Liberty Books

A recurring theme noticed by the American expatriate community is the vast difference in how foreigners view America and how Americans view themselves, especially in regards to how America has dealt with other countries. In the realm of literature and history, there have been few works that have bridged this divide, and most of them dealt with narrow topics; such as US - Mexico relation, or US - Japan relations in the 20th century. This book is probably one of the few that offers a long-term historical analysis of America's foreign policy from colonial days to the end of the 20th century. Starting from the early 1500s and ending with the 20th century, the book examines America's territorial and economic expansion by tracing the lives and careers of several famous / infamous military leaders. Most are American, such as Colin Powell and George Washington. There are also some non-Americans, such as Champlain and General Santa Anna. But all lead careers that defined the destiny of America.

The book reads very quickly, and the authors are objective in their style. The authors have produced a great history book from the foundations of several biographies. Probably the best feature of this book is its critical examination of how war can and often does destroy both victor and vanquished. This point is illustrates several times in this book, using both England and the US as examples of victors in war who went on to pay dearly later on. I recommend reading this book.

Fred Anderson has written with grace and authority about the involvement of American colonials with their British sovereign in contesting and destroying the French colonial empire in the West during the Seven Years War. This work serves brilliantly in the first four chapters of this flawed work to explain the role of warfare in shaping the American foundation and creation. The authors get into trouble when they attempt to explain how the use of war has been a permanent theme in American history. We are a nation founded in revolutionary war, we are a nation founded as a Slave Republic, two of the more repugnant features of human politics and organization. From that perspective one might argue that we have been remarkably successful in avoiding becoming an imperial aggressor on an even more extensive scale. The authors fail to explain or even address why it is that the United States voluntarily disarmed in 1865 and in 1919 when we had military forces that could easily have conquered Canada and Mexico, annexed the Caribbean islands and much more. Why did we not? They do not ask the question.
As this book was written in the earlier stages of our latest adventure in Iraq, it is understandable why they are attempting to use war to explain a policy that our government has not successfully or convincingly explained to us. But this book does not do a better job. Too bad because the wars they have explained are no longer with us and the one that is will remain a mystery to you when you finish this deeply flawed but occasionally brilliant book.

Anderson and Cayton make the controversial thesis that Americans use the themes of liberty and freedom for their own expansionist aims. The first two chapters of the book, the authors describe how the European powers cooperated with the Native Americans in order to acheive their aims. But after the Seven Years War, the colonists viewed British cooperation with natives as impeding their drive westward. During the Revolutionary War, Americans ethnically cleansed thousands of Native Americans in order to defend their individual rights to expand westward. George Washington tried tired to slowly assimilate Native Americans to embrace ideas of freedom and democracy, but his plans fell apart due to the violent actions by Scotch-Irish settlers and later by Andrew Jackson's policies in the western borderlands. Grant tried to implement Washington's program after the Civil War, but did nothing to prevent the expulsion of the Native Americans from their lands. The same policies that Washington and Grant used on the Native Americans expanded to the Phillippines and Cuba in which the interests of these citizens were subordinated to the wishes of the United States. MacArthur followed similiar actions in his dealings with the Japanese after the Second World War in which he repressed some Japanese publications because they were against the interests of the United States. The main weakness of this book is that the first two chapters of the book does not flow with the remaining chapters and that the authors don't compare the American empire with its European counterparts in the nineteenth century. Otherwise this book strongly disputes writings by the likes of William Kristol on the right, and Samantha Powers on the left, that advocate the use of American military force in order to spread individual freedom.

As is well known, American leaders tend to justify wars by explaining them as operations in defense of liberty and democracy. This important book examines that notion through the impact of several historically key men on North America.

They include Samuel de Champlain, whose missionizing and choosing up sides in various Indian wars set the stage for "the most widespread and destructive warfare in North American history"; William Penn, whose sincere efforts to coexist peacefully with the Indians degenerated into the unapologetic expansionism of his heirs; George Washington, who foresaw so many of the dangers of military intervention abroad; the tempestuous and bullying Andrew Jackson, who owned slaves, relocated thousands of Indians west of the Mississippi, and set the stage for ongoing wars of conquest in the name of freedom and liberty (and who had the gall to argue that relocating the Indians was "not only liberal, but generous"); Ulysses Grant, reluctant participant in the land-grabbing war with Mexico, a man who clearly understood that such aggressive moves always bring punishing consequences; the grandstanding Douglas MacArthur, aging momma's boy and self-appointed missionary of Christianity and liberty, finally relieved of command by Truman for suggesting that the United States nuke China; and Colin Powell, whose highly distinguished military career ran parallel with a habit of doing what he was told while silencing his doubts--doubts that nearly always turned out to be realistically based. "I had been conditioned to believe in the wisdom of my superiors...."

The authors of this book tell a balanced tale without heavy-handed recourse to the lessons unlearned from history, but the lessons stand out anyway: the conquest of the Phillipines, for example, so many of whose citizens died in the American attempt to liberate them in a bloody, exhausting campaign that only ended when the occupation did. Concentration camps and torture inflicted by MacArthur's soldiers stained these attempts to mold a nation's fate from above, as did Roosevelt's propagandistic declaration that the insurrection was over (July 4, 1902) when in fact it would not end for many years.

A poignant event might well give food for thought: Woodrow Wilson's 1916 draft of a speech to Congress, which stated that "it shall not lie with American people to dictate to another people what their government shall be or what use they shall have or what persons they shall encourage or favor." Reviewing the speech, Secretary of State Robert Lansing wrote: "Haiti, S. Domingo, Nicaragua, Panama" in the margin by way of comment (he might have added Cuba, Mexico, and the Phillipines), whereupon Wilson gave up on the speech, a decision that may well mark a significant difference between the politics of his time and our own.

This is a very insightful account of American history in the chord of imperial expansion, telling the story that doesn't quite appear in standard accounts. We are so habituated to the American narrative that we forget the terrible legacy of expansionism, and its endless betrayals and ethnic cleansing. One useful feature of the account is to start in the sixteenth century, and show the change that came over the relations of settlers and Native Indians. A further key is to include the complexities of the Seven Years War to that of the American Revolution, showing their direct connection (the same for the Mexican-American War and the Civil War). The story of William Penn and his pacifism and good relations with the Indians is like a forgotten echo, and, as with this case, it is important to see how much of our history is a story of the defeat of good intentions as the lowest common denominator of imperial conquest seems to take over. The case of Penn and Pennsylvannia is a reminder of what might/should/could have been, leaving no excuse for the teleological fallacies of the great American narrative.

J. C. Lester has written an outstanding book. It fulfills all the criteria for that accolade. It is the author's first book yet he tackles the subject with the consummate skill of an expert in the field. He is up to date with all the relevant literature, that which is sympathetic to his intellectual cause as well as the arguments of its opponents. He is familiar with all of the philosophical issues and manages to breathe some new life into matters that have been discussed ad nauseum by libertarians over the years. While not always crystal clear in his exposition (indeed, this book is not to be recommended to beginners), Lester writes generally in a lively and provocative style which is sure to attract freedom-loving scholars. Furthermore, he is not afraid to take on some well-known shibboleths of contemporary political philosophy and subject them to full libertarian rigor; his critique of democracy was a heady, almost intoxicating, refutation of the most emotive (and apparently uncriticizable) concept in the political lexicon. As he points out, "Democracy is the enemy of liberty and welfare." [1] Of course, most critics of democracy are automatically dismissed as fascists, but that is a most implausible, indeed libelous, charge to level at one who is so committed a believer in freedom.

Lester shows considerable originality, either when he is discussing some of the deepest problems in political theory or when he is making a contribution to some of the more casual issues of contemporary politics. He is able to use the concepts and intellectual weaponry of libertarianism as effectively as the giants of the subject - Rothbard, David Friedman and the early Nozick included. Equally important are his critiques of some of the most well-known critics of libertarianism. His sections on Rawls and John Gray are neat little vignettes, brief but rigorous.

Lester has written a book about libertarianism and he is not frightened to consider the major, and the deepest, intellectual conundrums in the doctrine. But while the discussion is intense and penetrative, the book is not about foundationalism; in fact, the author specifically rejects any fundamental demonstration of the truth of libertarianism, whether that is derived from natural rights, utilitarianism, or any other justificatory intellectual scaffolding that is alleged to be impervious to criticism. In a considerable theoretical coup, Lester adopts Karl Popper's anti-justificatory critical rationalism, though he takes it into areas undreamt of by that philosopher. Rather than aiming at philosophical absolutism, Lester adopts the method of conjecture and refutation. The "truths" of libertarianism emerge as they survive a series of logical (and occasionally empirical) tests. Perhaps Lester pushes the analogy with Popperian science a little far when he says that libertarianism is "as unsupported as universal scientific theories." [2] After all, scientific theories, unlike those of ethics and politics, display a greater vulnerability to falsification, and there is considerable agreement among scientists as to what counts as a refutation of a theory. Furthermore, there is a strong a priori element in Lester's thinking that does not gel easily with Popper's scientific empiricism (though that philosopher is clearly no ordinary empiricist). Certainly, the apodictic reasoning of Mises, who constructed the whole of economic theory from apriori premises, would not be acceptable since, in Popper's view, a proposition that could not be falsified had zero empirical content. Some of Lester's ratiocination looks suspiciously like this.

Still, at least the approach Lester takes gets away from the endless and fruitless search for the permanent and irrefutable justification of political and moral values. Lester is particularly effective in rebutting Gray's critique of classical liberalism, which depends almost entirely on the author's claim that the doctrine fails to be justified in the light some fashionable contemporary doctrines. Gray has repeatedly claimed that liberalism does not to take in account cultural pluralism and that it mistakenly tries to provide universal principles for problems that can only be solved within a localized value framework. But, as Lester stresses, classical liberalism does not need a heavy metaphysical justification. Liberty is not a "value laden" concept that requires agreement on a broad set of philosophical themes, including the notion of the person, if it is to be serviceable normatively. Liberty is a coherent ideal, or set of principles, that, when applied to abiding social problems, has an increasingly universal appeal. Indeed, only the liberty principle can validate cultural variation; it allows a plurality of customs to develop subject only to the constraint of non-interference by any one (the state) over its rivals. What is also surprising and refreshing is that Lester can produce arguments against interference and coercion that, in most cases, though not all, are inferences from the liberty principle itself and its associated economic and philosophical principles. There is no "baggage" of heady but unrealistic metaphysics

None of this is suggestive of a lack of intellectual ambition in Lester. He sets himself the difficult task of producing a fundamental compatibility in our values; liberty, property, welfare, and (ultimately) libertarian anarchy are theoretically harmonious and contain no, or very few, internal inconsistencies. This is a welcome change from much contemporary theorizing in politics which so often depends on precarious tradeoffs between competing values and unstable compromises between rivalrous demands. But Lester is confident that we can maximize welfare and achieve liberty, that legitimate property is perfectly consistent with a coherent conception of justice, and that utility, properly understood, does not clash with libertarian rights. A further welcome feature of his analysis is that, for the most part, he eschews external morality. His normative suggestions derive from the consequences of adopting liberty and self-ownership, not from the demands of a morality demonstrable by reason. But, still, rarely has capitalism been justified with such philosophical expertise.

Lester takes a robust and relatively uncomplicated view of the person (though this is not to say that his analysis is not complex). Against those who maintain that individuals have a propensity for valued action that may not be revealed in their uncoerced choices, a position that normally leads to paternalism, Lester is happy to see us as rational choosers whose desires are perfectly valid reasons for action. This enables him to surmount the old altruism/egoism conflict. The fact that we are sometimes other-regarding in our actions is not a reason for dropping self-interest as the primary focus of action. Action is a product of perceived self-interest and there is no reason why that should always take an immediate egoistic form. When we behave altruistically we do so from a "selfish" desire to effect some improvement in the world. However, Lester slightly relaxes this rigor when he admits into the theory what he thinks is the necessity of cardinal utility (knowing how much a person is better off from a course of action). While he concedes that such notions are not strictly measurable, he claims that "without the notion of cardinal utility we are left without the notion of conscious beings." [3] I am not sure this is consistent with his minimalist, even materialist, view of the self that he espouses earlier. I wonder what some persistent interventionist might make of the notion of "conscious being": it could be used as a device for suppressing our choices in the market.

Naturally, Lester concentrates on liberty and he has some very important and novel things to say about it. To get away from the endless debates about the meaning of the concept, and the limits and extent of unfreedom, he conjectures that liberty is a state in which people do not have a subjective cost initiated and imposed on them by others without their consent. [4] People are at liberty when they pursue their choices in the market. Withholding a benefit to which a person might (mistakenly) think he is entitled, often a feature of positive liberty, is not a loss of freedom: only the imposition of a cost is. This might cover most cases of unfreedom, but there is a problem because of its unavoidably subjectivist nature. Those of a deep religious persuasion undoubtedly feel a loss of subjective liberty when their faith is traduced, as Muslims undoubtedly did when the author Salman Rushdie parodied their beliefs. This example is used by Lester, but not very satisfactorily. He simply says they had no "realistic case" without properly analyzing it in the context of his philosophical position. I do not think the notion of harm can be eliminated from a discussion of permissible actions, even though Lester rightly points to its conceptual ambivalence. Despite the ambiguity here, and irrespective of the Muslims' perhaps explicable anger at Rushdie, it is hard to imagine that they suffered a loss in liberty. Only by a perverse definition could their interests be said to have been harmed. The disputatious nature of harm is matched by the irredeemably subjectivist aspect of Lester's criterion of the imposition of cost.

The connection between liberty and property is obviously of crucial importance to libertarians and Lester has some interesting comments to make about it. In his discussion of the propertarianism versus libertarianism debate he comes down on the side of liberty. Indeed, the notion of self-ownership derives from the idea of liberty conjectured in a state of nature. However, the fact that liberty must prevail over property might pose some problems for Lester's compatibility thesis. He quotes the familiar example of the property owner buying up land so that he surrounds an otherwise innocent person, completely eliminating his freedom. Is property to be legitimately limited to prevent this happening? Lester merely asserts that liberty takes priority. Similar problems, identified by David Friedman, occur with a possible conflict between liberty and an uncontroversial notion of utility. Are we entitled, albeit illegitimately, to seize a gun when that is the only way of controlling a dangerous lunatic? Lester seems to go along with common sense solutions to admittedly unusual cases; they do pose probably insoluble intellectual problems. But they could be converted into more plausible scenarios by anti-libertarians using well-chosen examples.

There is a property problem more immediately relevant to public policy than the examples of "desert island ethics" analyzed in detail by Lester, however. I refer here to the original ownership of land and the rationale of land rent. It is a problem that bothered classical economists in the nineteenth century and it should concern libertarians today more than it does. It certainly has a bearing on Lester's compatibility of liberty and property thesis, for the case for a land tax (Henry George's single tax) is the only example of an interventionist policy I know that is consistent with efficiency (utility) and a superficially plausible notion of liberty. What gives the lucky inheritor of land the sole title to a resource limited by nature? What can possibly justify the differential rent paid to an owner of a property in New York which is identical to a property in Idaho? The owner of the New York apartment did not create that extra value: in a sense, everybody did. Are libertarians saying that inheritors of land display entrepreneurship? If so, then that concept becomes entirely analytic. Of course, the followers of Henry George did not deny that improvements to land should be fully rewarded. They were, on the whole, pro-market, and they could easily argue that no efficiency losses would occur through the single tax (as land has little alternative use). I do not deny that there are libertarian replies to consistent Georgists, but I was disappointed that Lester ducked the issue with his assertion that "....exclusive land ownership, for reasons of security and privacy, is usually a relatively trivial imposed cost on people and its absence a great one." [5] I am not sure that it is trivial, even though in the modern world knowledge is probably a more fertile source of wealth creation than landownership. Lester does recognize some constraints on original acquisition, [6] deriving from a version of Locke's injunction to leave "as much and as good" for others, and also those embodied in the claim that it is illiberal for people to consume irreplaceable natural resources. It is therefore a little disappointing that he gives no attention to the only socialist proposition that ever made any sense, i.e., collective restraint on individual landownership.

With regard to welfare, which Lester handles with considerable aplomb, there is only one area that provoked dissent from this reviewer. After eloquently defining welfare in terms of want-satisfaction, where only the individual is qualified to determine utility (defined in preference terms rather than quantifiable units of pleasure), Lester suddenly invokes the idea of the interpersonal comparison of utilities (an assertion which has an unacknowledged affinity with his earlier sympathy for cardinal utility). [7] It is true that he does so somewhat warily, aware as he no doubt is of the way in which interventionist, Benthamite utilitarians have used the notion to smuggle in all sorts of constraints on liberty and the market (for example, progressive income tax) which allegedly make everybody better off. Lester, however, says we make such utility comparisons all the time. Of course, a mother often says Susie needs a new dress more than Tommy needs shoes, and she no doubt thinks the family as a whole is better off as a result of the purchase. But we don't want such judgments to invade public policy. To my surprise, Lester says "general arguments can show that certain social rules are likely to promote over-all want-satisfaction."[8] It is true that he does not want some sort of comprehensive utility function imposed on society, but he is obviously worried by the implications of the formal Pareto criterion. For a welfare improvement to occur, everybody must gain, and there is a rigid prohibition on any interpersonal comparisons of utility in Paretianism.

This austere doctrine means, for example, that any movement from a slave to a free society requires the agreement (or compensation) of the slaveowners, or that the landowners in Britain would have to have been compensated on the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846. But the problem here has been misunderstood. The Paretian is not necessarily precluded from making moral judgments about the evils of slavery or monopoly landownership; he is not necessarily an emotivist or a logical positivist. All he is arguing is that such appraisals have no relevance to a scientific analysis of what constitutes a welfare improvement. Slaveowners and monopoly landowners are simply immoral, but Lester is reluctant to make ethical judgments. Sometimes we must, though, if we are to have a fully compatible set of values.

In a short review article it is impossible to do justice to Lester's remarkable book. He manages to say new and exciting things about criminal justice (restitution should replace formal punishment), new ways of internalizing externalities, and property rights solutions to the "tragedy of the commons." Not all libertarians, for example, would agree with his claim that creators should have full claim to profits from copyrights and patents and there is a respectable body of thought that maintains that these arrangements simply establish economically and morally unjustified monopolies, but Lester's arguments are presented with sophistication and are informed by an impressive mastery of the secondary literature.

To conclude on a slightly critical note: anarcho-capitalists are very good at showing how a private enterprise system of law enforcement could work, how even national defense could be provided voluntarily, and how well-defined property rights would solve all the problems of the environment. Indeed, with some minor discordances, Lester has shown how in such a world all our values are compatible. Getting there, however, is not only an immense practical problem, but it is also an intellectual one which tests compatibility to the full. How can unfunded pension systems be wound up without hurting one generation? What about all those people who have become completely dependent on welfare through coercive national insurance schemes? Can they all be compensated in any changeover? We know the world looks very pretty in theory but in practice it bears the same tawdry and weary face that it always did. And always will?

[1] J. C. Lester, Escape from Leviathan: Liberty, Welfare and Anarchy Reconciled. (London, Macmillan, 2000), 203.

[2] Ibid., 8.

[3] Ibid., 48.

[4] Ibid., 54.

[5] Ibid., 106. Emphasis in the original.

[6] Ibid., 93-95.

[7] Ibid., 152.

[8] Ibid.

Lester appears to have written this study out of the desire to address the familiar argument that libertarian principles have no morality. Beginning with a "recap" of exactly what constitutes classical liberalism, he then breaks up his book into four components to address this argument. In "Rationality," he looks at altrusim, its underlying motivations, and how an attitude of enlightened self-interest is actually a better framework for real altruism than the current atmosphere of welfare. People are naturally psychological egoists amd not altruists, Lester argues, and so we can never have purely selfless interests. In this sense the phrase "self-perceived interest" is a better expression than "altruism," since altruism implies having an interest in others as an end in itself. The second part of the book, "Liberty," takes up the bulk of the space and explores the end results of coercion versus liberty, in matters pertaining to property rights (both intellectual and material), and also some refreshing new theories on what constitutes equitable redress. Lester comes up with an interesting definition of Liberty that this reviewer has not encountered anywhere else, and that is the _absence of imposed cost._ An interesting analogy of two misanthropic individuals stranded on a tropical island presents some curiously simple examples to back up this definition, which is easily the most fascination component of the entire book. The third section, "Welfare," returns to the premise of the first section by explaining how whole-heartedly embracing the motive of want-satisfaction ultimately leads to a better system of social justice. The final section, "Anarchy," is very brief and mainly addresses the innate hurdles and societal prejudices against a system which, after all, must ultimately be the hallmark of an advanced civilization. (This reviewer has long held the view that anarchy is a natural state at the very beginning, and the very end, of the so-called political spectrum: primitive societies are anarchic because they are unable to embrace any notion of governance, and supremely advanced societies are anarchic because they have outgrown any need for any form of governance at all.) It should be pointed out that this book was recommended to me by a Senior Fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute (www.mises.org).

This book probably represents a landmark in the literature of liberalism on two counts. One of these is the robust statement of his major thesis on the compatibility of free markets, liberty and welfare. The other is the way he uses the non-authoritarian theory of rationality expounded by Karl Popper and William W Bartley.

"In practice (rather than in imaginary cases) and in the long term, there are no systematic clashes among interpersonal liberty, general welfare, and market anarchy, where these terms are to be understood roughly as follows...". Those who seek linguistic precision may be alarmed that his terms are to be understood roughly. Lester has quite deliberately avoided the kind of conceptual analysis, the teasing out of the meaning of terms, that Popper has labeled "essentialism". At least one reviewer noted the remarkable amount of meat that is packed into the book. This is partly due to the self-conscious avoidance of essentialism, partly to Lester's firm grasp on his materials and party to the mode of argumentation that he has adopted, following the non-justificationist or non-foundational line that has been articulated by Popper and Bartley.

The main characteristic of this approach is that it only attempts to achieve what is possible, which is the formation of a critical preference for one option rather than another, in the light of the evidence and arguments that are available up to date. He does not attempt the impossible, namely a logically conclusive proof of his case. What is possible is to propose a theory or a doctrine and subject it to criticism, then if it stands up we may proceed with that theory or doctrine until such time as an alternative is proposed that has better credentials and stands up to criticism at least as well as the previous candidate.

Turning to the organization of the book, after the Introduction are four chapters; Rationality, Liberty, Welfare and Anarchy. Each chapter is tightly organised and packed with crisply presented arguments which resist efforts to paraphrase them. Consequently no short review will do justice to the contents of the book or its organisation. Lester's theory of rationality has to reconcile two extreme views in economics - the neglected subjective, "a priori" approach of Menger and the Austrians, and the standard objective, empirical account. He adopts the theory that agents are self-interested utility-maximisers and he addresses a number of standard objections that are raised against this concept. He argues, successfully in my view, that the objections do no damage to his thesis.

Liberty is formulated as the absence of initiated or proactively imposed cost, or in the case of a mutual clash of imposed costs, the minimisation of imposed costs. This means avoiding or minimising the subjective costs imposed on us by other people, without our consent. Lester explains this formulation, compares it with typical libertarian alternatives to illustrate its strengths and then tests it by attempting to solve some problems presented to libertarians by David Friedman and John Gray. This is the longest chapter and it covers a huge amount of ground, including intellectual property rights and a theory of restitution for crimes and torts. In addition to the criticism of Friedman and Gray there is also a rejoinder to Amartya Sen and to Karl Popper.

The criticism of John Gray is important because for some time he enjoyed a high profile as a rare instance of a classical liberal Oxford don. Lester also responds to Gray's charge of "restrictivism", directed at liberals on the ground that they do not accept that freedom is "an essentially contested concept". In response, Lester accuses Gray of "conflationism", that is, importing a raft of contentious theories from elsewhere (psychology, hermeneutics, epistemology) to muddle and confuse the issues, at the same time appealing to various authorities and ultimately overriding interpersonal liberty in favour of some other goal.

Welfare is a sticking point for many people of good will who support freedom but believe that they cannot be libertarians because of all the poor people who need assistance. Actually support for deserving poor people could be provided by a VWA (Voluntary Welfare Association), dispensing funds from voluntary donations from all the people who currently vote to support welfare policies. The main targets in the chapter on welfare are R M Hare, Amartya Sen, Bernard Williams, John Rawls, John Harsanyi and Alan Ryan.

The final chapter on anarchy is very short because most of the work to defend private property and the market order has been done in previous chapters. "Basic conceptual confusion and mere prejudice are more the real problems" (page 193). He casts a critical eye over some conceptual aspects of the state and then he turns to John Rawls again as an exemplar of confusion and prejudice. Finally, Lester identifies the way that Rawls has simply ignored the libertarian position on the state, which is perceived as providing the arena where the most divisive issues can be removed from the political agenda.

A reply to Peter Vinton Jr.

Peter Vinton's title asks "And just where does `anarchy' fall on the spectrum again?" I was persuaded by an editor not to put my essay on this matter into an appendix of the book. I am not convinced that this omission was a good idea. Were it there, Vinton would have been answered and the ideological position of anarcho-liberalism might have been illuminated for other readers (maybe it can be in the next, a revised, edition). The short answer to his question is that anarchy is off the spectrum but on the compass. The long answer can be found here: http://www.la-articles.org.uk/pc.htm.

My intention in writing Escape from Leviathan was, using the critical-rationalist epistemology, philosophically to defend (by responding to all the best or typical criticisms I could find) the social-scientific evidence (but certainly not summarizing it all) that private-property anarchy does not clash with either interpersonal liberty or human welfare (which italicised proposition I called the `extreme classical-liberal compatibility thesis'). I eschewed all moral advocacy as irrelevant and confusing, given the objective nature of my thesis. However, I did, where necessary, engage in meta-ethics to explain how morals and moralizing (but without any particular content) fitted with the rest of my arguments and theories. I emphatically did not avoid morals because I think morals are unimportant or irrelevant to all libertarian arguments, as some critics have supposed. Still less did I write the entire book out of a "desire to address the familiar argument that libertarian principles have no morality", as Vinton somewhat more strangely supposes.

The introduction explains-as its subheadings indicate-the classical-liberal compatibility thesis, why moral advocacy is avoided, and the critical-rationalist method. So I don't agree that it begins "with a `recap' of exactly what constitutes classical liberalism".

In the chapter on rationality I do not only, or mainly, look at altruism, as Vinton appears to suggest. I am attempting to give a comprehensive philosophical defence of aprioristic instrumental rationality. And I look only at the `logic' of altruism (and related aspects of morals), where I look at it at all, rather than "its underlying motivations". I nowhere suggest or imply the proposition that "an attitude of enlightened self-interest is actually a better framework for real altruism than the current atmosphere of welfare" (although I do argue that human welfare is best promoted by laissez-faire). Contra Vinton, I explicitly argue against the thesis that "[p]eople are naturally psychological egoists" and in favour of the thesis that altruism is genuine. Given the immediately previous quotation, he does not even appear to be consistent in what he asserts I say here. Nor do I suggest that "`self-perceived interest' is a better expression than `altruism'" but that it is clearer than `self interest'. And I explicitly defend, not reject, the view that "altruism implies having an interest in others as an end in itself."

It is a howler, given what I write in the book about `coercion', to state "The second part of the book ... explores the end results of coercion versus liberty". And it cannot be accurate to state that the book has "some refreshing new theories on what constitutes equitable redress." For equity (fairness in justice) is not discussed; nor is any theory of justice propounded. However, Vinton is right to note the novelty and, I hope, interest of the theory of liberty as `the absence of [proactively] imposed cost' and the consequences of applying this as a thought experiment in various simple situations.

In the chapter on welfare, I defend the view of (spontaneous-)want-satisfaction as a plausible theory of welfare for persons. That is not the same as advocating that people should be "embracing the motive of want-satisfaction". And to explain and defend the objective libertarian consequences of maximizing such welfare is not to argue that this "leads to a better system of social justice". That is just the kind of red herring about morals the book takes pains to avoid.

The single short sentence on the anarchy chapter does not contain any obvious inaccuracies.

Why do I reply to a review that does not appear to have any real criticisms and quite a few misunderstandings? I don't want to miss an opportunity to clarify what the book is about because I believe it to be both substantially true and morally urgent. However, I do not have high hopes of its being given wider consideration while the publishers continue to sell only the hardback at such a stiff price and while anti-libertarian professors prefer to repeat their old lectures on Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia. His book is often thought-provokingly clever but it is a justificationist, minarchist, ragbag bereft of a clear theory of liberty and its relation to property and human welfare.

I have replied elsewhere on the net to most other amazon.com reviews, which have sometimes appeared in longer forms first. Seek and ye shall find.

J C Lester, March 2005

Excerpted from The Independent Review (Summer 2001) by James R. Otteson
J. C. Lester's Escape from Leviathan is a bracing book.
The chief asset of the book is its dogged and persistent attack on the detractors of the private-property anarchy the author advocates. But this asset is simultaneously a liability: Lester does not argue for his position; rather, he argues that the most likely objections to it fail. This tactic gives the book a somewhat unpleasantly defensive tone, and, more significantly, it limits the ultimate persuasiveness of the book's central thesis.
In the end, the principal value of Lester's book is as something like a catalog of arguments defending libertarian or anarchistic political thought against various detractors and their objections. Not all of the defenses work, and in a few cases Lester's dismissals are too hasty; nevertheless, he offers many interesting and novel insights. I remain disappointed that he did not undertake to defend his own thesis directly, and I hope that in the future he will relax his commitment to Popperian epistemology and undertake such a defense. In the meantime, however, refutation of objections is a valuable service in its own right, and Lester accomplishes that task well.

Anarchocapitalism is a controversial viewpoint even among some libertarians, but in this momumental manifesto, the late Murray Rothbard presents his case with gusto, conviction, and wisdom imbuing logic, economic wisdom, and common sense in one uber-awesome package in this work. Starting this book, I was essentially a minarchist of sorts: a small-government libertarian. After reading this work, I came away....an anarchoapitalist. Rothbard wins.

In this work Rothbard explains his anarchocapitalist philosophy with, once again, strong confidence and explains his belief that the privatization of everything from roads and postal service to air, oceans and lakes, radio frequencies, courts, and police forces. I was very skeptical with regards to courts and police privatization prior to reading this, but Rothbard makes a stunning argument that has lead me to believe in its great possibility. There is also a section where he talks of abortion rights and how pro-choice is the only legitimate libertarian position on the issue because of this, a section I love because I've always been pro-choice (and almost universally despise the repugnant and almost completely evangelical-Christian based pro-life movement). Rothbard's point is this: everyone naturally owns their own person (private property), but NO human being, baby or not, has a right to remain "unbidden" on another's body, their own private property. This argument is stunning, and does not require an "answer" to utterly unanswerable philopophical questions such as "when does life begin" and such questions that, due to their ultimate unanswerability, lead to the abortion question never being answered.

My favorite section, though, Rothbard's chapter on enviromentalism and conservation. I happen to, personally, believe that there is global destruction going on although not to the level that some radical environmentalists and Al Gore seem to think. Rothbard also seems to believe this, as he chastises authors such as Ayn Rand and Robert Moses for denying that environmental damage is taking place, calling it a "denial of science." What he proposes is private-property-based environmental views, where in a anarchocapitalist scoiety everyone each ones an individual (hopefully small) parcel of land so everyone has a motivation to keep their parcel as clean as possible and thus can level charges of damage to private property when pollution occurs. Here, the free market's natural checks and balances would keep the environmental damage to an absolute minimum. Again, Rothbard wins. Epically.

In short, this is an absolute genius work and the best introduction to libertarianism I've read so far. If you interest at all in libertarian/anarchocapitalist thought, this is the book for you.

[[Warning. Reading may cause your head, in ecstasy of pure and unadulterated amazement, to explode a la 'Scanners.']]

Essential.

Rothbard makes a strong case that government has become too powerful and intrusive. I agree with a lot of what he says in the book. But there's just no way around the fact that he goes way too far. He advocates disbanding the military, police, courts, etc. and privatizing them all. I just don't see that as a viable solution. The title is misleading: it's an anarchist manifesto, not a libertarian one. I don't think a society could function in this anarchist paradise. He carries a legitimate philosophy into political lunacy. Even Ron Paul, the closest Congress has to a libertarian today, wouldn't go nearly as far as Rothbard in dismantling the government.

As powerful as first written in 1973, Rothbard's stirring manifesto still radiates his unyielding optimism for humanity's ultimate triumph over tyranny, vanquishing all forms of statism and oppression.

This beautiful new edition is terrific.

You can't go wrong with Murray Rothbard but this book is just slightly dated. The Ethics of Liberty is timeless and fundamental. It can radically shake you into a stronger foundation for your advocacy of Freedom.
All of the issues raised in "For a New Liberty" are still with us. I am saddened that the Libertarian Party no longer follows Rothbard's theoretical purity. Theories like his, if used, have real-world applications that repay the practician.

So there is only one way to tell if we are real Libertarians. This is the book. This book is not radical except to those who are kaffeeklatch Libertarians. As we read this book it clarifies what we were already thinking. It is just nice to see it organized and spoken about. Normally we do not mark up good books but in this case if our high liter does not go dry, we missed something.
One of my favorites is:
As we have seen, police service is not "free"; it is paid for by the taxpayer, and the taxpayer is very often the poor person himself. He may vary well be paying more in taxes for police now then he would in fees to privet, and far more efficient, police companies.
Well if we made it through the book, we are the real things.
If not you still have a chance to be radical and confuse everyone with "A Piece of the Action" by Louis O. Kelso. If you can't find it, then "Democracy and Economic Power: Extending the Esop Revolution Through Binary Economics"

The Marquis de Lafayette seems to be enjoying a resurgence of popularity, with two new books on him and an exhibit at the New York Historical Society in 2007-8 dedicated to his (massively popular) tour of America in 1824-5. Considering that I have loved Lafayette since we learned about him in middle school American history, I am happy for this new-found enthusiasm. And Lafayette deserves the attention. He is the "Hero of Two Worlds" who, despite his birth into a wealthy and prestigious French family, believed in the ideals of the American Revolution and fought in the Continental Army without pay. After that revolution ended he tried to make his home country a better place, but his moderate position (he advocated a constitutional monarchy) was ultimately at odds with the bloody, radical affair that the French Revolution became.

One of the aspects that interests many Americans about Lafayette is his close relationship with George Washington. Although Gaines shies away from the traditional view of Lafayette and Washington's relationship as that of a surrogate father and son, he does show their close friendship and the deep respect they both had for each other.

Gaines' book is a highly readable, insightful and incredibly interesting look at the American and French Revolutions through the lives of Washington and Lafayette. He traces both countries through the time period, so the reader gets a good view of both Old Regime France and post-revolutionary America and thus has a better understanding of how events in one country influenced decisions in another. Gaines also introduces a fascinating cast of characters that were involved in the events, including the other Founding Fathers, the resourceful playwright Beaumarchais (who wrote the plays Marriage of Figaro and Barber of Seville), and the cross-dressing French spy, the Cheavlier d'Eon. Gaines' portrayal of his two main protagonists, Washington and Lafayette, gives the reader a good feel for what they were like and will likely leave the reader very impressed with both. FOR LIBERTY AND GLORY is a perfect read for anyone interested in Washington, Lafayette, the revolutions they fought in and the formation of America after the revolution ended.

James Gaines has posted quite an accomplishment with this book. Artfully he assembles a mountain of research and weaves the best pieces into a cohesive whole. You will learn fascinating things about America's founders,and also about the various factions and personalities of the French Revolution.

I thought that Lafayette stole the show. Washington was willing to risk all to bring liberty and stability to a new nation, and won. Lafayette was equally willing to risk all to bring liberty and stability to an old nation, after having already helped bring those blessings to us. Since his task was impossible, he lost. Nevertheless, his idealism and sense of duty allowed him to keep his honor.
It is rare that a work of history will engage your emotions the way this one does. Just remember, it is scholarly, lengthy, and demanding. But worth it. James Gaines is the former editor of Time magazine.

We all know the story of the Marquis de Lafayette and his participation in the American Revolution, at least in outline. Washington had been overwhelmed by the foreign, mostly French, mercenaries who appeared at his headquarters, all offering to lead the army in his stead in return for a fortune and all of the credit for any victories. In walks a teenager, very wealthy, a bit awkward, but very willing to spend money for the cause, and insistent that he be allowed to serve in whatever capacity he's needed. The childless Washington and the fatherless Lafayette become surrogates for one another, and lead the Continental Army to victory.

James R. Gaines has a somewhat different, more nuanced appreciation of the friendship between the two men which was so crucial to the formation of the revolutions of their respective countries. This book, which follows the two men's friendship and the two revolutions they tried to lead, is very well-thought-out, and the result is an interesting, intelligent discussion of their relationship and the facets of it that reflected into the history of first our country and then France. The book is structured as a dual biography in part, and a dual history in part also, which makes it a bit confusing, but Gaines is a good writer and knows how to knit a story together, so the narrative moves along well and is interesting.

Washington comes across as the founding father we all know and love, even if we don't at this remove quite understand him any more (if anyone ever did). He's stiff, almost emotionless at times, and seemingly distant from those around him save a few intimates, but he's also supremely, almost inhumanly concerned with the welfare of his country above everything else, and willing to sacrifice everything he has personally to preserve that. Lafayette, however, emerges as more than a child who was ardently an advocate of freedom. At times, it has appeared that he was more of an adventurer than any sort of patriot or ideologue, but Gaines makes it clear that ideology was the main driving force of his actions, and that the views he expressed when he purchased a ship, filled it with goods he had also bought, and then sailed it to America, were the same ideals that he espoused 50+ years later when he visited America for the last time, and he held them throughout the period in between, never deviating from them. His devotion to Washington, as a result, winds up being more nuanced than just a search for a father-figure: he actually revered his politics, his reserve, his dignity, his self-control, and his desire to see democratic government preserved in the United States.

I enjoyed this book a great deal. I'd never heard of Mr. Gaines before, but this book is one of the better ones on the American Revolution that I've read in recent years, and it's very well done. I would recommend it to anyone even slightly interested in the subject.

Hardly any of us knows Washington and marquis de Lafayette in other than the romantic model of heroes of long, long ago. If one is willing to gaini a more cogent image of the men and their times, "For Liberty and Glory" is a good read. Gaines's research that backed this 400-plus-page treatment goes well beyond what one might consider the background a usual journalist might develop. It does. And the reader is rewarded by the writing style of an experienced journalist. But one is left with a problem of redesigning one's functional image of the times and the men--especially Washington and Lafayette. A great bonus is the attention Gaines gives to Lafayette back home in France in the frightening times of French revolutions.

James R. Gaines takes us through the American and French Revolutions by showing us the roles Washington, Lafayette and their friendship played in both. We get to see how the struggles between Great Britain and France led them to use the American Revolution as another theater to fight for dominance. There is no doubt that American Independence benefitted from French support against the British, but it also benefitted by the British focusing more on France and not understanding the nature of the stakes they were fighting for in suppressing the American Rebellion until they had lost the colonies.

While I had known the name of Lafayette and had some notions about his contributions to the Revolutionary War, I had no idea how young he was (19) and how wealthy he was when he joined himself to George Washington as a junior officer. One of this book's many virtues is his treatment of how men such as Washington and Lafayette viewed their world and their place in it. The discussion of Liberty, Duty, Glory, and Honor is quite good and helps us understand the way these men lived their lives and the choices they made. Washington's character and steady hand in guiding the new government in difficult times can be seen clearly. Lafayette's great struggles in trying to gain a Constitutional Monarchy and his (and his family's) terrible suffering at the hands of various extreme revolutionists remains shocking after nearly 200 years. You will find his story compelling if you don't know it and I suspect you will learn things from Gaine's telling even if you already know of his imprisonment and loss of all his wealth and property as well as the terrible sufferings of his wife.

While the story uses these two men and their friendship as its supporting structure, another virtue of the book is its fabulous list of other people and their contributions to both Revolutions - for good and ill. Some are familiar to me, but others I had not heard of and Gaines tells his history so well, that I learned more about every person I read about. Frankly, the book has so much to offer that I had to take my time reading it. There are so many riches that it takes time to absorb. The connections between the Revolutions, the attempts to draw America into a war with France after the Revolution, and the French seditionists were all made clearer to me.

The book has a number of black and white and color illustrations of the key people and events. They help the reader see much of what is being discussed.

Excellent! I recommend it for everyone and if you want to understand this aspect of our history, I believe it is a must read.

Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI

This book is a great exploration of the rivalry between Britain and France.

That Sweet Enemy: Britain and France: The History of a Love-Hate Relationship (Vintage)

This book points out things that the average American never knew--how we were starving thousands of Germans and trying to convert their country into an agrarian state, so they would not make war again. Interesting how Russia marched thousands of German citizens from their section of conquered Germany into Russia for slave labor and removed hundreds of industrial plants from Germany to Russia. This points out a time after WWII that Americans should not be proud of. Read this and find out little known facts about post war Germany. Americans did not care what went on there--we wanted to get on with our lives and forget the war and the feeling was that Germany started the war so the German people deserved everything they were getting and then some. Highly recommended.

Gruesome Harvest was shocking and depressing as it described in shocking detail of the tragic reports and stories about the post war conditions in Germany in 1945 and 1946. The treatment of civilians, women and girls in particular, was horrific. It is dificult to imagine now that the powers of Britain, France, the Soviet Union and the United States could look the other way when things got so bad in Germany's effort to deal with starvation and a hopeless decline in civil control. Chaos was rampant and it is a miracle that they recovered from a total breakdown of society. It is an historical document which should be more widely
distributed and publicized.

I bought Gruesome Harvest several years ago, but never read it until this summer. This book is a full-frontal assault on the genocidal Morgenthau Plan and the Potsdam accords. But how accurate is it? Very accurate. My mother was a civilian employee of the United States Armed Forces and a resident of the French Zone of occupation after World War II. The information in this book corresponds directly with her accounts of life there after the war. It's interesting to note that there was a hierarchy of food availability in the U.S. occupied zone - the military naturally got as much food as they needed, then the DP's or Displaced Persons also had access to good nutrition. Finally, the Germans were at the bottom of the food chain, given a subsistence diet of 1,200 calories a day. The author cites studies from The University of Minnesota of the results of feeding people 1,650 calories a day "Within six months each man lost a fourth of his weight and experienced fainting spells, dizziness, and a feeling of always being cold. Their hearts shrank and some had to have two blankets even in summer. All lost three-fourths of their energy and work ability." He also cites a similar study of an experiment conducted by Northwestern University Medical School; " ... after six weeks, however, they showed a slow, progressive deterioration in physical and mental health, accompanied by loss of endurance, skin lesions, leg pains, and mental slowness." The 1,200 calorie diet was all the more horrific because the majority of the 15 million German expellees were resettled into the bombed out ruins of the Western zones (not Soviet zone) of occupation after having been starved, repeatedly raped, and otherwise abused by the Soviets and their puppets. And who were these 15 million refugees, Nazi war criminals and camp guards? No, they were primarily women, the elderly and children. The men, as this book illustrates, were all in prison camps, consigned to slave labor in Siberia and other parts of the former Soviet Union by the Yalta and Potsdam accords; also used as slave labor under horrific conditions by the British, French and Americans.
In hindsight, it can be noted that Harry Truman was inexperienced in world affairs, and he inherited an impossible situation from FDR. The former president, an egomaniacal imbecile thought his charm would work wonders with Stalin - it's frightening to think what the outcome in Europe would have been had he lived 2 years longer. Also, in defense of Truman it should be noted that he inherited from FDR an administration padded with Stalinist communists including Hiss and White who were making many decisions relevant to Germany. From other accounts I've read, Morgenthau's intent was to starve to death 30 to 40 million Germans out of psychotic bloodlust revenge, while his aide Harry Dexter White intended to do similar things to create a situation in Germany in which the Germans would be so horrified they would run to Stalin as a savior and protector, i.o.w. Germany would go communist. Also, Stalin (according to this book) was dangling a carrot over the German's heads-the return of the lost territories-if the Germans would switch sides and go communist.
What was the result of Potsdam and the Morgenthau starvation policies? No doubt the death by starvation and disease of several millions of Germans. In some parts of Germany, infant mortality rates after the war were upwards of 100%. There are some of us who don't believe any government (Hitler's nor Roosevelt's) should be in the business of starving people to death. Apparently, Americans don't learn from their mistakes, going by the repulsive Clinton Administration Secretary of State Albright saying "We think it's worth it" in reply to a question about starving Iraqi children to death.
How dire was the situation in occupied Germany? From Page 16; "On the train to Berlin, she was pillaged once by Russian troops and twice by Poles...Women who resisted were shot dead, she said, and on one occasion she saw a guard take an infant by the legs and crush its skull against a post because the child cried while the guard was raping its mother." ... "An old peasant from Silesia said...victims were robbed of everything they had, even their shoes. Infants were robbed of their swaddling clothes so that they froze to death. All the healthy girls and women, even those 65 years of age were raped in the train and then robbed, the peasant said."
On Page 111, the author gives an example of the FDR administrations bizarre take on the basic right of freedom of speech "In March 1945, GI's in Germany were actually placed under official orders not to make unflattering remarks about the Reds (Russians). Typical of our un-American efforts to throttle criticism was AMG censorship in April, 1946, of a letter by a Catholic Bishop calling attention to Russian abuses of Germans through forced labor and expulsions. We prohibited the reading of the letter in churches, because it might offend Russia." The author then goes on to state the following; "We must realize that there is something seriously wrong with nations, as with people, who cannot stand criticism, who try to place themselves beyond reproach, and that something is equally wrong with people who truckle to them." The reader of this book should think of the USA today in 2006, and how this truth still holds.
Finally, here's a bit of wisdom from Page 130; " No. If totalitarianism is coming to the United States it will come because the American people can be charmed by insincere, superficial, adroit politicians and fail to demand the leadership of men of character, of courage, of honesty." Just think of Clinton & Dubya when you read this.
My only other criticism of this book is the author's seemingly negative attitude towards American GI's, especially African-American GI's. The Americans were known to be among the best behaved soldiers during the post-war occupation of Germany. In the 1970's I was in Germany and remember a German woman telling me "If a German's car breaks down, no German will stop to help, only African-American soldiers stop and help." I remember the overall attitude of Germans as friendly and favorable to African-American GI's, but also remember being told by Germans that they feared and loathed French colonial troops, particularly Moroccans, who raped and assaulted German women in the postwar years. I have also read German accounts of the immediate post-war years in which it was stated that African-American GI's treated the Germans better than many Caucasian American soldiers who acted with snobbery and arrogance. Overall, my minor criticisms aside, this is a very detailed and easy-to-read historical document about the origins of the cold war and the failures of psychotic American policy based on stupidity, revenge and Stalin-appeasement.

For those interested in knowing all of world war 2 history, and not just the rosy view from the perspective of the victor, this book is a must read. My mother's side of the family are ethnic German expellees from Yugoslavia and this book aided in explaining why my family went hungry in the American zone.

All too often the rhetoric we hear is the sufferings, both real and alleged, caused by those we defeat in war. We never hear about the atrocities that our side commits. This book exposes the atrocities the Allies committed willfully against civilians, leaving the reader asking why does our country claim the moral high ground?

This certainly qualifies to be called a "holocaust" against the German people, yet in our politically biased atmosphere it is unknown. For those of you interested in the human rights of all peoples, not just those we support in wars, this is a must for you. It will make you wonder what is wrong with your history books.

The book Gruesome Harvest, should be on the mandatory highschool and college reading list for history and sociology. It is one of the few books that are available in English that address the murder of millions of non-combatant German civilians and German prisoners of war from 1944 to 1950 as a matter of deliberate allied policy not inefficient logistics as it is most often presented in school text books. It is important because this book was written as it was still happening and includes comments from eye witnesses in the same time period. The book is not politically correct and shocked me because it speaks in a such a predudicial fashion about persons of the black race. That however in this point makes it useful to sociologist and historians because it correctly reflects widely held opinion at the time within U.S. society.

As to the correct observation that allied policy was to reduce the German population through, murder in multiple forms, slave labor, and starvation, and destroy the fabric of the society through mass rape of the female population, other authors are critized for saying the same thing but only decades later. Fact is there is a great effort to keep this information from the public because it shows that the victors of WWII incorporated not only military strategy and tactics but also the NAZI ideology of racial hatred and a policy of extermination and discrimination for one people. 4 million persons perished because of the ethnic cleansing carried out by, Russians, Poles, Czechs, and Serbs according to the former German Prime Minister Konrad Adenauer, 5 million Germans starved to death in occupied Germany according to estimates by the Canadian James Bacque, and 2 million German Soldiers died in allied captivity often while performing slave labor in Auschwitz like conditions. General Eisenhower prohibited the German Public from sharing their own meager rations with detained German soldiers on pain of death. Hence from 1944 until 1948 a U.S. and Russian Holocaust for the Germans was on going. For more information on this topic see books by the following authors: James Bacque (Other Losses)(Crimes and Mercies), Alfred M. de Zayas (Die Wehrmacht-Untersuchungstelle)and(The Nemisis of Potsdam), Guido Knopp (Die Gefangenen), Erich Kern and Karl Balzer (Allierte Verbrechen and Deutschen). A similarly important historical document is the book titled (Alliierte Kriegsverbrechen) which translates to "Allied War Crimes". It is a collection of historical information of eyewitness experiences of hundreds of Allied war crimes. This information was written down in 1946 by German Soldiers held prisoner in Camp 91 in Darmstadt by U.S. forces. Lawyers for the defense hoped to bring some of this information as evidence and perhaps for mitigation to the Nüremberg Tribunal but the it was not permitted. In fact the Commander of Camp 91 attempted to collect and destroy all copies of this book. That is why it is important that as many people read the afore mentioned books as possible. They need to be translated into English and widely read so that the fairy tale of WWII as the last "Good War" can finally be put to rest.

I believe that the other reviewers here may not have understood Franco's (admittedly unobvious) intent in this work. Certainly the greater portion of the book is devoted to an explication of Hegel's essentially post-mediaeval notions of `ability,' with particular attention paid to those seemlingly inconsistent areas aligned with the early Christian modes of thought, but--useful as this is--it is merely the foundation for Franco's presentation of his own theory of `paralysis of will' in late 19th and 20th century political discourse. One is tempted to gloss over this short section, since at first glance it seems a trivial sort of nonsense, but a close reading in the light of his comments on Heigel's later period reveals that Franco does indeed cast new and interesting light on post-Leninist Marxism. This, unfortunately, is obsecured by some meandering in the later parts, and certainly bringing Ayn Rand into it (however indirectly) was entirely uncalled for. Still, beyond the unquestionably excellent study of Hegel himself, this book has something interesting to offer modern philosophers.

I hesitate to use this review as a "discussion board", but I'm afraid TMChurch has somewhat glossed over the shortcomings in Mr. Franco's achievement. While it is, without a doubt, a substantial bit of research, Franco veers off course, neglecting the import of Hegel's private life on his all-too-public philosophy. Missing are the hazy, misbegotten 'Amsterdam Years' of Hegel's youth and the reckless university pranks and mayhem that made Hegel the philosopher everyone loves to scrath their collective heads over.

To Mr. Franco - a good work that simply requires a finer brush stroke. To TMChurch: a more careful read is in order!

As a Slobovian, it has always been difficult to accept Hegel's edification of the Prussian State. After all Prussia, in guises including but not limited to Nazi Germany, the Papist Church, the Uncircumcised turks, Croat fascist biker gangs, and italin black shirts on bicycles, has invaded my beloved land many times. Mr. Franco shows me that Hegel was more than just a rightist apologist for this tyranny, and more than simpply a precursor to godless marxism....he like Thomas Jefferson, Robbespierre, Ronald Reagan, and the late and famous slobovian rock star Czicik Kromonobicka was a believer in freedom. thank you for writing this book even if my english does not enable me to truly comprehend it.

Hegel, often misunderstood and trivialized by stolid academics, is finally brought to new life in this insightful volume. The book rewards those intrepid travellers willing to follow the elegance of Professor Franco's argument and prose style. He lets you sink your teeth into the rich meaning of freedom and liberalism, particularly relevant in today's turbulent world. As he points out, Hegel offers a deep image of ourselves and of our modern, liberal social order. The author holds the mirror up to the inner core from which that social order derives its most profound meaning and justification. The book is an essential work for the serious student of philosophy, both professional and amateur.

Paul Franco once again demonstrates that he is the master of social and political philosophy. Prof. Franco delves into every corner of Hegel's profundity to offer up a stunning cautionary tale; beware! Hegel, largely neglected and even more misunderstood, steers a course independent of the paralysing conformity of western "liberal" thinking and the totalitarian mysteries of the east; he was the last great third way. Franco shines a light on this and with bubbling clarity and freshness of prose let's even the beginning reader in on the secret we've all been missing.

The book arrived in a timely fashion, and it was in perfect condition. I was very pleased.

Today, it seems everyone from Patrick Buchanan to Jessie Jackson are extoling the ideal of "social justice." But where did this insidious concept emerge. In the third and final installment in Hayek's Law, Legislation and Liberty series, Hayek delivers a knock out blow to the the notions of "social justice" or "distributive justice." He examines its socialistic roots and intellectual origins, which ensued after the egalitarian fervor in post-1791 Europe. He critiques new economic and social policy, which has emerged in the wake of the "social justice" phenemenon.

Don't be put off from reading Hayek just because some authors and reviewers say his work is complicated and technical.Most of Hayek's writings are edited versions of speeches he has given to various audiences. His work is very readable, and I have found enormous benefit from just reading a chapter at one reading, and taking the work up again at another time.

Hayek's work should be found in both the classroom and on the coffee table.

Hayek was second to none in his opposition to socialism. In his early years Hayek argued against overt socialism by focusing on economic theory. While Hayek was correct on the economic arguments against socialism, he realized that the case against socialism had to go beyond economic theory. The socialist movement is not driven solely, or even primarily, by the details of economic theory. Rank and file socialists often know very little about socialism. If we are to understand the socialist moment and its popularity we must undertand the ideas that drive it.

In this second volume of Law, Liberty, and Legislation Hayek examines the mirage of social justice. How did socialist egalitarian convictions gain popularity in the modern world? Can socialism live up to its romanticized ideals? The idea of social justice espoused by the modern left is, as Hayek put it, a Mirage. The concept of social justice has no meaning in a free and prosperous society, and no society can be free and prosperous if it is planned on the basis of some notion of social justice.

The Law Liberty and Legislation trilogy was intended to complete the case that Hayek made for classical liberalism in The Constitution of Liberty. This trilogy combines with the Constitution of Liberty to make a powerful case for strictly limited government and free enterprise. You should read The Constitution of Liberty before starting this trilogy, but be sure to read both. Hayek's analysis of spontaneous order and government planning is highly relevant. The collapse of the USSR might have made it seem that proponents of free social order had won. But it is all too obvious that the drive for "social justice" is gaining ground. Read Hayek along with Nozick and Buchanan. These ideas are vitally important.

The following passage sums up the entire book quite well: "[I]n...a system in which each is allowed to use his knowledge for his own purposes the concept of `social justice' is necessarily empty and meaningless, because in it nobody's will can determine the relative incomes of the different people, or prevent that they be partly dependent on accident. `Social justice' can be given a meaning only in a directed or `command' economy (such as an army) in which the individuals are ordered what to do; and any particular conception of `social justice' could be realized only in such a centrally directed system. It presupposes that people are guided by specific directions and not by rules of just individual conduct. Indeed, no system of rules of just individual conduct, and therefore no free action of the individuals, could produce results satisfying any principle of distributive justice...In a free society in which the position of the different individuals and groups is not the result of anybody's design--or could, within such a society, be altered in accordance with a generally applicable principle--the differences in reward simply cannot meaningfully be described as just or unjust." (pp. 69-70)

As with Robert Nozick (and with John Locke before them), justice is for Hayek a matter of process rather than results.

Law, Legislation, and Liberty was intended as a sequel to The Constitution of Liberty, in that Hayek wrote it to "fill in the gaps" that he felt existed in his argument in that earlier work. He wrote and published Law, Legislation, and Liberty on and off over a time-span of approximately 15 years (early-mid 1960 to mid-late 1970s), which were in part interrupted by ill health. Hayek admits that the result is at times repetitive and lacking in organization. The reason why he did not go through the effort of redoing the entire work upon completion is because he thought he might at that rate never finish it (he was 80 years old by the time volume 3 was published).

There are still plenty of great insights, which Hayek argues persuasively and in doing so manages to portray as common sense. There are also plenty of flashes of that true rhetorical brilliance characteristic of Hayek that can make his writings such a feast to the ear and mind. On the downside, however, these rhetorical gems are hidden in a large volume of pages that at times do indeed seem tedious, repetitive, and unorganized, unlike with The Constitution of Liberty, where they literally seem to jump off the page at you. All in all, read The Constitution of Liberty first, as Hayek himself suggests. And if you're not up for reading the approximately 500 pages that make up the complete Law, Legislation, and Liberty, two chapters (30 pages total) in the book The Essence of Hayek make for a comprehensive summary exposition of the ideas in the entire trilogy ("Principles of a Liberal Social Order", ch. 20 in The Essence of Hayek, covers vols. 1-2, and "Whither Democracy?", ch. 19, covers vol. 3).

The premise intrigued me: A man finds out about his neighbor's secret past of war crimes over 30 years earlier and reacts to that knowledge. Unfortunately, the book did not pull me in. I never really cared about any of the characters and was uninterested in the side-stories of advertising and having a son in minor league baseball. Truly, I feel I wasted my money on this book.

Main plot: retiring professional meets reclusive neighbor who turns out to be a wanted man. Good piece of fiction that develops the characters well. Characters become well known and the main character guides the reader to an understanding of how little it really takes to get us out of our little civilized shells into a bigger, scarier world beyond the US borders and beyond our sense of humanity. The initial smoothness of the reading makes the transition to deeper thoughts all that more involving and tedious.

"The Liberty Campaign" a very introspection-heavy novel, focusing on the thoughts of a soon-to-be-65 marketing executive. It is a deeply nuanced novel, and though it has more thought than action I found it easy and enjoyable to read. The main character is forced to reconsider his life when faced with his looming retirement, his son's waning career as a professional baseball player, and the discovery that his long time neighbor may or may not be a former Brazilian war criminal in hiding. Though the last item in that list might seem a little shocking it actually gets about the same page count as the other two topics, which, balanced against the whole of the protagonists life is highly appropriate. The very fact that in the suburbs people can sit around and inactively contemplate a neighbor's alleged war crimes is one of the revelations the narrator sits around and inactively contemplates.

The book asks and doesn't quite answer a lot of questions about our ability to know evil and judge others, about the what it is that make someone's life successful, and about the nature of repenting and forgiveness. Frankly, it's hard to list out questions like this without them seeming trite, but that's why you need a well-written novel to dance around the issues in a new and profound way if you want to really understand them.

Dee's book has a moral weight that you rarely see in American fiction, but the writing is not at all heavy-handed. An excellent accomplishment.

an excellent book. sad, funny, always interesting. just enough elements of cinema to draw a reader in, seduce them into thinking they're getting nothing more than a well-written drama--which it is, only with depths that movies don't bother to ever aspire to find. the subtle, sad undertones floating throughout the story make this book a humane but dark book. i wish all adpeople would read it and recoil at how shallow most of our lives are.

I was truly looking forward to reading this book as I am a fan of the historical mystery/thriller genre and this book did not disappoint. I particularly enjoyed the well-developed, detailed characters - the strong lead character of Abigail was especially satisfying. She drew me in and kept me rooting for her (and everyone else at the Raritan Tavern) page after page. The amount of historical detail provided was perfect.

My only criticism of this book (and the reason I gave it 4 instead of 5 stars) is that the explanation of the formation of the group of men responsible for the letters and escorting the courier, etc. was a bit rushed and muddy. I had to re-read this section a few times before I thought I had it, and understood who was doing what when and who knew the secret before the mystery was unraveled. However, I quite enjoyed the novel and thought it ended too soon...I enjoyed the plot line begun towards the end of the novel and would have loved to have read the outcome of Miriam's search. However, it's not so much criticism as it is praise...bravo to the author on an engrossing read! I anticipate (hopefully!) a sequel!

Set in British-occupied New Brunswick, New Jersey, in the winter of 1777, Swee's debut offers a fine, tense portrait of the times and a bustling view of tavern life under siege.

Narrator and heroine Abigail Lawrence has her hands full. British soldiers are billeted throughout the tavern she has managed for her Uncle Samuel (a Patriot) since losing her husband and son to a fever eight years before. Her 15-year-old-daughter is smitten with one of the dashing young officers; one slip of her rebel tongue would lose the tavern to the British; and then she finds a guest's body in one of the rooms, impaled by a sword.

Pocketing evidence to keep it out of the hands of an imperious British captain, Abigail lands herself in the midst of an intrigue of espionage and treachery. And she still has a tavern to run.

The tavern milieu is exceptionally well done - from clothing, wartime food concerns and the useful organization of the warming kitchen, to the stables, sleeping accommodations, the fine meals and gossipy service, the evening card games and brandy, and the behind-the-scenes work of laundry, kitchen and bill-paying - all of it organic to the setting and plot.

The British and Patriot points-of-view are also subtly done, and the mystery sufficiently baffling. A strong woman who balances on a knife-edge of neutrality, and knows how to pick her battles, Abigail is an appealing, intelligent heroine.

I picked this up in the library in paperback, based on the cover design. Who says you can't judge a book by its cover? This book was worth the read - very entertaining and a good combination of history and murder mystery. This book included a strong female character as well as insights into the role of women in that time period, which was interesting and easy to believe (as a work of historical fiction, you can't be sure where fact & fiction separate).

Check it out!

This book was such a fun adventure! Abigail Lawrence is an instantly likeable character with a loveable staff at her taven/inn in New Brunswick during the Revolutionary War. This wonderful first novel by Karen Swee makes you wish you could travel back in time to help her solve the murder of one of her guests. I was sad when the book ended because I felt like I was just getting to know the characters. I would have loved even more descriptions of personality and locale and wouldn't mind if this were the first in a series of books about our friends at Rarian Tavern. Hint hint!

Book entertaining, well written, and with a clever and engrossing story line. Excellent description of occupying British troops, political views of the day for both sides, and good work on the personal aspects. Only problem is one that can be corrected with good editing. That is punctuation. This book is sadly lacking in good editing.
Example: "How are you Abigail?" No comma before the proper name. This occurs steadily throughout the book, as well as other poor editing examples, detracting from what should have been a 5 star read!!!!!!!

This is just a silly little story about the "girl who grew up to be Lady Liberty", presupposing that she's not a statue, but an actual person.

She's born green and tall, and always does the right thing.

There's really not much to this book, and if you're short on funds you'll be better off with another one. But if you have the space in the library, or a special interest in the Statue of Liberty (I got this book for my nieces, who, living on Staten Island, think it's great fun to stand on chairs and pretend they're the statue!) I think it's worth the investment.

My preschooler has taken an interest in the Statue of Liberty. We live in NYC so we are fortunate enough to have Lady Liberty basically in our "backyard". In addition to visiting the statue, reading this book was a way to help our preschooler get to know the famous statue a little better on her level. Lots of fun!

I can't thank Chris Robertson enough for writing the book "Little Miss Liberty." I was at a Harry Potter book release party with my daughter "Liberty." I had to bring her with me so people didn't look at me funny thinking, what the heck is a 30+ year old women doing at a Harry Potter party. She was getting a little board so we went to the children's section and there is was front and center "Little Miss Liberty" on the shelf of Barns and Nobel. My Daughter instantly went for the book and asked me to read it to her. She is convinced that the book is just about her. "That's me when I was a baby" "I grow tall" "There's Mommy and Daddy" "My school," and so on...Every page I turned she had a remark for. It is so wonderful to she her have as much interest in books as me, even though she is three and can't read yet, but she recognizes her name when she sees it print.

I chuckled when I read the sentence "Always a child of independence..." because; more then once I have said I should have named her independence because she has to do things her way. But, most children her age have that characteristic.

I hope that Mr. Robertson will continue to write about adventures that Little Miss Liberty has and about the people that she welcomes to America. I think it would be a wonderful tool to teach my child about other cultures and diversity.

I sent the book to the publisher and requested it to be autographed. About 3 weeks later received a wonderful personal letter and a signed copy of the book from Chris Robertson. It means the world to me and our Family! We can't thank you enough!

I thought I would share with you how we came up with our Daughter's name. She was born shortly after 9/11/01 and my Husband and I decided to name her Liberty after the victims of that tragic day. Also, when we had our second Daughter we named her Justice.

Chris Robertson debut is an acomplishment. The story is educational but not overbearing. The art is original while keeping within the recognisable features of one of the most famous monuments in the world. All in all an excellent book! I would build a lesson plan off of it if I taught the right grade.

From the beginning, it is clear that Little Miss Liberty is a most unusual child. For one thing, she is partial to the color green. And she has a serious growth issue, gaining a foot or more of height each day. And as you can imagine, vast quantities of food are necessary to fill her up, a task that keeps Miss Liberty's parents hopping. Besides a decided penchant for the color green, Little Miss Liberty has quite an appetite for knowledge, reading everything she can, books, maps, cereal boxes and billboards. Even comic books. Because of her thirst for information, Little Miss Liberty is an excellent student, her hand raised high every time the teacher asks a question. But she is even more beloved, because Little Miss Liberty is a natural friend to all, especially anyone who feels different or misunderstood.

Although she always loved the city of her birth in France, Little Miss Liberty felt she had a special place in the world. Of independent mind, she set out to find it. Yet no matter where she traveled, nothing felt just right until she found a pedestal near a brilliant city surrounded by water. Happily climbing on to the pedestal, Little Miss Liberty lifted her torch, held it high and settled in for a long stay. She was home.

The story is illustrated by energetic drawings of Little Miss Liberty's astonishing birth and rapid growth, towering over her parents and other students, all in green. Sketches indicate the geography of other places, familiar monuments and terrains, the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben, the pyramids, as Liberty treads the earth in search of her true home. The bright colors and simple text are perfect for introducing children to the importance of the Statue of Liberty, where the statue originated and what Liberty symbolizes.

This coming 4th of July will celebrate the 120th Anniversary of the Statue of Liberty, so this book is a wonderful introduction for a child's early knowledge of history. His drawings reminiscent of the Madeline books and Curious George, Robertson offers a compelling journey from the concept of freedom and independence to the reality of a national monument. Chronicle Books. (Age 4 and up.) Luan Gaines/2005.