Archive for Brian Doherty
Brian Doherty is a senior editor at Reason magazine and author of Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement and Gun Control on Trial.
The Road from Mont Pelerin: The Making of the Neoliberal Thought Collective
This collection of essays tries to trace the influence, define the ideology, and question the validity or propriety of the philosophy known as “neoliberalism.” The book is structured around the notion that this term can be fruitfully defined as the ideas promoted by the Mont Pelerin Society (MPS). The MPS was an organization of academics [...]
21Sep2011 | Brian Doherty | 2 comments | ContinuedFaith in Freedom: Libertarian Principles and Psychiatric Practices
Thomas Szasz, a Freeman columnist and a long-time libertarian hero, thinks that many other libertarian luminaries are slacking on the job. Szasz has fought his intellectual and legal battles for individual liberty—always paired with responsibility—in a particularly contentious arena: the struggle over rights for the so-called mentally ill. Szasz wonders why so many other prominent [...]
13Jul2010 | Brian Doherty | 1 comment | ContinuedThe Morality of Everyday Life: Rediscovering an Ancient Alternative to the Liberal Tradition
In his new book, The Morality of Everyday Life: Rediscovering an Ancient Alternative to the Liberal Tradition, Thomas Fleming, longtime editor of the fine paleoconservative journal Chronicles (to which I have contributed in the past), essays a multipronged assault on the style of moral reasoning that has, in his telling, dominated the Western world from [...]
9Jul2010 | Brian Doherty | 1 comment | ContinuedUnsanctioned Voice: Garet Garrett, Journalist of the Old Right
This is a curious book about a curious man. It’s not a biography in a normal sense, but a biographical essay based on the limited material left behind by Garet Garrett, the journalist, novelist, and powerful voice speaking up for individualism and free markets as the New Deal eclipsed them. Bruce Ramsey, an editorial writer [...]
5Jan2010 | Brian Doherty | 4 comments | ContinuedA Manifesto for Media Freedom
Americans are blessed with access to an unprecedented variety of media–not to mention ways in which information can be stored and the points of view and ownership interests represented. As documented in the brisk book A Manifesto for Media Freedom, this cornucopia of media options has led not to celebration of the marvelous diversity that [...]
23Sep2009 | Brian Doherty | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Cult of the Presidency: America’s Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power
Gene Healy relates a sad and disturbing “kids say the darndest things” anecdote in his new book. The story typifies an attitude toward government that Healy, senior editor at the Cato Institute, rightly identifies in his book’s title as The Cult of the Presidency. A little girl, on hearing that President Kennedy had been murdered [...]
2Mar2009 | Brian Doherty | 6 comments | ContinuedOne Market Under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism, and the End of Economic Democracy by Thomas Frank
Doubleday · 2000 · 414 pages · $26.00 Reviewed by Brian Doherty Thomas Frank is the hippest leftist theorist around. He publishes The Baffler, a journal of cultural criticism mostly aimed at the evils of corporations. Frank is a hero at Harper’s and gets his books—essay collections of social criticism, not generally considered hot properties—published [...]
1Dec2001 | Brian Doherty | 1 comment | ContinuedFreedom and Virtue: The Conservative/Libertarian Debate
Libertarians and conservatives seem to want to get along; how else explain this book’s existence? It was published by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, a now-conservative organization founded by libertarian journalist Frank Chodorov as the Intercollegiate Society of Individualists. What happened when Chodorov passed control of his organization to more conservative characters is emblematic of the [...]
1Dec1999 | Brian Doherty | 0 comments | ContinuedCroaking Frogs
It’s the kind of story that doesn’t often get reported in the media—even though it is largely the media’s creation. In February, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt made a stirring call for an extra $8.1 million in other people’s money—your money and mine—for fiscal 2000 to research yet another potentially earthshaking environmental crisis: declining and deformed [...]
1Jul1999 | Brian Doherty | 3 comments | ContinuedBook Review: Environmental Politics: Public Costs, Private Rewards Edited by Michael S. Greve and Fred L. Smith, Jr.
Praeger Publishers, 1992 • 212 pages • $19.95 The old rationales for central control of the economy have suffered a crippling blow at the hands of history and economic logic. Socialism has proven neither more rational, more efficient, nor more humane than the free market. But could it be more environmentally sound? This book is [...]
1Sep1993 | Brian Doherty | 0 comments | Continued-
The Latest
Contraception: Insuring the Uninsurable
Update below. Controversy rages over the Obama administration’s mandate that all employers – including... Read More
The Snow Plowers’ Petition
The following might have happened in a small college town in upstate New York… In a cold and snowy... Read More
Super Bowl versus Education?
In the spirit of Super Bowl weekend I’d like to deconstruct a Facebook status update that a friend... Read More
Capitalism, Corporatism, and the Freed Market
When a front-running presidential contender tells the country that thanks to Barack Obama, “[w]e are... Read More
Creating Jobs versus Creating Value
Picking on New York Times columnist Paul Krugman is one of the largest participation sports on the Internet.... Read More
