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Articles by David Gordon
The Dangers of Disputing Warming Orthodoxy
What is the Mises Institute? The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard. Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order.
POLYCRISIS WATCH, OCTOBER 1, 2026
Polycrisis Watch This is an unusually capacious edition of Polycrisis Watch: David and I treat the Trump–Xi summit, Taiwan, Iraq, Iran, Ethiopia, the Sahel, Nigeria, Brazil, Myanmar, sovereign debt, oil markets, El Niño, disappearing glaciers, mirror organisms, and autonomous weapons; we also look at AI systems that are increasingly able to attack networks, improve AI research, and take unauthorized action—and much more.
POLYCRISIS WATCH, SEPTEMBER 24-28
Polycrisis Watch This stopped being funny a long time ago. September 28, 2026 Would China like to buy some weapons? Donald Trump asked Xi Jinping whether China would like to buy American weapons, according to US Ambassador to China David Perdue. The State Department subsequently pointed out that US law prohibits arms sales to China and said that no offer or plan exists.
POLYCRISIS WATCH
Remember: You can check the POLYCRISIS WATCH tab to see the most recent updates when they’re fresh. You don’t need all of the parts of a complex system to break to make the whole thing to fail. Sometimes, the loss of a single indispensable component is enough. This week’s stories are a catalog of failing components—refineries, tankers, grain corridors, copper mines—and governments that are discovering, rather late in the day, how little redundancy remains in the apparatus.
Polycrisis Watch
The Middle East war spreads into Saudi Arabia, oil approaches US$100, Russia resumes bombing Kyiv, and the fractures in the global economy widen. Calling a war a war. Rectifying the names would be a good start toward rectifying the national morass. The United States is fighting a war, whatever euphemisms the administration prefers. Houthi missile and drone attacks struck four Saudi cities, wounded 73 people, and set fires at oil facilities. Saudi aircraft retaliated against Houthi positions in Yemen.
The National Socialist Medical Welfare State
DIGG THIS The following is a talk given at the LRC Health and Wealth Conference in Foster City, California, December 2, 2006. Almost all the information in the talk, though not my libertarian theme, comes from two books by Robert Proctor: Racial Hygiene: Medicine Under the Nazis (Harvard, 1988) and The Nazi War on Cancer (Princeton, 1999). Every society must answer a fundamental question about its medical system. Does each person control his own body?
Friedman Contra Rothbard
In a series of posts to an Internet discussion group several years ago, David Friedman severely criticized Murray Rothbard’s account of Adam Smith in his Economic Thought Before Adam Smith (Edward Elgar, 1995). These comments have enjoyed wide circulation, and various posters to the Mises Institute Blog have referred to them. For that reason, I propose to examine Professor Friedman’s extraordinarily insulting remarks.
Inconvenient Facts About World War II
DIGG THIS Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization. By Nicholson Baker. Simon & Schuster, 2008. 566 pages. The neoconservatives are already in hot pursuit of Human Smoke. In the March 2008 issue of Commentary, David Pryce-Jones called it a “mendacious book.” From this review, one might have thought that Nicholson Baker had written a defense of the Third Reich and its Führer.
How Would a Patriot Act? Defending American Values from a President Run Amok
DIGG THIS How Would a Patriot Act? Defending American Values from a President Run Amok. By Glenn Greenwald. Working Assets Publishing, 2006. 128 pages. In this remarkable book, Glenn Greenwald solves a difficult problem. President Bush has for several years authorized the National Security Agency to wiretap telephones within the United States without a judicial warrant. Doing so is illegal, but Bush claims that security against terrorism requires it. Here our puzzle arises.
Introduction to Bagels, Barry Bonds, and Rotten Politicians
DIGG THIS Burt Blumert was one of the closest friends of Murray and Joey Rothbard, and it was in that connection that I met him in 1979. As he often did, he had invited the Rothbards to dinner and I was fortunate enough to be included as well. It was immediately apparent that Burt was a remarkable person. He knew almost everyone important in the libertarian movement, as well as in the hard money community of which he was a leading member.
How Much Money Does an Economy Need?
DIGG THIS How Much Money Does an Economy Need? Solving the Central Economic Puzzle of Money, Prices, and Jobs. By Hunter Lewis. Axios Press. Vi + 185 pages. In Are the Rich Necessary? Hunter Lewis showed himself to be a master of dialectics; and he here applies the same method to monetary theory. Not content to expound his own views, Lewis carefully explains conflicting standpoints as well.
Living With Hamilton's Curse
DIGG THIS Hamilton’s Curse: How Jefferson’s Archenemy Betrayed the American Revolution — and What It Means for America Today. By Thomas J. DiLorenzo. Crown Forum. 2008. 245 pages. After you read the dedication of Hamilton’s Curse, you know that the book is going to be good: "Dedicated to the memory of Professor Murray N.
Americans in Unjust Wars Cannot Morally Kill Resisters
Killing in War. By Jeff McMahan. Oxford University Press, 2009. Xii + 250 pages. Jeff McMahan has written a genuinely revolutionary book. He has uncovered a flaw in standard just-war theory. The standard view sharply separates the morality of going to war, jus ad bellum, from the morality of warfare, jus in bello. Whether or not a war is just does not affect the morality of how war is to be conducted.
Doomed to Failure: American Conservatism
DIGG THIS Conservatism in America: Making Sense of the American Right. By Paul Edward Gottfried. Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Xviii + 189 pages. Paul Gottfried’s excellent book lends strong support to a controversial claim of Murray Rothbard’s. In his The Betrayal of the American Right (Mises Institute, 2007), Rothbard argues that the American Old Right could not be considered conservative in the European sense. Quite the contrary, it opposed traditional conservatism as an enemy of liberty.
The State Debate: Some or None?
DIGG THIS Anarchism/Minarchism: Is a Government Part of a Free Country? Edited by Roderick T. Long and Tibor R. Machan. Ashgate, 2008. Xi + 196 pages. An MP3 audio version of this book review, read by Dr. Floy Lilley, is available for download. Libertarians of course believe in the free market; if you find someone who favors the government provision of medical care or education, e.g., you know immediately that he is not a full-fledged libertarian. But how far can one take the free market?
The Dangers of Disputing Warming Orthodoxy
Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud, and Deception to Keep You Misinformed. By Christopher C. Horner. Regnery, 2008. Viii + 407 pages. An audio version of this review, read by Dr. Floy Lilley, is available as a free MP3 download. Those of us who refuse to accept calls from proponents of global warming for drastic restrictions on production often confront objections like this: You skeptics, blinded by fanatical devotion to the free market, ignore evidence.
The Best Libertarian Books of the Decade
Compiling this list was a difficult task. There were many excellent books published during the past ten years, and it’s hard to select twelve as the best. All of the following, though, are outstanding works. They are not listed in any order of merit 1. John Attarian, Social Security: False Consciousness and Crisis. By far the best analysis of Social Security.
Did FDR Make the Depression Great?
April 18, 2013 The Best of David Gordon David Gordon is Senior Fellow at the Mises Institute and Distinguished Columnist at LewRockwell.com. He is also author of Resurrecting Marx and An Introduction to Economic Reasoning and editor of numerous books including Strictly Confidential: The Private Volker Fund Memos of Murray N. Rothbard. Send him . Americans in Unjust Wars Cannot Morally Kill ResistersThe Real Danger of Global Warming
A Guide to Keynes's Dangerous and Destructive Economics
Where Keynes Went Wrong And Why Governments Keep Creating Inflation, Bubbles, and Busts. By Hunter Lewis. Axios Press, 2009. Vi + 384 pages. Defenders of Keynes, such as the recent convert Bruce Bartlett, often claim that he supported capitalism. (Bartlett’s The New American Economy has this as a primary theme.) His interventionist measures had as their aim not the replacement of capitalism by socialism or fascism. Rather, it is alleged, Keynes aimed to save the existing order.
The 'Equality of Opportunity' Fallacy
Many people argue in this way: The 1964 Civil Rights Act was fine. No one should be discriminated against because of his race or sex. Because blacks and women have suffered such discrimination in the past, it may be that programs like affirmative action are justified, at least temporarily. However, the purpose of these programs should be to promote equality of opportunity. Everybody deserves an equal chance to live a good life or, at any rate, a fair chance.
What Price Charity?
Ludwig von Mises tries in Human Action to reconcile two arguments about charity that pull in opposite directions. The first of these is that some people cannot survive without receiving help: unless they are guaranteed such help by law, they are dependent on charitable donations from the better-off. Within the frame of capitalism the notion of poverty refers only to those people who are unable to take care of themselves.
Dissecting Lincoln
Thomas DiLorenzo, the president of the Mises Institute, has already reviewed Paul C. Graham’s Nonsense on Stilts: The Gettysburg Address and Lincoln’s Imaginary Nation (Shotwell Publishing, 2024) in characteristically excellent fashion, but the book is so insightful that some further comments are warranted. It is clear that Graham has a philosophical turn of mind and is a master of linguistic analysis.
Lincoln on Stilts
Thomas DiLorenzo, the President of the Mises Institute, has already reviewed Paul C. Graham’s Nonsense on Stilts: The Gettysburg Address and Lincoln’s Imaginary Nation (Shotwell Publishing 2024) in characteristically excellent fashion, but the book is so insightful that some further comments are warranted. It is clear that Graham has a philosophical turn of mind and is a master of linguistic analysis.
Lincoln Dissected
Thomas DiLorenzo, the President of the Mises Institute, has already reviewed Paul C. Graham’s Nonsense on Stilts: The Gettysburg Address and Lincoln’s Imaginary Nation (Shotwell Publishing 2024) in characteristically excellent fashion, but the book is so insightful that some further comments are warranted. It is clear that Graham has a philosophical turn of mind and is a master of linguistic analysis.
The Classical Liberal Case For Israel
In War Guilt in the Middle East (1967) Murray Rothbard observes that libertarians are very clear on the principles of liberty, but less so on the details of specific events: “Now this kind of insight into the root cause of war and aggression, and into the nature of the State itself, is all well and good … But the trouble is that the libertarian tends to stop there, and evading the responsibility of knowing what is going on in any specific war or international conflict, he tends to leap...
Jacobin Capitalism?
In his important book The Failure of American Conservatism (2023), the political theorist and philosopher Claes G. Ryn offers some criticisms of libertarianism and free-market capitalism, and in this week’s column, I’d like to examine these. Ryn is not an opponent of all forms of the free market, but he fears an extreme version of it can be dangerous.
Exposing Our Fed-Driven Bubble Economy
See all the latest videos and articles patriots need to watch and read at Discern.tv. The Great Money Bubble: Protect Yourself from the Coming Inflation Storm, by David A. Stockman, Humanix Books, 2022; 229 pp. (Mises)—David Stockman served for a short while as budget director during Ronald Reagan’s first term as president, but he soon resigned owing to Reagan’s refusal to cut government spending.
Exposing Our Fed-Driven Bubble Economy
The Great Money Bubble: Protect Yourself from the Coming Inflation Storm by David A. Stockman Humanix Books, 2022; 229 pp. David Stockman served for a short while as budget director during Ronald Reagan’s first term as president, but he soon resigned owing to Reagan’s refusal to cut government spending.
Governing Least - LewRockwell
Governing Least: a New England Libertarianism. By Dan Moller. Oxford University Press, 2021. xii + 326 pp. Dan Moller’s thoughtful book is packed with arguments, and in what follows I’ll be able to discuss only a few points of interest. The central thread of the book concerns the welfare state in contemporary capitalist societies.
Rothbard on A Priori History
Murray Rothbard is well-known as one of the greatest exponents of praxeology, which operates through a priori reasoning. He was careful, however, to distinguish praxeology from history. The latter could be studied only through empirical investigation. In this week’s column, I’d like to discuss some observations he makes about this in For a New Liberty, which was published fifty years ago.
Wanjiru Njoya - LRC Blog
https://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/wanjiru-njoya/ The great Wanjiru Njoya has done a podcast for the Tom Woods Show that has just been posted: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zx-98q4R52Y 2:35 pm on September 8, 2023 The Best of David Gordon
Can You Trust Robert Kagan?
The Ghost at the Feast: America and the Collapse of World Order, 1900-1941 By Robert Kagan (Knopf, 2023) The historian and political commentator Robert Kagan has picked a clever title for his book, but it turns out to be an ironic one as well.
Lost Continetti - LewRockwell
The Right: The Hundred-Year War for American Conservatism. By Matthew Continetti. Basic Books, 2022. 503 pages, Amazon Kindle Edition. Why should we be interested in this book? At first glance, it appears that we shouldn’t be.
Cracked-Up Slobodian
Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World without Democracy by Quinn Slobodian Metropolitan Books, 2023; 336 pp. Quinn Slobodian, a professor of the history of ideas at Wellesley College, has a good deal to say about Murray Rothbard, and I have attempted to respond to that in a review that is to be published in the next issue of The Austrian.
The Belloc Universe
The Political Economy of Distributism: Property, Liberty, and the Common Good. By Alexander William Salter. Catholic University of America Press, 2023: Xiii + 238 pp. Distributism attracted considerable attention during the 1920s and 30s among people who wished to apply the principles of Catholic social teaching to the modern capitalist economy, and it has recently had a revival.
The Kochtopus vs. Murray N. Rothbard, Part II
DIGG THIS See Part I After Murray Rothbard and the Cato Institute permanently parted company, in the manner described in Part I, a fundamental issue arose. Would Cato, and the other organizations in the Kochtopus, continue to promote the same ideas as they had previously done? Ostensibly, there had been no ideological split. Rothbard had objected to Cato’s hiring a non-Austrian economist, David Henderson; but he left Cato after a short time.
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