Author: David Gordon

[Debating Gun Control: How Much Regulation Do We Need? By David DeGrazia and Lester H. Hunt. Oxford University Press, 2016. Xvi + 269 pages.] The authors are well-qualified for a good debate, and the book does not disappoint. Hunt is a philosopher of libertarian inclinations who has written books on Nietzsche, human character, and Robert Nozick. In my view, he is a thinker of genuine depth. DeGrazia is best known for work on animal rights and on bioethics. “Debating” in the title is a misnomer, as each author presents only his own case and there are no responses. DeGrazia mentions … Continue reading →

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The authors of American Amnesia, well-known political scientists from Yale and Berkeley, argue that supporters of the free market have forgotten a fundamental truth. Defenders of the market often point to the “Great Fact,” as the distinguished economic historian Deirdre McCloskey terms it, i.e., the amazing increase in human well-being and wealth that began about two hundred years ago when trade and production in parts of Europe and America became freer than ever before. Does this not make manifest the virtues of the free market? Our authors do not think so. It is the “mixed economy” of government and business … Continue reading →

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The anarcho-capitalism that Murray Rothbard favored differed entirely from the American system of government, and he saw the State as a gang of robbers. It by no means followed from this, though, that he was uninterested in politics. Quite to the contrary, he was passionately absorbed in it. I have never known anyone with as great an ability to amass and retain information as Murray Rothbard. He not only followed presidential campaigns, but he had a detailed knowledge of Congressional races as well. He could take any Congressional district in the United States and tell you who was running and … Continue reading →

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Fascism: The Career of a Concept. By Paul E. Gottfried.  Northern Illinois University Press, 2016. Vii + 226 pages. Paul Gottfried’s immensely erudite survey of interpretations of fascism puts one in mind of Ludwig von Mises.  Although Gottfried does not discuss Mises, readers of his excellent book will again and again be surprised and instructed at the extent to which Gottfried defends views similar to those of the great Austrian economist. Surprise, though, is not really in order. Though Mises is a classical liberal and Gottfried a conservative, both are steeped in the values and traditions of European civilization, and … Continue reading →

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Few books have as misleading a title as Hard Choices. For Hillary Clinton, as this tedious memoir of her years as Secretary of State makes evident, there are no hard choices. The Solutions to all political and economic problems are easy. We must always rely on the directing hand of government, guided by the superior wisdom of our moral and intellectual betters, Hillary Clinton foremost among them. In her main discussion of economic policy, she says something that will surprise those familiar with her record.  She contrasts China with America: “China had become the leading exponent of an economic model … Continue reading →

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[Debating War: Why Arguments Opposing American Wars and Interventions Fail. By David J. Lorenzo. Routledge, 2016. viii + 233 pages.] David Lorenzo, a professor of international affairs at the National Chengchi University in Taiwan, has undertaken an ambitious task. America has engaged in many wars throughout its history, and all of them have encountered opposition. Lorenzo in this excellent book endeavors to classify the principal types of argument that have been raised by those who challenged the path of war. Readers will come away from Lorenzo’s extensive survey with an indelible impression. The same debates recur again and again. If … Continue reading →

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[This article appeared in March–April issue of  The Austrian.] In the view of John Tamny — an editor at Forbes andRealClearMarkets — economics as it is usually studied and taught in universities is unnecessarily complicated. The basic truths of economics are simple and require no difficult mathematics to understand. Readers will be reminded of Hazlitt’s great Economics in One Lesson. Entrepreneurs vs. Bureaucrats The book is animated by a controlling vision. A successful economy depends on innovative entrepreneurs who are willing to take large risks in return for the chance at great profits. It is essential to prosperity not to … Continue reading →

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Libertarianism doesn’t often attract attention from The Atlantic, but a recent article, “The Information Revolution’s Dark Turn,” features philosopher Alistair Duff who attacks libertarianism in general, and Murray Rothbard specifically. Unfortunately, the article misrepresents libertarianism but does so in a superficially plausible way. Many critics of libertarianism, I suspect, view it in the same way the article does. The article is an interview of Alistair Duff, who teaches information society and policy at Edinburgh Napier University. Duff is interested in the information revolution in Silicon Valley, and he thinks that people who work there are too anti-statist. Duff says of … Continue reading →

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Russell Kirk: American Conservative. By Bradley J. Birzer. University Press of Kentucky, 2015. 574 pages.  When The Conservative Mind was published in 1953, its author, like Lord Byron after the appearance of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, awoke to find himself famous. Russell Kirk was a hitherto unknown American academic, but Time magazine, which “devoted its entire July 6, 1953 book review section to The Conservative Mind,” and other organs of establishment thought touted Kirk as the voice of a renascent American conservatism.   Kirk’s later work never attracted as much notice as The Conservative Mind, but Kirk retained a substantial following … Continue reading →

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[This article appears in the November–December 2015 issue of The Austrian.] Peter Simpson is a distinguished classicist and philosopher, known especially for his work on Aristotle’s ethics and politics. (He is also, by the way, a mordant critic of Leo Strauss and his followers.) In Political Illiberalism, he poses a fundamental challenge to philosophical justifications of modern liberalism, culminating in the vastly influential Political Liberalism (1993) of John Rawls. Though Simpson cannot be classed as a libertarian, his bold arguments will be of great use to all of us who, like Lew Rockwell, are Against the State. According to a … Continue reading →

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Jason Brennan, a remarkably prolific libertarian political philosopher, has a good eye for the essence of an argument. He puts this ability to effective use in Why Not Capitalism? In the book he challenges the defense of socialism in Why Not Socialism? by G.A. Cohen, whom Brennan rightly considers “the leading Marxist philosopher — and one of the leading political philosophers, period — of the past 100 years.” At first, one might think that arguments in political philosophy over the merits of socialism and capitalism have no importance. If by socialism one means collective ownership or control of the means … Continue reading →

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[This article appears in the September-October 2015 issue of The Austrian.] Charles Murray thinks that government has become arbitrary and tyrannical. In doing so, it has betrayed the “Madisonian” heritage of America, which strictly limited the power of the government to interfere with individual liberty. “As I [Murray] got into the book, I discovered I had to find a label less cumbersome than ‘people devoted to limited government’ … my first impulse was to call us Jeffersonians, but Jefferson was well to the libertarian side of the spectrum, and I wanted to include advocates of limited government who think of … Continue reading →

Most often the state compels you to do things, not because these things are supposed to be good for you, but because they fulfill the state’s purposes. The state doesn’t take your money to help you. Sometimes, though, the state does pass laws that claim to restrict people for their own good, e.g., laws that forbid use of certain drugs that are supposed to be bad for your health. Laws of this kind are called paternalistic. Libertarians of course oppose paternalism, but it is not only libertarians who reject it. It is at odds with the entire heritage of classical … Continue reading →

[Lincoln’s Political Thought, by George Kateb. Harvard University Press, 2015. Xv + 236 pages] In a famous speech, delivered in Springfield in 1858, Lincoln said that “a house divided itself cannot stand.” Lincoln of course applied the sentence to the American Union, which he doubted could long endure “half slave and half free.” George Kateb has much to say about this speech of Lincoln’s in his important new book, but readers will find it difficult to avoid wondering whether the sentiment quoted applies to books as well as nations. Kateb has given us a book very much divided against itself. … Continue reading →