[ 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
[ 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
John V. Denson’s A Century of War (2006) is an important contribution to revisionist history. In the book, Judge Denson analyzes the provocative policies of Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin Roosevelt. Each of these presidents concealed from the public his bellicose intentions. The book attracted the attention of Gerd Schultze-Rhonhof,
[Excerpted from The Austrian .] Readers of Judge Napolitano’s outstanding book will at once be struck by its unusual title. What is the “suicide pact” referred to there? The phrase occurs in a famous dissenting opinion by Justice Robert Jackson. In Terminiello v. Chicago (1949), the Supreme Court held that the city of Chicago had wrongly
In an excellent article for The New Republic , April 6, 2015, “Rand Paul Will Break Republican Hearts, Just Like Reagan Did,” the Canadian journalist Jeet Heer displays a knowledge of libertarianism rare among mainstream journalists. Heer points out that Rand Paul’s bellicose foreign policy statements will make him lose support among
Introduction Most of my readers, not yet enlightened by the wisdom of hermeneutics, probably believe that the aim of economics is to discover true propositions about the external world. Exactly which members of the set of true propositions fall within economics, as against other disciplines, has occasioned much dispute. The Austrian approach,
The well-known libertarian economic journalist Robert Wenzel has written a post that would have delighted Murray Rothbard. Wenzel discusses a recent Monetary Conference held at the Cato Institute. “Under the direction of the billionaire Koch brothers, the institute appears to have drifted so far from its roots that it is barely recognizable as the
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
Earlier today, Dr. David Gordon took to the Mises Institute’s Facebook page to answer questions submitted by our followers. Here’s the transcript: Q: Would Mises have advocated for socialism if it turned out that it was better than capitalism at satisfying people’s ends, encouraging economic growth, etc.? What about Rothbard? Dr. David Gordon:
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
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.