Independent Review articles from March 2008

Independent Review archives from March 2008

Sovereign impunity.(Essay)
March 22, 2008... Today all branches of America's national government--legislative, executive, and judicial--act with near impunity. Constitutional limits on the government's power have been eroded, institutional checks and balances rendered largely nugatory....

Hugo Chavez against the backdrop of Venezuelan economic and political history.(Essay)
March 22, 2008... Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez is a source of irritation for the leaders of freer countries. Financed by high oil prices, Chavez has meddled, sometimes successfully, in the internal politics and electoral processes of Bolivia, Ecuador, El...

Politically contrived gasoline shortage.(Critical essay)
March 22, 2008... The 1972 book The Limits to Growth (Meadows et al. 1972) sensationalized the theory that natural-resource depletion and rising pollution would soon bring catastrophe. The authors theorized that, among other problems, running out of basic...

Isabel Paterson, Rose Wilder Lane, and Zora Neale Hurston on war, race, the state, and liberty.(Essay)
March 22, 2008... The ideals of liberty, individualism, and self-reliance have rarely had more enthusiastic champions than Isabel Paterson, Rose Wilder Lane, and Zora Neale Hurston. All three were out of step with the dominant worldview of their times. They had...

Frederic Bastiat: libertarian challenger or political bargainer?(PREDECESSORS)(Essay)
March 22, 2008... Social thinkers and scholars tend to moderate their beliefs, especially their most radical beliefs, as they age. Many who begin their careers as radical libertarians, challenging the status quo and extensive state power, tire over time or...

The quarantine quandary.(REFLECTIONS)(Essay)
March 22, 2008... When globetrotting groom Andrew Speaker was discovered to be carrying tuberculosis (TB) germs in May 2007, virtually no one questioned that the state should and could protect us from him. Apparently, healthy citizens suddenly lose their rights...

Bloody Germany: Berghahn's view of twentieth-century state violence.(Vilker Berghahn)(Essay)
March 22, 2008... Vilker Berghahn, a prolific and well-respected historian of the modern world, is Seth Low Professor of History at Columbia. His historical interests have evolved around the history of Germany in the past century and Europe as a whole in the era...

Punctuated Equilibrium and the Dynamics of U.S. Environmental Policy.(Book review)
March 22, 2008... * Punctuated Equilibrium and the Dynamics of U.S. Environmental Policy Edited by Robert Repetto New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2006. Pp. 304. $30.00 paperback. The National Environmental Protection Act, which created...

Polarized America: The Dance of Ideology and Unequal Riches.(Book review)
March 22, 2008... * Polarized America: The Dance of Ideology and Unequal Riches By Nolan McCarty, Keith T. Poole, and Howard Rosenthal Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2006. Pp. 240. $35.00. Polarized America, by Nolan McCarty, Keith T. Poole, and...

Living with Leviathan: Public Spending, Taxes, and Economic Performance.(Book review)
March 22, 2008... * Living with Leviathan: Public Spending, Taxes, and Economic Performance By David B. Smith London: Institute of Economic Affairs, 2006. Pp. 187. 12.50 [pounds sterling] paperback. David B. Smith's Living with Leviathan...

Anarchy, State, and Public Choice.(Book review)
March 22, 2008... * Anarchy, State, and Public Choice Edited by Edward Stringham Cheltenham, U.K.: Edward Elgar, 2005. Pp. vi, 229. $110.00. Including the introduction by Edward Stringham, Anarchy, State, and Public Choice contains eighteen...

Letters to the editor.(Letter to the editor)
March 22, 2008... When I was teaching, one of the phrases I had many occasions to write on students' papers was: "Specify, do not characterize." James C. W. Ahiakpor's review of my book On Classical Economics in the fall 2007 issue was long on characterizations...