WEBVTT NOTE War, Fear, and Trembling 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:13.000 I have a whole stack of books I want to talk about, so I think we're going to have to extend the session by an hour. 2 00:00:13.000 --> 00:00:17.000 So I'll let equal time per book. 3 00:00:17.000 --> 00:00:24.000 The first book I want to mention is one I wrote under my pen name, Adam Nicholson. 4 00:00:24.000 --> 00:00:29.000 This is called God's Secretaries, The Making of the King James Bible. 5 00:00:29.000 --> 00:00:38.000 And for those of you who don't know about the people who made the King James Bible, 6 00:00:38.000 --> 00:00:47.000 I'm willing to tell you that this was perhaps the only successful committee project of all time. 7 00:00:47.000 --> 00:00:53.000 I myself regard this version of the Bible as a jewel of the English language, 8 00:00:53.000 --> 00:01:01.000 In fact, it's hard to think of anything that has influenced the language more in the past 400 years. 9 00:01:01.000 --> 00:01:06.000 For many people, this was the only book they ever read or knew anything about, 10 00:01:06.000 --> 00:01:14.000 and its phrases have entered the language so widely that most of us are completely unaware of how pervaded the English language is 11 00:01:14.000 --> 00:01:19.000 by metaphors taken from the King James Version of the Bible. 12 00:01:19.000 --> 00:01:30.000 I actually take offense at these modern translations, recognizing they have their virtues and they may be better as translations and so forth, 13 00:01:30.000 --> 00:01:38.000 but I don't think they'll ever equal the beauty, the poetry of the King James Version. 14 00:01:38.000 --> 00:01:45.000 One of the members of this committee was a man named Lancelot Andrews. 15 00:01:45.000 --> 00:01:54.000 This book of mine, which I've just begun reading, I've only made it to page 33 so far, so I don't know a great deal. 16 00:01:54.000 --> 00:01:59.000 But it's clear that one of the main characters of this book will be Lancelot Andrews. 17 00:01:59.000 --> 00:02:06.000 And Andrews was clearly a fascinating man. 18 00:02:06.000 --> 00:02:11.320 And I identified with him immediately when I encountered the description that he could 19 00:02:11.320 --> 00:02:19.400 speak 15 modern languages and 6 ancient, but the heart and bulk of his existence was his 20 00:02:19.400 --> 00:02:25.320 sense of himself as a worm. 21 00:02:25.320 --> 00:02:35.440 Except that I don't know any of those languages, he and I, I feel have much in common. 22 00:02:35.440 --> 00:02:42.800 But in 1603, Andrews, who was the Dean of Winchester, he was a high official in the 23 00:02:42.800 --> 00:02:49.680 clergy of the Church of England, he preached a sermon, and what I really want to tell you 24 00:02:49.680 --> 00:02:55.000 is one of the things he said, the sermon was basically railing against the inclination 25 00:02:55.000 --> 00:03:02.560 of so many people in Jacobean England to be innovative, to be doing new things, to be 26 00:03:02.560 --> 00:03:27.560 What could be more wicked than the idea of being an author, let alone witty? 27 00:03:32.560 --> 00:03:37.560 I was tempted to be with him. 28 00:03:37.560 --> 00:03:47.560 Last year when I spoke to you at the book session, I mentioned that a book called Rethinking Green was going to be published pretty soon. 29 00:03:47.560 --> 00:03:48.560 And it was. 30 00:03:48.560 --> 00:03:58.560 And so I just want you to know that this book is available if you have any interest at all in environmental policy making. 31 00:03:58.560 --> 00:04:04.680 And you may have an interest, not because you're an environmentalist, but perhaps because 32 00:04:04.680 --> 00:04:18.280 you recognize that in various guises, environmentalism is one of the principal forms in which the 33 00:04:18.280 --> 00:04:27.040 forces that oppose what most of us in this room favor are expressing themselves and gaining 34 00:04:27.040 --> 00:04:31.240 Public policies to implement their views. 35 00:04:31.240 --> 00:04:37.640 We don't have to worry too much about organized communism anymore, but in some ways the environmental 36 00:04:37.640 --> 00:04:48.120 movement, the green movement, has simply replaced the reds with greens to somewhat similar effects. 37 00:04:48.120 --> 00:04:56.160 The authors in this book are all at pains to, I'm only the editor here with Carl Close 38 00:04:56.160 --> 00:05:02.020 of this book. So I wrote the introduction and nothing more. They're all at pains to 39 00:05:02.020 --> 00:05:12.420 demonstrate both the failings of current environmental policies and alternatives by which desirable 40 00:05:12.420 --> 00:05:19.600 objectives might be achieved through private property and the market. So if you have an 41 00:05:19.600 --> 00:05:24.680 interest in this field, I encourage you to have a look at Rethinking Green, Alternatives 42 00:05:24.680 --> 00:05:28.680 As to Environmental Bureaucracy 43 00:05:28.680 --> 00:05:38.680 Now, I'll tell you about several books that have been published in the past year. 44 00:05:38.680 --> 00:05:48.680 The first one is called Resurgence of the Warfare State, subtitled The Crisis Since 9-11. 45 00:05:48.680 --> 00:06:02.080 This consists of my own writing and is an odd book, it's unlike anything I ever put forth as a book before. 46 00:06:02.080 --> 00:06:13.680 Right after 9-11, I was contacted by a number of journalists who were familiar with my work on the growth of government 47 00:06:13.680 --> 00:06:43.680 and particularly my book Crisis in Leviathan and they recognized that what had happened on 9-11 might trigger a kind of crisis that would set and train the same sort of spurt in the growth of government that I had documented, many people had documented having taken place in connection with the World Wars and the Great Depression 48 00:06:43.680 --> 00:06:53.120 and to some extent lesser national emergencies as well in U.S. history and so I did respond 49 00:06:53.120 --> 00:07:00.560 to these journalists in various ways, I was invited to write things and for the most part 50 00:07:00.560 --> 00:07:07.200 I simply took it upon myself from time to time to express my views about what was being 51 00:07:07.200 --> 00:07:12.760 done by the U.S. government in response to the events of 9-11. 52 00:07:12.760 --> 00:07:19.480 And so the book puts between covers here about three and a half years worth of what 53 00:07:19.480 --> 00:07:27.440 I had to say from time to time about what I take to be the utter immorality and idiocy 54 00:07:27.440 --> 00:07:31.360 of the U.S. government's response to 9-11. 55 00:07:31.360 --> 00:07:37.360 And if you're interested in that subject, and I think you should be because it poses 56 00:07:37.360 --> 00:07:49.360 is a great threat to our freedoms and to mankind, I think, the way it's unfolding, then it affects us all. 57 00:07:49.360 --> 00:08:01.360 So this was one man's attempt to at least to show that not everybody stood by 58 00:08:01.360 --> 00:08:09.360 and just allowed these terrible things to be done without protest. 59 00:08:09.360 --> 00:08:19.360 The next book I want to mention is another edited volume by Carl Close and me. 60 00:08:19.360 --> 00:08:25.360 It's called The Challenge of Liberty, Classical Liberalism Today. 61 00:08:25.360 --> 00:08:45.360 And like the book I mentioned, Rethinking Green, this book also consists entirely, except for the introduction that Carl and I wrote, of articles first published in the Independent Review. 62 00:08:45.360 --> 00:08:56.360 Thank you. I don't know who brought this but it's a good show and tell too. It's the cover of the current issue of the journal, The Independent Review. 63 00:08:56.360 --> 00:09:10.360 Many of you know about this journal and many of you in fact have written for it or refereed for it or advised me in various respects and while I have you all here I want to say thank you again 64 00:09:10.360 --> 00:09:25.360 Making a journal successful is a definite group enterprise and no matter how hard an editor works, an editor is nothing without raw material and people to help. 65 00:09:25.360 --> 00:09:31.360 I appreciate all the help that so many of you have given to me over the years. 66 00:09:31.360 --> 00:09:33.360 The journal is now 10 years old. 67 00:09:33.360 --> 00:10:03.360 working now on the 11th year and I think along the way we've managed to put out some some pretty good stuff much of it is here in the challenge of liberty and some of these authors are very well known James Buchanan for example, Anthony DeGiasse others not so well known but but wrote nice pieces 68 00:10:03.360 --> 00:10:16.360 for the Journal, Tom Sawes has a nice article here, Charles Rowley, Dan Klein, many others whose names are familiar to you, 69 00:10:16.360 --> 00:10:24.360 and what we tried to do in this book was to show that classical liberalism is not just some moldy thing, 70 00:10:24.360 --> 00:10:52.360 The Classical Liberalism is a living doctrine. It was not refuted. It was simply ignored for a long time, and it's very much alive. 71 00:10:52.360 --> 00:11:06.360 In the introduction, Carl and I, among other things, I think, bring back Mises as perhaps the leading figure of classical liberalism in the 20th century. 72 00:11:06.360 --> 00:11:13.360 And that too, I think, comes as actual news to many people. They don't even know about Mises. 73 00:11:13.360 --> 00:11:23.360 Many people who write in political science and political philosophy nowadays have no idea of even who Mises was. 74 00:11:23.360 --> 00:11:26.360 They've never read anything by him. 75 00:11:26.360 --> 00:11:32.360 Even though I was trained in economics when I went to school, I was never assigned anything by Mises. 76 00:11:32.360 --> 00:11:36.360 And I'm sure that that's still the case today, unfortunately. 77 00:11:36.360 --> 00:11:46.360 We have attempted here to demonstrate, not just to say, look, we think classical liberalism holds great promise. 78 00:11:46.360 --> 00:11:55.360 There's a meat in this book, and I think it shows that classical liberalism is a living vital doctrine 79 00:11:55.360 --> 00:12:05.360 that is worthy of anybody's intellectual attention, and so I recommend that book to you. 80 00:12:05.360 --> 00:12:13.360 Now, I just got here this morning. I don't know if Joe Siemens is here yet, but you back there, Joe? 81 00:12:13.360 --> 00:12:16.360 I see, yeah, I see him in the back. 82 00:12:16.360 --> 00:12:20.360 He talked to Joe about another book I have coming out next month. 83 00:12:20.360 --> 00:12:27.360 He tells me it's coming out, and I trust him. 84 00:12:27.360 --> 00:12:32.360 And I also trust him to tell me what's in it, because this book is in the Czech language. 85 00:12:32.360 --> 00:12:59.360 and I don't read that language and so as I told Joe at one point I mean this could actually be the history of Donald Duck and I'd never know but for all of you who read Czech language I have a book coming out in Prague next month I think. 86 00:12:59.360 --> 00:13:29.360 Now one I'm a little more certain about, and I don't have the book to show you, and it's slated for publication at the end of April, is different from anything I've mentioned so far, and this one is being published by Oxford University Press, and it's called Depression War and Cold War Studies in Political Economy, and that's what the cover's called. 87 00:13:29.360 --> 00:13:50.360 I'm rather interested in this book compared to the others I've written in recent years because I've done several collections of articles and edited volumes and things of that sort. 88 00:13:50.360 --> 00:13:56.360 This book from Oxford is a meteor book. 89 00:13:56.360 --> 00:14:05.860 It consists of ten chapters, all of which were in some form previously published. 90 00:14:05.860 --> 00:14:12.860 Everything has been redone for this book and integrated so that it's all part of a coherent book. 91 00:14:12.860 --> 00:14:23.860 But these papers are, in a sense, among my more serious follow-ups to Crisis and Leviathan. 92 00:14:23.860 --> 00:14:30.500 I complain sometimes that people think, you know, this guy Higgs, what did he ever do? 93 00:14:30.500 --> 00:14:35.700 Well, he wrote a book. He wrote a book called Crisis and Leviathan. That's what he did. 94 00:14:35.700 --> 00:14:44.580 Well, it's true I did that, but I've done other things, believe it or not. 95 00:14:44.580 --> 00:14:47.580 And I don't think they're all just trivial. 96 00:14:47.580 --> 00:14:52.420 ivid And so I hope this book will show that after Crisis and Leviathan, 97 00:14:52.420 --> 00:14:57.380 and I continued to do some worthwhile work in this area. 98 00:14:57.380 --> 00:15:04.540 It deals with such topics as why the Great Depression lasted so long, far longer than 99 00:15:04.540 --> 00:15:12.220 in any other country, what the relationship was between the end of the Depression and 100 00:15:12.220 --> 00:15:14.500 World War II. 101 00:15:14.500 --> 00:15:21.980 There's a received doctrine that says the war ended the Depression and I have long disputed 102 00:15:21.980 --> 00:15:29.580 that and tried to clarify in what sense, if any, the war may be taken to have ended the 103 00:15:29.580 --> 00:15:39.620 depression and so there's a number of chapters on the nature of the war economy during World 104 00:15:39.620 --> 00:15:40.620 War II. 105 00:15:40.620 --> 00:15:49.220 This has been held up for a long time as the prime validation of the vulgar Keynesian model 106 00:15:49.220 --> 00:16:06.720 And I think it's anything but that, and so I'm at pains here to demonstrate exactly why that's a bankrupt view, even though it's held to this day, not only by general public, but by most economists. 107 00:16:06.720 --> 00:16:19.720 I see it every time I open books that have anything to do with this, people are asserting the war into the depression, just as if it's as obvious as anything can be. 108 00:16:19.720 --> 00:16:30.720 So I deal a lot with the war economy. I think it's been totally misunderstood, and this is a good topic for an Austrian, 109 00:16:30.720 --> 00:16:41.720 because it's been misunderstood for the same reasons that people misunderstood the socialist calculation problem, basically. 110 00:16:41.720 --> 00:16:52.720 They just didn't know what was a meaningful number, basically. 111 00:16:52.720 --> 00:16:56.720 People look at the reduction of the unemployment rate in World War II, 112 00:16:56.720 --> 00:17:11.920 The Second Five Chapters in this book are about the Cold War period and in different 113 00:17:11.920 --> 00:17:21.840 ways analyze what that involved in terms of the relationship between the war economy and 114 00:17:21.840 --> 00:17:29.060 The rest of the economy deal with things like the nature of business fluctuations. 115 00:17:29.060 --> 00:17:35.060 Even the dating of business cycles is altered if we get more serious about the role of the 116 00:17:35.060 --> 00:17:37.980 war economy. 117 00:17:37.980 --> 00:17:43.780 And I take up questions of the profitability of the big defense contractors and the role 118 00:17:43.780 --> 00:17:49.900 of public opinion in sustaining high levels of military spending and a number of other 119 00:17:49.900 --> 00:18:01.900 and other things, so I hope you will have a look at Depression War and Cold War when it comes out, should be available in May, thank you very much.