Mises Wire

The Lockean Case for Dictatorship?

The Lockean Case for Dictatorship?

Harvey Mansfield, writing in the Wall Street Journal, slaps together one of the strangest and most circuitous defenses of executive tyranny I’ve ever read. From his perspective, the case for abolishing the rule of law is in the tradition of Aristotle, Locke, Hamilton, Madison, Tocqueville, and a few others. His prose is so unencumbered honest analytics that he might have added Paine, Hayek, Rothbard, and his pet canary too. William Grigg is also alarmed to see such an open defense of, well, everything a liberty-minded person should oppose.

Actually, the best answer is Mansfield comes from Mises — today’s Daily Article — who explains the relationship between the individual and society. How societies form and grow and the contribution of individual volition in this process: here is a point not comprehended by defenders of despotism.

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