I conclude here my look at Martin Van Creveld’s analysis of the relationships between states and war in The Rise and Decline of the State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). ENTER THE AMERICANS Van Creveld’s views on the rise of the American...

GETTING BACK TO THE SUBJECT… To recur, in a concrete way, to the relationship between war and heightened statism, let us now look at things from the standpoint of Martin Van Creveld's The Rise and Decline of the State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,...

In my last two columns on Murray Rothbard, I named a couple of books as important contributions to a Rothbardian analysis of the connections between statism and war. One is Martin Van Creveld's The Rise and Decline of the State (1999), around which the Ludwig von...

I promised last week to go further into what the late Murray Rothbard (1926-1995) teaches us about foreign policy, peace, and war. Those who keep up with such things will have noticed that there exists a colossal and ever-growing body of writing on "what Marx...

The sheer amount of writing done by the late Murray N. Rothbard (1926-1995) continues to astound. The quality of his work accounts for the impact it has had, and the attention it now draws, but its volume cannot have hurt, either. Rothbard spread the word about...

A WORTHY TRADITION? Many foreigners have written books about American culture, life, politics, foreign policy, and the like. Many of these works have been rather awful and, therefore, rudely received this side of the water. The exceptions would include those of Alexis...

JEFFERSONIAN THEORIST PAR EXCELLENCE Progressive historian Charles A. Beard called John Taylor of Caroline "the most systematic thinker" of the Jeffersonian Republican party. Taylor was an American exponent of republican theory as developed by English...

ELLIOTT STRIKES BACK A few weeks ago, I was innocently cruising the web, when I stumbled on an essay which denounced American business for failure to warmonger. That was an interesting and serious charge. As I scrolled down, great clumps of unalloyed neo-conservative...

BACK IN THE SADDLE AGAIN Back from rusticating in the kindly shadows of a bodacious western mountain range, I naturally grow thoughtful – first of all, about mountains and music. Americans tend to romanticize mountains, forgetting what our ancestors knew, namely...

SPOONER’S REAL VIEWS ABOUT EVERYTHING In truth, I have not been entirely candid in composing the above title. Spooner never said that much about foreign policy as such; but did have a lot to say about governments and wars, and that is close enough for present...