Book Reviews

Imperialist Freedom

by Martin Morse Wooster May 12, 2011

Empire for Liberty: A History of American Imperialism  from Benjamin Franklin to Paul Wolfowitz by Richard H, Immerman. (Princeton University Press; 237 pages); $24.95. There are many reasons to be angry about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but perhaps the most teeth-grating moments of the launching of war in Baghdad were marked by the moralism by which U.S. officials ...

The Best Introduction to Libertarianism

by Laurence M. Vance April 1, 2011

Libertarianism Today by Jacob H. Huebert (Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2010), 254 pages. Major books on libertarianism seem to come in pairs. First, in 1973, there was Murray N. Rothbard’s For a New Liberty (Macmillan, with a revised edition in 1978) and John Hospers’s Libertarianism: A Political Philosophy for Tomorrow (Nash Publishing). The year 1997 saw the publication of David ...

The Story Behind the Permanent War

by Anthony Gregory March 18, 2011

Washington Rules: Americas Path to Permanent War by Andrew J. Bacevich (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2010), 286 pages. During the last decade, left-liberals accused the controversial Bush administration of a wickedness, arrogance, and incompetence that supposedly set that presidency apart from others in American history. Bush was an especially bad warmonger who broke with the traditional and venerable principles that had ...

A Dictionary of Libertarianism

by Laurence M. Vance February 15, 2011

Libertarianism, from A to Z by Jeffrey A. Miron (New York: Basic Books, 2010); 198 pages. More and more Americans are coming to realize that the liberal/conservative paradigm is deeply flawed. Disillusionment with Washington is at an all-time high. The old adage that there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between the two major parties has never seemed more ...

How Will the Empire End?

by Anthony Gregory January 1, 2011

Dismantling the Empire: America’s Last Best Hope by Chalmers Johnson (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2010); 212 pages. Most Americans would very likely deny that their government is a global empire, horribly destructive to national security, liberty, and wealth. But whatever we call this U.S. system of ubiquitous military bases, satellite regimes throughout the world, ever-growing “defense” budgets, and an ...

Nullifying Tyranny

by George Leef November 1, 2010

Nullification: How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century by Thomas E. Woods Jr. (Regnery, 2010); 309 pages. One of the big mistakes made by the drafters of the Constitution was their omission of any provision that says what is to be done if the Congress or president acts unconstitutionally. Although the Constitution places limits on their authority, nowhere does ...

The Addled Theories of John Maynard Keynes

by George Leef October 1, 2010

Where Keynes Went Wrong: And Why World Governments Keep Creating Inflation, Bubbles, and Busts by Hunter Lewis (Axios Press, 2010); 384 pages. In the wake of the bursting of the housing bubble and the resulting financial collapse, many politicians and high-profile economists (such as Nobel winner and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman) have missed no opportunity to push ...

America’s Peacetime Crimes against Iraq

by Anthony Gregory September 1, 2010

Invisible War: The United States and the Iraq Sanctions by Joy Gordon (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010), 359 pages. Between the Gulf War and the Iraq War, the United States enforced a comprehensive sanctions policy against the Iraqi people, under the auspices of the United Nations. Whereas the hot conflict of 1990 and the one that has run ...

Lies Are the Health of the State

by Anthony Gregory August 1, 2010

Lies the Government Told You: Myth, Power, and Deception in American History, by Andrew P. Napolitano (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2010), 349 pages. Americans take for granted that politicians lie. You know one is lying when his lips are moving, so goes the joke. Even citizens snookered by one politician’s lies will quickly acknowledge that the other side lies. “Bush Lied, People ...

The Real Culprit in the Housing Crisis

by George Leef June 1, 2010

The Housing Boom and Bust by Thomas Sowell (Basic Books, 2009); 192 pages. Throughout Thomas Sowell’s long career, he has tried to get Americans to grasp some simple but crucial truths about economics and government policy. One of those lessons is central to this book, namely that it is a mistake to judge policy enactments on the basis of their stated, ...

The Anti-Fed Revolution

by Anthony Gregory May 1, 2010

End the Fed by Ron Paul (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2009), 212 pages. Through his 2008 presidential campaign, Ron Paul managed to make monetary policy a national political issue. For nearly a century it had been a relatively obscure topic, and throughout my lifetime respectable opinion considered it a fringe inclination even to be interested in it. ...

America’s Injustice System

by George Leef March 1, 2010

Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent by Harvey A. Silverglate (Encounter Books, 2009); 325 pages. It was probably inevitable that as the United States became an increasingly politicized nation, its justice system would be transformed from one that actually sought justice into one where prosecutors abuse their power to win cases and advance their careers. ...