Archive for George C. Leef

George Leef is book review editor of The Freeman.

The Politically Incorrect Guide to Socialism

What do the following have in common: hungry Venezuelans, starving North Koreans, ecological devastation in the former Soviet Union, and functionally illiterate students in Washington, D.C., high schools? Give up? They are all consequences of socialism. In his book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Socialism, economics professor and National Review editor Kevin Williamson gives the [...]

4Jan2012 | George C. Leef | 2 comments | Continued

George Leef’s Top Ten

And the best books reviewed in The Freeman in 2011 are . . .

29Dec2011 | George C. Leef | 2 comments | Continued

Back on the Road to Serfdom: The Resurgence of Statism

Since the housing bubble burst in 2007, America’s social and economic troubles have mounted rapidly. Unemployment remains high, saving and investment low. The federal government is desperate to suck in enough money to pay its enormous tab for welfare and warfare a bit longer. Our politics have become increasingly vicious. About two-thirds of the people [...]

30Nov2011 | George C. Leef | 1 comment | Continued

Libertarianism Today

Libertarianism is attracting more attention than ever. As the economic and social damage done by Leviathan increases exponentially Americans are coming to understand that government power is the root of our many troubles. The idea that a consistent philosophy based on freedom and peaceful cooperation among all people is the only path out of the [...]

26Oct2011 | George C. Leef | 4 comments | Continued

Great Wars & Great Leaders: A Libertarian Rebuttal

Essential to the maintenance of support for the government (almost any government, any time) is the idea that the nation’s wars have been just and heroic, and that the leaders who presided over them were great men. Ugly truths about those wars and leaders are routinely swept under the rug. Court historians (and yes, democracies [...]

21Sep2011 | George C. Leef | 4 comments | Continued

Neoconservatism: An Obituary for an Idea

It has always been hard to pin down just what “conservatism” stands for, what with people of such widely divergent views as Barry Goldwater, Jerry Falwell, and both George Bushes described by that term. The relatively recent addition to the political lexicon of “neoconservatism” complicates matters further. What do “neocons” believe? Where do their ideas [...]

24Aug2011 | George C. Leef | 3 comments | Continued

Shakedown: The Continuing Conspiracy against the American Taxpayer

Politics has one feature that sets it apart from all sorts of voluntary action: It employs coercion. Politicians can raid the wallets of taxpayers, forcing them to part with money they would rather spend, donate, or invest according to their own desires. Much of the money thus confiscated is then spent to succor special-interest groups [...]

22Jun2011 | George C. Leef | 4 comments | Continued

Six Political Illusions: A Primer on Government for Idealists Fed Up with History Repeating Itself

You don’t believe in magic, do you? Magicians employ a variety of tricks to deceive audiences into thinking that something has happened that can’t. They are masters of illusion. Adults know that they’re being fooled when the rabbit seems to materialize out of an empty hat. Magic is harmless fun, but the government is not. [...]

25May2011 | George C. Leef | 1 comment | Continued

We Need to Build Society for “Shared Prosperity”?

In a recent New York Times column (“Degrees and Dollars,” March 6), economist Paul Krugman surprisingly had an “it just ain’t so” moment of his own, taking issue with the widely accepted but erroneous idea that more education is the key to increasing prosperity. While he was right about that, his conclusion that technological changes [...]

25May2011 | George C. Leef | 0 comments | Continued

Bought and Paid For

Americans who have at least a modicum of political sophistication know that special-interest groups have enormous power to influence the political system, getting favors from government they couldn’t obtain through voluntary means. Informed people know, for example, that many farmers receive subsidies, that labor unions have privileges to employ coercion that no other private organization [...]

21Apr2011 | George C. Leef | 0 comments | Continued

The Road to Big Brother: One Man’s Struggle Against The Surveillance Society

As I write this review, millions of Americans are annoyed if not outraged over the recent measures adopted by the so-called Transportation Security Agency. Airline travelers hate the choice between going through a scanner that effectively undresses them and an aggressive grope of their bodies. Are those offensive procedures necessary? Are they legal? What is [...]

23Mar2011 | George C. Leef | 1 comment | Continued

Intellectuals and Society

If you trace back to the origins of almost any damaging public-policy idea in America, you find it rooted in the imagination of some intellectual. Just to pick one field, consider housing. Why do we have huge tracts of depressing, unsafe, unclean public housing in some of our largest cities? That did not simply happen—the [...]

24Feb2011 | George C. Leef | 5 comments | Continued

Why American History Is Not What They Say: An Introduction to Revisionism

In one of his most iconoclastic essays, “The Anatomy of the State,” Murray Rothbard observed that it is crucial to ruling groups to manipulate the thinking of the ruled. They must get the populace to accept that the rulers are truly good people working tirelessly to advance the common good. Toward that end, the rulers [...]

22Dec2010 | George C. Leef | 1 comment | Continued

The Dollar Meltdown: Surviving the Impending Currency Crisis with Gold, Oil, and Other Unconventional Investments

Imagine an ice cube on an asphalt roadway in the mid-summer heat, quickly melting away to nothing. That’s a good way of thinking about what government policy has been doing to the value of our money. In The Dollar Meltdown, investment adviser and former radio talk-show host Charles Goyette explains why the dollar is melting [...]

24Nov2010 | George C. Leef | 7 comments | Continued

Classical Liberalism in the 21st Century: Essays in Honour of Norman P. Barry

Longtime readers of The Freeman may have noticed the absence of articles by Norman Barry. A contributing editor, Barry died in October 2008, at the age of 64. (His last Freeman article, “The Americanization of Japan,” was published in May 2007). This splendid volume, which had been in the works before Barry’s death, contains one [...]

22Oct2010 | George C. Leef | 0 comments | Continued

Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher’s Journey Through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling

An annoying bumper sticker I have seen on occasion reads, “If you think education is costly, try ignorance.” That trope is meant to break down resistance to the education establishment’s desire to shop-vac in as much taxpayer money as possible. The trickery is subtle—deceive people into equating schooling with education. What the education establishment does [...]

22Sep2010 | George C. Leef | 14 comments | Continued

Black Maverick: T. R. M. Howard’s Fight for Civil Rights and Economic Power

Black Maverick is the only biography of Dr. Theodore Roosevelt Mason Howard, whose remarkable life (1908–1976) combined entrepreneurship, medical practice, civil-rights activism against segregation, philanthropy, and high living. He was an irrepressible but flawed character, a man on the make who grew up under Jim Crow and took advantage of the few opportunities that system [...]

25Aug2010 | George C. Leef | 0 comments | Continued
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