’s main points and then offer a few critical remarks.
Taxes Have Consequences: An Income Tax History of the United States By Arthur B. Laffer, Brian Domitrovic, and Jeanne Cairns Sinquefield Post Hill Press, 2022, xxv + 413 pp. Taxes Have Consequences is a good book that could have been better. The authors are leading defenders of “supply side” economics, which attracted much attention during the
Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas—Not Less By Alex Epstein Portfolio 2022 xii + 468 pp. In his remarkable new book, Alex Epstein has changed the terms of the debate about the danger of “global warming” and the alleged need to take drastic action in response to this. One side assures us that we
Nigel Biggar, a recently retired professor of theology at Oxford University, has never shunned controversy, as the title of one of his books, In Defence of War , suggests. In this week’s column, I’d like to examine an article of his, “ A Christian Defense of American Empire ,” that appeared in the October 2022 issue of First Things . As you might
Radley Balko, a defender of liberty best known for his book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces , has been fired by the Washington Post . Balko writes: “ So after nine years, I’m being let go by the Washington Post. This is disappointing but not surprising. In recent years, the Opinion leadership has made it
Is praxeology inconsistent? Praxeologists criticize neoclassical economists for using false assumptions in their models. For example, neoclassicals acknowledge that the conditions for “perfect competition” are never found in the actual world. Firms selling a good such as wheat may not have much control over price, but they aren’t perfect “price
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.