In Search of Monsters to Destroy: The Folly of American Empire and the Paths to Peace by Christopher J. Coyne Independent Institute, 2022; xxii + 217 pp. Christopher Coyne, an economics professor at GMU, forcefully attacks America’s foreign policy, claimed by its defenders to aim at a peaceful international order under benevolent American
Quite often, the hot-button issue of income inequality is caricatured as an outcome of capitalism rather than as a characteristic of all societies across time. Critics of capitalism have a rather romantic version of precapitalist societies. This error stems from a misunderstanding of human societies in general. Inequality is a permanent fixture in
Language is the perfect instrument of empire . —Antonio de Nebrija, bishop of Ávila, 1492 The bishop was correct, in his time and ours. Spain proceeded to become the most powerful empire in the world over the following century, spreading her mother tongue across the Americas—just as the Roman army had imposed Latin across its sweep and just as the
Pascal Salin is an economist, professor emeritus at the University of Paris-Dauphine, and was president of the Mont-Pelerin Society from 1994 to 1996. Among the extensive list of books Professor Salin has published, mention can be made of the following titles: La vérité sur la monnaie (Paris: Odile Jacob, 1990), Libéralisme (Paris: Odile
(Barthelemy) Charles (Pierre Joseph) Dunoyer (1786–1862) was born on May 20, 1786 at Carennac in ancient Turenne (Quercy, Cahorsin), the present-day Lot. His father, Jean-Jacques- Philippe Dunoyer, was seigneur de Segonzac. Destined at an early age for the order of St. Jean de Malte, he began his education in the order’s near-by house at Martel.
Matt McManus, a lecturer at the University of Michigan, has published in Jacobin an article under the less-than-engaging title “Ludwig von Mises Was a Free-Market Ideologue, Not a Hardheaded Thinker.” In the article, McManus raises some points of philosophical interest, but unfortunately his evident animus against Mises interferes with his
Not Thinking like a Liberal by Raymond Geuss, Harvard, 2022 xiv + 197 pp. Raymond Geuss, an American philosopher now retired from Cambridge, has in his many books emphasized narrative and the genealogy of concepts, and Not Thinking like a Liberal is, fittingly, an account of how various events in his life have shaped his conceptual framework. The
This year is the fortieth anniversary of Murray Rothbard’s The Ethics of Liberty , and although many topics in it have attracted attention, several of them have been neglected. I’m going to discuss one of these in this week’s article. Isaiah Berlin was one of the most influential and important political philosophers in the years after World War
The philosopher Hilary Putnam was not a friend of the free market—far from it. At one time he supported the Progressive Labor Party, a Communist faction that admired Mao’s red Chinese tyranny, and though he abandoned that extreme position, he remained a socialist. He thought that an obvious refutation of the libertarianism then professed by his
Peyton Gouzien: Welcome to Repeal the 20th Century . I have a very special guest, Jeff Deist. For those who do not know, Jeff Deist is the president of the Mises Institute and hosts the Institute’s Human Action Podcast . I wanted to have you on, Mr. Deist, because I’ve seen you talk about how illiberal the twentieth century was, and as you know,
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.