The meltdown of liberty can be stopped. But it won’t be stopped until those who understand the problem speak out courageously against the clear and present danger, which is the state at war. It is a danger even if the state wins. As Mises says: "no citizen of a liberal and democratic nation profits from a victorious war."
It was the achievement of Ludwig von Mises to recreate in his time the radical program of early liberalism, i.e., the realizing of individual freedom, peace, and prosperity through limitations on state power, individual rights, and an economy based on private property. A state pursuing vengeance, he believed, threatens liberty itself.
What set in motion the explosive technological advance of the last 250 years was the world of ideas. Great thinkers began to understand the internal logic of the market economy and its potential for liberating mankind from poverty, dependency, and despotic rule.
The dust jacket of Mr. Kaplan's book made me suspicious. Henry Kissinger, that vest-pocket Bismarck, calls the book “one of the most thought-provoking and profound ... that I have ever read.”
These two short books supplement each other and are best considered together. Mr. Chomsky is an assiduous collector of facts, many of them highly embarrassing to the U.S. government. Archbishop Williams,
Free trade is premised on the idea that human relationships should be voluntary and based on mutual consent. It is grounded on the understanding that the material, cultural, and spiritual improvements in the circumstances and conditions of man are best served when the members of the global community of mankind specialize their activities in a world-encompassing social system of division of labor.
Robert Kaplan's newest book seems to be, bottom line, a briefing book to justify the switches and turns, contradictions, and conflicting rationales for American foreign policy and the domestic political control to which it is tightly bound, while freeing the government to to do anything it wants, anywhere in the world it wants.
John Walker Lindh has pleaded not guilty to the charge that he conspired to kill Americans. It does seem like this religious pilgrim was caught at the wrong place, on the wrong side, at the wrong time. He was drawn to Islamic fundamentalism. For him it was the radical alternative to what he came to regard as the corrupt materialism of the West. He was there when the U.S. troops came, and now he faces life in prison.
September 11 was far from the first time that the United States has been targeted by terrorists. In a 1997 report on the scourge of terrorism, the Pentagon's Defense Science Board observed: "Historical data show a strong correlation between U.S. involvement in international situations and an increase in terrorist attacks against the United States." Recognizing that fact is crucial to understanding why both terror and the response to terror have become such grave threats to freedom and prosperity.
Americans are discussing whether the president can just take on the powers of a Caesar, claiming more and more power because of the demands of war. But for those advocates of an imperial presidency, there are the words of Justice Davis: "No doctrine, involving more pernicious consequences was ever invented by the wit of man than that its provisions can be suspended during any of the great exigencies of government."
