But now our world has changed irrevocably. What faces us in this era of fear and uncertainty? How do we protect ourselves against war machines that can penetrate the defenses of any state? Visionary and prophetic, The Shield of Achilles looks back at history, at the “Long War” of 1914-1990, and at the future: the death of the nation-state and the birth of a new kind of conflict without precedent.

    He discusses the fate of virtue, the legacy of racism, the moral issues implicated in the war on terrorism, and the objectivity of ethical norms. Against those who see no place for religious reasoning in the democratic arena, Stout champions a space for religious voices. But against increasingly vocal antiliberal thinkers, he argues that modern democracy can provide a moral vision and has made possible such moral achievements as civil rights precisely because it allows a multitude of claims to be heard.Stout's distinctive pragmatism reconfigures the disputed area where religious thought, political theory, and philosophy meet. Charting a path beyond the current impasse between secular liberalism and the new traditionalism, Democracy and Tradition asks whether we have the moral strength to continue as a democratic people as it invigorates us to retrieve our democratic virtues from very real threats to their practice.

    Delivering a searing indictment of the political leaders who have led us astray, Scarborough inspires conservatives to reclaim their heritage by drawing upon the strength of the movement’s rich history.With independent thinking and straight talk, Scarborough explains:• How Washington and Wall Street conspired to create the housing bubble that caused America’s financial meltdown• How the “candidate of change” has not only maintained but accelerated the reckless spending policies that led us to this historic economic collapse• How Washington’s bailout culture will cripple America’s future if left unchecked• How Barack Obama’s stimulus plan devolved into a socialist spending spree that would make FDR and LBJ shudder• And how conservatives need to take a closer look at Ronald Reagan’s political career before claiming his great legacyA fearlessly argued conservative manifesto that brings American conservatism into the twenty-first century, The Last Best Hope is a must-read for all who care about the direction America is heading.

    But the heart of the matter is that, as the crisis unfolds, the basic rules of European democracy are being subverted or turned into their opposite, bypassing parliaments, governments and EU institutions. Multilateralism is turning into unilateralism, equality into hegemony, sovereignty into the dependency and recognition into disrespect for the dignity of other nations. Even France, which long dominated European integration, must submit to Berlin's strictures now that it must fear for its international credit rating.How did this happen? The anticipation of the European catastrophe has already fundamentally changed the European landscape of power. It is giving birth to a political monster: a German Europe. Germany did not seek this leadership position - rather, it is a perfect illustration of the law of unintended consequences. The invention and implementation of the euro was the price demanded by France in order to pin Germany down to a European Monetary Union in the context of German unification. It was a quid pro quo for binding a united Germany into a more integrated Europe in which France would continue to play the leading role. But the precise opposite has happened. Economically the euro turned out to be very good for Germany, and with the euro crisis Chancellor Angela Merkel became the informal Queen of Europe.The new grammar of power reflects the difference between creditor and debtor countries; it is not a military but an economic logic. Its ideological foundation is 'German euro nationalism' - that is, an extended European version of the Deutschmark nationalism that underpinned German identity after the Second World War. In this way the German model of stability is being surreptitiously elevated into the guiding idea for Europe. The Europe we have now will not be able to survive in the risk-laden storms of the globalized world. The EU has to be more than a grim marriage sustained by the fear of the chaos that would be caused by its breakdown. It has to be built on something more positive: a vision of rebuilding Europe bottom-up, creating a Europe of the citizen. There is no better way to reinvigorate Europe than through the coming together of ordinary Europeans acting on their own behalf.

    They do enough to keep themselves in beer and out of work and have no ambition beyond stealing. Narrator Bex talks and walks us through a dozen note-worthy jobs and give us his thoughts on life, love and nicking.Bristling with razor-sharp wit, this is the first-person account of petty thief Bex, who, along with his partner-in-crime Ollie, just about gets by on the money he makes house-breaking the suburbs of London. Bex and Ollie stick together, have a laugh and on a good week make enough money to stay in the pub all weekend. The Burglar Diaries is a hilarious insight into the mind of a petty criminal. In the late 1980s, after being convicted of various offences, including burglary, Danny King gave up crime, got an education and started to work as a journalist. He lives in London.

    Students lashing out at any speaker brave enough to say something they disagree with. Precious snow flakes demanding “Safe Spaces” to protect them from any idea they haven’t heard from their liberal professors. In this book and the accompanying movie, Dennis Prager, Mark Joseph, and Adam Carolla expose the attack on free speech and free thought. It began in the universities, but—fair warning—it’s coming to your neighborhood and your workplace. “No Safe Spaces is a film every American should see. I could barely move when it was over. Powerful, emotional, and a call to action for anyone worried about the intellectual fascism happening in this country. A brave, timely, and important film.” —MEGYN KELLY, former FOX News anchor and host of Megyn Kelly Today “There is no free speech in America for free thinkers! You can have free speech in America but only if you say what everybody else agrees with. It’s not enough to ‘live and let live’ now. The psycho-elite believe ‘silence is violence’ and you must actively promote what THEY want no matter how vile or reprehensible it is to you. George Orwell lives! They should’ve called Orwell ‘Nostradamus’ because his most frightening prophecies have come to pass, as you will witness in No Safe Spaces!” —MANCOW MULLER, radio phenomenon “An excellent film, the best I’ve seen on the subject of free speech. I especially like Dennis’s line, ‘They have to believe we are evil; otherwise they’d have to debate us.’ Perfect!” —CAL THOMAS, America’s #1 syndicated columnist

    This work begins with a mini-treatment of money and banking theory, and then plunges right in with the real history of the Federal Reserve System. Rothbard covers the struggle between competing elites and how they converged with the Fed. Rothbard calls for the abolition of the central bank and a restoration of the gold standard. His popular treatment incorporates the best and most up-to-date scholarship on the Fed's origins and effects.

    This book scrupulously investigates the reason for this alliance and the sources of its tensions, providing a lucid and succinct introduction to some of the subject’s central concepts and concerns.

    Stephan Kinsella has caused libertarians worldwide to rethink the very basis of intellectual property.Mises warned against patents, and so did Rothbard. But Kinsella goes much further. He argues that the very existence of patents — and copyrights and trademarks, too — is contrary to a free market. They all use the state to create artificial scarcities of nonscarce goods and employ coercion in a way that is contrary to property rights and the freedom of contract.Many who read this book will be unprepared for the rigor of Kinsella's argument. It takes time to settle in, simply because it seems so shocking at first. But Kinsella makes his case with powerful logic and examples that are overwhelming in their persuasive power.After all, the relevance of this argument in a digital age can't be overstated. The state works with monopolistic private producers to inhibit innovation and stop the progress of technology, while using coercion against possible competitors and against consumers. Even US foreign policy is profoundly affected by widespread confusions over what is legitimate and what is merely asserted as property.What Kinsella is calling for instead of this cartelizing system is nothing more or less than a pure free market, which involves nothing resembling what we call intellectual property today. IP, he argues, is really nothing more than a state-enforced legal convention, not an extension of real ownership.Few books written in the last decades have caused so much fundamental rethinking. It is essential that libertarians get this issue right and understand the arguments on all sides. Kinsella's book is masterful in doing just that — making a case against IP that turns out to be more rigorous and thorough than any written on the left, right, or anywhere in between.Read it and prepare to change your mind.To search for Mises Institute titles, enter a keyword and LvMI (short for Ludwig von Mises Institute); e.g., Depression LvMI

    Clarke sounds a timely and chilling warning about America’s vulnerability in a terrifying new international conflict—Cyber War! Every concerned American should read this startling and explosive book that offers an insider’s view of White House ‘Situation Room’ operations and carries the reader to the frontlines of our cyber defense. Cyber War exposes a virulent threat to our nation’s security. This is no X-Files fantasy or conspiracy theory madness—this is real.

    It identifies its author by the names 'Kauṭilya' and 'Vishnugupta', both names that are traditionally identified with Chanakya (c. 350–283 BC), who was a scholar at Takshashila and the teacher and guardian of Emperor Chandragupta Maurya, founder of the Mauryan Empire. The text was influential until the 12th century, when it disappeared. It was rediscovered in 1904 by R. Shamasastry, who published it in 1909. The first English translation was published in 1915.Roger Boesche describes the Arthaśāstra as "a book of political realism, a book analysing how the political world does work and not very often stating how it ought to work, a book that frequently discloses to a king what calculating and sometimes brutal measures he must carry out to preserve the state and the common good."Centrally, Arthaśāstra argues how in an autocracy an efficient and solid economy can be managed. It discusses the ethics of economics and the duties and obligations of a king. The scope of Arthaśāstra is, however, far wider than statecraft, and it offers an outline of the entire legal and bureaucratic framework for administering a kingdom, with a wealth of descriptive cultural detail on topics such as mineralogy, mining and metals, agriculture, animal husbandry, medicine and the use of wildlife. The Arthaśāstra also focuses on issues of welfare (for instance, redistribution of wealth during a famine) and the collective ethics that hold a society together.

    Indeed, American students lag behind their peers in other nations, but America remains on the leading edge economically, scientifically, technologically, and militarily. The reason for this paradox, explains Barone in this brilliant essay, is that “from ages six to eighteen Americans live mostly in what I call Soft America—the parts of our country where there is little competition and accountability. But from ages eighteen to thirty Americans live mostly in Hard America—the parts of American life subject to competition and accountability.” While Soft America coddles, Hard America plays for keeps. Educators, for example, protect children from the rigors of testing, ban dodgeball, and promote just about any student who shows up. But most adults quickly figure out that how they do depends on what they produce. Barone sweeps readers along, showing how we came to the current divide—for things weren’t always this way. In fact, no part of our society is all Hard or all Soft, and the boundary between Hard America and Soft America often moves back and forth. Barone also shows where America is headed—or should be headed. We don’t want to subject kindergartners to the rigors of the Marine Corps or leave old people uncared for. But Soft America lives off the productivity, creativity, and competence of Hard America, and we have the luxury of keeping part of our society Soft only if we keep most of it Hard.Hard America, Soft America reveals: • How the American situation is unique: In Europe, schooling is competitive and demanding, but adult life is Soft, with generous welfare benefits, short work hours, long vacations, and state pensions• How the American military has reclaimed the Hard goals and programs it abandoned in the Vietnam era• How Hardness drives America’s economy—an economy that businesses and economists nearly destroyed in the 1970s by spurning competition • How America’s schools have failed because they are bastions of Softness—but how they are finally showing signs of Hardening• The benefits of Softness: How government programs like Social Security were necessary in what was a harsh and unforgiving America• Hard America, Soft America is a stunningly original and provocative work of social commentary from one of this country’s most respected political analysts.From the Hardcover edition.

    Taking an international perspective, and focusing on highly topical issues such as torture, arbitrary detention, privacy, health, and discrimination, this Very Short Introduction will help readers to understand for themselves the controversies and complexities behind this vitally relevant issue. Looking at the philosophical justification for rights, the historical origins of human rights and how they are formed in law, Andrew Clapham explains what our human rights actually are, what they might be, and where the human rights movement is heading.

    Taxes arouse strong passions, fueled not only by conflicts of economic self-interest, but by conflicting ideas of fairness. Taking as a guiding principle the conventional nature of private property, Murphy and Nagel show how taxes can only be evaluated as part of the overall system of property rights that they help to create. Justice or injustice in taxation, they argue, can only mean justice or injustice in the system of property rights and entitlements that result from a particular regime. Taking up ethical issues about individual liberty, interpersonal obligation, and both collective and personal responsibility, Murphy and Nagel force us to reconsider how our tax policy shapes our system of property rights.

    Still fewer understand the role played by political parties in the electoral process or the ironies within the system. Participation in elections in the United States is much lower than in the vast majority of mature democracies. Perhaps this is because of the lack of competition in a country where only two parties have a true chance of winning, despite the fact that a large number of citizens claim allegiance to neither and think badly of both. Or perhaps it is because in the U.S. campaign contributions disproportionately favor incumbents in most legislative elections, or that largely unregulated groups such as the now notorious 527s have as much impact on the outcome of a campaign as do the parties or the candidates' campaign organizations. These factors offer a very clear picture of the problems that underlay our much trumpeted electoral system. The second edition of this Very Short Introduction introduces the reader to these issues and more. Drawing on updated data and new examples from the 2016 presidential nominations, L. Sandy Maisel provides an insider's view of how the system actually works while shining a light on some of its flaws. He also illustrates the growing impact of campaigning through social media, the changes in campaign financing wrought by the Supreme Court recent decisions, and the Tea Party's influence on the sub-presidential nominating process. As the United States enter what is sure to be yet another highly contested election year, it is more important than ever that Americans take the time to learn the system that puts so many in power.