Political Theory

The Free Market 19, no. 11 (November 2001)

The idea that political freedom can be preserved in the absence of economic freedom, and vice versa, is an illusion. Political freedom is the corollary of economic freedom. It is no accident that the age of capitalism became also the age of government by the people.

Presidents assume near dictatorial powers during wars, and FDR was able to manipulate World War II to provide moral legitimacy to his domestic agenda. With the war, Roosevelt could boast of eliminating unemployment at home while fighting evil abroad. Not a bad deal.

The pessimistic scenario is not only that American businessmen, students, and tourists will forever fear to travel in any nation with a Muslim community. It could also mean disinvestment overseas, the further impoverishment of the developing world, a lasting world depression, a world split into major warring blocks, and police-state policies at home.

For too long,we libertarians have allowed our misguided opponents to monopolize the banner of equality. We have more right to that banner than they do. The time has come to seize it back.

"Socialism" and "think tank" are mutually exclusive-even contradictory. Socialism does, however, produce lots of tanks: tanks to suppress people who actually do think. 

What the Misesians have done in Guatemala is create an intellectual infrastructure that promotes a hard-core attachment to freedom among the business class, which dovetails very nicely with the working classes' instinctive opposition to taxes.

Either the U.S. should reclaim its traditional policy of free trade and peace and thereby end its international military interventions, or it should wage unrelenting war against any group or government that resents and predictably responds to U.S. policy.

A supporter of the absolute state might defend his cause with many slogans, but freedom of religious opinion, one would think, could hardly find a place among them.

Professor Berns has written a book capable of great harm. Not content with the world's major faiths, he proposes to establish a "civil religion" in the guise of patriotism.