What's weird is the world of <i>National Review</i>, where it troubles no one to call for huge spending cuts and slashing government at the domestic level while defending the worst form of global imperialism abroad, complete with reflexive defenses of every violation of human rights and liberty.
They say there's no such thing as bad publicity. But even though the <i>New York</i> author, Christopher Beam, tries to be fair to libertarians, in the end he thinks their worldview is wacko. Here is where Beam goes wrong.
The famous physiocratic tenet that only land is productive must be considered bizarre and absurd. It is certainly a tremendous loss of insight compared to Cantillon, who identified land and labor as original productive factors, and entrepreneurs as the motors of the market economy.
Only in the direct presence of the authority figure do you find that most people will obey malevolent orders. Overall, what we find is that authority is a relatively weak way to establish and maintain social order.
While Sechrest's book will be an asset for further research, his untimely death has not only cost many of us a dear friend but will also deprive the continuing debate of his sound scholarship, open mind, and willingness to actively engage in the search for truth.
You have only a few years to live and cannot hope to remake society in so short a time. Nobody now living will see a free society in America. But, in fighting for it, one can have a lot of fun. Consider the effort as a legacy to your great-grandchildren.
The 17th-century Dutch Protestant Hugo Grotius, deeply influenced by the late Spanish Scholastics, developed a theory of natural laws that he boldly declared was truly independent of the question of whether God had created them.
