Independent Review articles from January 1997

Independent Review archives from January 1997

Liberty, dignity, and responsibility: the moral triad of a good society:
January 1, 1997... In The Constitution of Liberty, Friedrich Hayek wrote, "the belief in individual responsibility...has always been strong when people firmly believed in individual freedom" (1960, 71; see also 1967, 232). He also observed that during his time...

The tragedy of the public budgetary commons.
January 1, 1997... Outlays of federal, state, and local governments have risen to approximately 34 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) over the past several decades. Outlays of the federal government alone have recently amounted to more than 20 percent...

Market-based environmentalism and the free market: they're not the same.
January 1, 1997... Since the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, overtly socialist solutions to public policy problems have fallen into disrepute, even among socialists. It now seems to be widely accepted among policy analysts of both the Left and the Right...

Market-based environmentalism and the free market: substitutes or complements?
January 1, 1997... Roy Cordato has presented an insightful critique of market-based environmentalism. His analysis provides several reasons why one should be suspicious of recent attempts to shape environmental policy through the use of "market-based" rules....

The almighty, impotent state: or, the crisis of authority.
January 1, 1997... That government authority is in crisis is not a new idea. A book recently reviewed by me in this journal, Nicholas Kittrie's The War against Authority (1995), demonstrates that political authority must constantly deal with dissidents and...

Private Truths, Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification.
January 1, 1997... It is astounding how many of the most elegant and penetrating theories of political economy grow out of ideas so simple as on first blush to seem prosaic. Adam Smith's Invisible Hand is a metaphorical illustration of the idea that the...

The Free Society.
January 1, 1997... This engaging and intelligent book offers a general defense of a fairly thoroughgoing political libertarianism. It opens with an extraordinarily interesting account of moral foundations, proceeds to a central section on liberty and government,...

Against the Tide: An Intellectual History of Free Trade.
January 1, 1997... In medieval times, men devoted great efforts to the search for a formula to turn lead into gold, but the endeavor proved futile. People eventually learned they could not turn the trick and stopped trying. Unfortunately, people continue to seek...

Adam Smith's System of Liberty, Wealth and Virtue.
January 1, 1997... This book is an attack on the view that Adam Smith conceived of the science of economics after shelving moral considerations and wholeheartedly approving of the motivating force of self-interest. This view, which the author claims to be...

The Sacred Fire of Liberty: James Madison and the Founding of the Federal Republic.
January 1, 1997... In recent years some historical sociologists, critical of the tendency of Marxist and other forms of grand social theory to disregard empirical evidence, have urged a strategy of "bringing the state back in" to the study of politics. Their point,...

The Road to Mass Democracy: Original Intent and the Seventeenth Amendment.
January 1, 1997... The Constitution of 1787 provided for the appointment of United States senators by state legislatures. In 1913, the Seventeenth Amendment was ratified, installing the current regime of direct election of U.S. senators. The bloated and...

The Return of George Sutherland: Restoring a Jurisprudence of Natural Rights.
January 1, 1997... Hadley Arkes's The Return of George Sutherland is less a biography of the conservative Supreme Court justice than an extended essay on several major issues of constitutional law through which he issues a clarion call for the restoration of "a...

Black Wealth/White Wealth: A New Perspective on Racial Inequality.
January 1, 1997... Few policy problems are as explosive or persistent as racial inequality. Fewer still have been studied so intensively. The bulk of the work by economists has focused narrowly on earnings. It is known, for example, that the black-white earnings...

Land Rights: The 1990's Property Rights Rebellion.
January 1, 1997... This excellent collection of articles on various aspects of the conflict between government and private property rights is part of the Political Economy Forum Series, edited by Terry Anderson. A central theme of all the books in the series is the...

In the Shadow of War: The United States since the 1930s.
January 1, 1997... In his new book, In the Shadow of War' Michael S. Sherry describes and explains the process of militarization that has fundamentally transformed American life since the 1930s. He explores the myriad ways in which war has shaped--indeed,...

For the President's Eyes Only: Secret Intelligence and the American Presidency from Washington to Bush.
January 1, 1997... Christopher Andrew's book examines in critical detail the use and abuse of the intelligence community throughout the history of the American presidency. Andrew provides a lucid narrative surveying how presidential ignorance and misconceptions...

One for All: The Logic of Group Conflict.
January 1, 1997... A wave of brutal wars has followed the fall of communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, such barbaric events are hardly unusual--the Holocaust is the most horrible example from recent history. In such events, large...