It would be easy to write a very negative review of Robert Kuttner’s Going Big (New Press, 2022), but it would be a mistake to do. Kuttner is a well-known progressive economist and the founder of the Economic Policy Institute. He is an ardent New Dealer who regrets that political exigencies, as well as Franklin D. Roosevelt’s own hesitancies, made
Raymond Geuss is an influential political philosopher, and I hope to review his new book, Not Thinking Like a Liberal ,(Harvard, 2022) on another occasion. Geuss is a confirmed enemy of liberalism, both classical and modern, He dislikes both Rawls and Nozick; in fact, his attitude toward Rawls falls little short of hatred. This interferes with
In last week’s article, I discussed some of the arguments Yoram Hazony gives in his book Conservatism: A Rediscovery in favor of an empiricist procedure in ethics that supports working within a particular national tradition and against the rationalist deductive method of those who without empirical evidence defend the supreme value of freedom by
Moderate Conservatism: Reclaiming the Center by John Kekes Oxford University Press, 2022; 256 pp. John Kekes, who taught for many years at the State University of New York at Albany, does not agree with the protagonist of Henrik Ibsen’s Brand that “the devil is compromise,” at least where politics is concerned. The thesis of Moderate Conservatism
Reconsidering Reparations by Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, Oxford University Press, 2022; pp. 261 Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò , who teaches philosophy at Georgetown University, has a very different view of justice from libertarians. We believe that justice is based on the libertarian rights of self-ownership and Lockean appropriation, expressed in laws that apply to
Lincoln’s God: How Faith Transformed a President and a Nation by Joshua Zeitz Viking, 2023; 313 pp. Joshua Zeitz, a contributing writer to Politico , has written a very useful book. It belongs to an increasingly common genre: books that are very favorable to Abraham Lincoln, in some cases approaching a deification of him, which nevertheless
The Political Thought of David Hume: The Origins of Liberalism and the Modern Political Imagination by Aaron Alexander Zubia Notre Dame 2024; 366 pp. The central thesis of Aaron Zubia’s very scholarly book will be of interest to students of Ludwig von Mises. Zubia argues that the thought of David Hume underlies contemporary liberalism. He intends
The New Leviathans: Thoughts after Liberalism by John Gray Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023; 192 pp. John Gray is a strange case. He is a political philosopher who taught for many decades at Oxford and the London School of Economics, and he has become one of the leading British “public intellectuals.” A friend of the rich and famous, including
Governing Least: A New England Libertarianism by Dan Moller Oxford University Press, 2021; xii + 326 pp. Dan Moller’s thoughtful book is packed with arguments, and in what follows I’ll be able to discuss only a few points of interest. The central thread of the book concerns the welfare state in contemporary capitalist societies. Moller is not a
For many economists, economic growth is a mystery. By “economic growth,” Shawn Ritenour has principally in mind economic progress in the less developed countries, but his recipe for growth applies universally. Why is growth a mystery? Ritenour explains why in this excellent book: “Indeed, a major reason modern macroeconomics has not solved 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.