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Against Leviathan: Government Power and a Free Society
Against Leviathan: Government Power and a Free SocietyOn at , 2 Comments »
Against Leviathan: Government Power and a Free of charge Society
An unflinching critical analysis of government is contained in this work, which distills complex economic and political issues for the layperson. Combining an economist’s analytical scrutiny with an historian’s respect for empirical evidence, the book attacks the data on which governments base their economic management and their responses to an ongoing stream of crises. Among the topics discussed are domestic economic busts, foreign wars, welfare programs such as social security, the arts of political leadership, the intrusive efforts of governments to shield men and women from themselves, and the mismanagement of the economy. Although focused on US government actions, the book also makes revealing comparisons with similar government actions abroad and in China, Japan, and Western Europe.  List Price: $ 18.95 Cost: [wpramaprice asin="0945999968"] Related National Debt Relief Program Goods Tags: ECON, cri, Work, good, crises, United States, ProgramRelated PostsLeave a Comment2 Responses to “Against Leviathan: Government Power and a Free Society” |
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A Homerun,
A very readable collection of essays and assorted writings that are an excellent companion to any of James Bovards works especially “Lost Rights”.
He explodes myths in a way that exposes the corrupt foundation of big government. Nothing from the Wefare state to the FDA, the Drug War and overall regulation escapes Higgs’ scrutiny.
There is something here for everyon and I plan to pass my copy to as many people as possible including my daughters college friends as an antidote to their years of being brainwashed.
If you’ve veer wondered whether all these big expensive and liberty-destroying federal programs are worth it or can ever work, Higgs will certainly cure you of any doubts.
The chapter of the FDA is alone worth the price of the book as many of my friends all use the FDA as the one thing that the federal government does right and we cannot live without. Higgs exposes that for the sad joke that it is. In reality the FDA had killed many more people than they’ve ever saved. Despite years of testing and hundreds of millions od dollars prescription drugs still kill thousands ( Voixx was approved by the FDA then recently pulled ) at the same time tens of thousands are dying while potential life saving drugs are denied patients by the FDA rules – all in the name of safety!
The best thing about this book is that Higgs exposes the underlying issues without his own poitical axe to grind, and he is willing to give credit where credit is due. Overall his attack is relentless and his arguments very convincing. Even the most rabid Demo-publican will not be able to factually dispute anything presented here. Like Bovards works, this book is meticulously researched.
Read this and it will become intuitively obvious to the most casual observer the futility of government action. Think of this book as a bull$h** vaccine. After digesting this work any reader will be more likely to pick out and filter the BS coming from DC and their media lapdogs.
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|A wonderful book, a great education!,
“I believe that it is better to tell the truth than to lie. I believe that it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe that it is better to know than be ignorant.”
~ H. L. Mencken (Living Philosophies, 1931)
H. L. Mencken would have delighted in Robert Higgs’s crisp and razor-sharp assessment of America’s political evolution, Against Leviathan: Government Power and a Free Society. The American body politic in the early 21st century seems somewhat inexplicable to many classical liberals, traditional conservatives, libertarians and others who appreciate the famous Marxist inquiry (Groucho, not Karl) of “Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?” Higgs, in forty concise chapters focusing on what has really happened in our historical, political and economic evolution as a Republic, ensures not only that we “know” and are no longer ignorant, but hints that Americans may also someday recognize that it is better to be free than to be a slave to the idea of the necessity of a centralized nation-state.
How did America migrate so far from the ideas of the founders, who believed government was a necessary evil to be constantly watched for signs of insincerity and encroachment? How did we change from a people who saw American presidents as presentable representatives abroad and models of moderation in all things governmental, into a people who worship activists from Wilson to Roosevelt to Nixon to Clinton and George W. Bush – each in their own way a national embarrassment abroad and utterly Bacchanalian in all things related to the state?
Higgs explains why this is so, by showing us the historical facts, the rich and widely available evidence of a growing and ravenous state, addicted to an all-it-can-eat diet of American national wealth, productivity and citizens, and the actions of the three prolific cooks in the kitchen – the judiciary, the legislature, and the executive. Whether the cooks are just doing their jobs, or are actually co-dependent with the chief customer and its insatiability, will be a question answered in one way by modern Republicans and Democrats, and another by the rest of the country. That the state has eaten extremely well in the last century will be denied by neither group.
In a particularly helpful way, Higgs explains how our Constitution exists in three realities – the literal paper document, the body of judicial evaluation and rulings accumulated over decades about what it meant to say, and the most important reality – Charles Beard’s idea of a living Constitution, “…what living men and women think it is, recognize as such, carry into action, and obey.” In this last incarnation we find hope that it really can be the citizens in a republic who govern. Sadly, the hope Higgs offers in Against Leviathan must be gleaned along the model of the Straussians through the esoteric approach, using a kind of anarcho-libertarian inspired gnosis.
For those of us who have apprehended American history from television and public school texts, Against Leviathan explains political actions beginning the early 20th century in a way that makes real sense and is historically accurate. Specifically, Higgs analyzes various mythologies against econometric data not available or ignored when these story-lines were initially put forth. In particular the idea that World War II got us out of the depression, something I grew up believing without question, is firmly debunked on the basis of hard cold fact. As the irreverent Mencken and Jesus of Nazareth both understood, knowing the truth is remarkably liberating.
The past prepares the way for the future, and it cannot be otherwise. Woodrow Wilson, with a friendly legislature and judiciary, transformed his own electoral pledge to “keep us out of the war” into the classic tease practiced by all centralized states, where “no means yes.” The federal government did not go from outlays of less than 2% of the gross national product in 1914 to the modern level of well over 20% without creative approaches towards confiscation and the elimination of citizen resistance, without a “crisis constitution” taking precedence over a “normal constitution.” The massive conscription called by Wilson worked hand in hand with the Espionage Act of 1917, and its notorious Sedition Act amendment, to deliver bodies to the state while silencing complaints. Wilson’s dedicated work paved the way legally and intellectually for the New Deal, in both spirit and detail of the governmental excesses, and further paved the way for an American command economy between 1941 and the end of World War II. This militarized society and emerging centralized state led, in turn, predictably and irreversibly into the quasi-corporatist government we both fostered and endured as Americans throughout the Cold War. Today we witness an even more perfect progeny, the never-ending War on Terror.
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