Is the Rule of Law in Danger?

By |2020-09-25T00:15:48-05:00May 29th, 2017|Categories: American Republic, Donald Trump, Friedrich Hayek, History, Politics, Rule of Law|

Having flouted and subverted the rule of law for decades, the radical elements of the progressive left in the United States now face the inevitable consequence of their concerted activity. “Donald Trump Could Threaten U.S. Rule of Law, Scholars Say.” So declared an ominous headline in the New York Times during the Republican primary campaign of [...]

Remembering The Road to Serfdom

By |2019-10-16T15:48:39-05:00May 11th, 2017|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Economics, Free Markets, Friedrich Hayek, History, World War II|

Friedrich Hayek believed that the very institutions of liberalism and republicanism, when misused, can foster the totalitarianism of democracy… The Road to Serfdom by F.A. Hayek (University of Chicago Press, 1944) Professor Friedrich August von Hayek (1899-1992) wrote The Road to Serfdom while a professor at the London School of Economics as the allied war [...]

Hayek and Me

By |2017-03-28T22:26:53-05:00March 28th, 2017|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Economics, Friedrich Hayek, The Imaginative Conservative|

Friedrich Hayek’s individualism is not the Rousseauian individualism of the person stripped naked of all his relations and his history, but rather that of Edmund Burke, with each person both encumbered and liberated by the little platoons to which we all belong… Sometime during the early to mid-1980s, I encountered the work of Friedrich August von [...]

Ten Books That Shaped America’s Conservative Renaissance

By |2022-01-17T13:57:28-06:00March 12th, 2017|Categories: Conservatism, Economics, Edmund Burke, Eric Voegelin, Featured, Friedrich Hayek, George Nash, Ludwig von Mises, M. E. Bradford, Robert Nisbet, Russell Kirk, T.S. Eliot, The Conservative Mind, The Imaginative Conservative, Timeless Essays, Wilhelm Roepke, William F. Buckley Jr.|

If we are to know and rebuild a conservative civil social order in this country, then we need to “rake from the ashes” of recent American history the books that influenced a generation of conservative scholars and public figures, books whose message resonated with much of the American populace and resulted in astonishing political triumphs. [...]

Selfish Libertarians and Socialist Conservatives

By |2019-09-02T10:53:29-05:00March 9th, 2017|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Conservatism, Featured, Friedrich Hayek, Leo Strauss|

Even if one disagrees with the authors of Selfish Libertarians and Social Conservatives, they have provided a scholarly model for how the media and academia should act: in calmness, in restraint, but also with open vigor and manliness… Selfish Libertarians and Socialist Conservatives?: The Foundations of the Libertarian-Conservative Debate by Nikolai Wenzel and Nate Schlueter (Stanford [...]

The Free Market Wisdom of Milton Friedman

By |2019-08-30T11:21:41-05:00September 7th, 2015|Categories: Economic History, Economics, Friedrich Hayek, Keynesian|

Only a short time ago, the prediction that Professor Milton Friedman would receive the Nobel Prize in economics would have been greeted by a broad spectrum of reactions ranging from horrified impossibility to an unemotional expression of obvious inevitability. Indeed, when the formal announcements were made in the fall of 1976, the range of reactions [...]

Conservatism: Reforming the Status Quo

By |2016-05-02T17:21:53-05:00June 1st, 2015|Categories: Conservatism, Edmund Burke, Featured, Friedrich Hayek, Liberty, Virtue|

A man is not primarily a witness against something. That is only incidental to the fact that he is a witness for something. —Whittaker Chambers, Witness In recent years, conservatives have fallen into a thoroughly oppositional mind-set in American politics. We have had good reasons for doing so. The agenda of the Obama administration has [...]

The Inevitable Glitch in Obamacare

By |2016-03-01T09:35:04-06:00February 3rd, 2014|Categories: Friedrich Hayek, Government, Politics|Tags: |

For those of us with (just the hint of) a sadistic turn, the square-wheeled rollout of Obamacare—or, as the White House suddenly prefers, “the Affordable Care Act”—is nothing short of schadenfreudetastic. The administration long ago gave up on “glitch,” a term that never approached capturing the problems with the launch of President Obama’s signature legislative [...]

Hayek and the Praise of Ignorance

By |2019-12-18T15:34:07-06:00December 27th, 2013|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Conservatism, Friedrich Hayek|

Those of us who belong to The Imaginative Conservative community spend a great deal of time lamenting the all-pervasive influence of ideologies, systems, and abstractions in this modern and post-modern vale of tears. We distrust them and those who advocate them, knowingly or unknowingly, and we presume they indicate a certain amount of undue pride, that [...]

Fable of American Prosperity

By |2017-09-05T23:06:33-05:00December 7th, 2012|Categories: Economics, Featured, Friedrich Hayek, Mark Malvasi, Political Economy|

F.A .Hayek Following the Second World War, Hayek tried in vain to warn Western capitalists that they had set themselves on the “road to serfdom” at the very moment when the West stood on the threshold of unprecedented economic affluence, which would have been impossible without the intervention of government. At the turn [...]

Austerity’s Prophets: How Friedrich Hayek eclipsed J.M. Keynes & Milton Friedman

By |2016-01-16T12:58:50-06:00October 24th, 2012|Categories: Economics, Featured, Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, Political Economy|Tags: |

“Austerity” has become the watchword of the year. Governors, prime ministers, and presidents around the world are talking about cutting welfare benefits, curtailing public union power, and reducing deficits. We’ve over-promised at the public trough, and now we must pay the price. Whoever is elected president in November is going to face the need to [...]

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