At least since World War I, Austrians have pointed to the relationship between warmongering and the decline of economic liberty. In our times, Robert Higgs is the most articulate and learned upholder of the position that free markets require peace to the same extent that peace depends on free economies.
He shows how the 9-11 attacks have led the government to exploit people's fears to build an empire at home and abroad, at the expense of freedom itself.
Resurgence of the Warfare State: The Crisis since 9/11 brings together Robert Higgs's real time analysis of the U.S. response in the three-and-a-half years that followed the September 11th terrorist attacks.
Higgs paints a bleak picture, showing how America's political leaders in the name of crisis management have discarded many of the checks and balances created to thwart potential abuses of government power, spent additional billions of dollars on programs unrelated to national security, trampled civil liberties and due process at home, and pursued reckless military adventures that have needlessly killed thousands of innocents abroad.
This collection of articles covers airport security, the costs of war, the decline of civil liberties, the lies of empire, the militarization of government, fiscal explosion, the nature of the military bureaucracy, and more.
Dr. Robert Higgs is retired and lives in Mexico. He was a senior fellow in political economy for the Independent Institute and longtime editor of The Independent Review; he was also a senior fellow of the Mises Institute. He is the 2007 recipient of the Gary G. Schlarbaum Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Cause of Liberty, and the 2015 Murray N. Rothbard Medal of Freedom.
