A tariff set the stage for the American Civil War. The quarrel between the North and the South was a fiscal quarrel, not a war over slavery. The tariff of 1828 was called the tariff of abomination. Nullification was a strong argument to void unconstitutional federal laws.
Lack of intelligence, lack of division of labor and violent ideologies are three factors which contribute to states, wars, and imperialism. Fighters in wars were vassals of the Lords, or mercenary groups who could be hired. Fights were frequent but small and they had rules of knightly honor.
It was thought that the ultimate antidote to war was universal democracy. It was not. Spencer defined liberal democracy as an individual free to control the product of his own efforts on the market. Welfare societies could not rationally be termed democracies.
Intellectuals are pro-power and anti-market. Great presidents are war presidents who glorify power. The Costs of War and Reassessing the Presidency are recommended books on this topic. The First World War was a turning point which vastly extended state power, and vastly destroyed social power.
Gustave de Molinari became the grand old man of classical liberalism, crediting Pareto. Molinari understood that the main issue in the Civil War was the tariff, not slavery. In Italy economists founded free market economics, crediting Bastiat.
Germany surrendered conditionally in 1919 under the Treaty of Versailles. Everybody opposed the treaty, but it was forcibly implemented. Revisionism is necessary to combat state propaganda, e.g. the lie in WWII that FDR was surprised by Pearl Harbor.
For two years, we have been innudated with denunciations of "corporate greed" that has supposedly created scandal and led to prosecutions of CEOs, writes Gary Galles.
It was not to be expected that Earl Shorris would view Leo Strauss with favor. Shorris is decidedly a man of the left; and most, though not all, followers of Strauss are neoconservatives who support a militant foreign policy.
Jean Bethke Elshtain thinks that I should not be reviewing this book. Of course, you may say, she thinks that I should not be writing at all. But I do not here refer to her views about me.
Presented as part of the Mises Institute’s Austrian Workshop seminar series on 22 June 2004 in Auburn, Alabama.
