BOOK REVIEW - Velimir Šonje and Kristijan Kotarski "Corona Economics: The Five Horsemen of the Apocalypse" When the pandemic was first confirmed, self-preservation instincts kicked in. In a global communication environment defined by the real-time free flow of information, fear spreads faster than any virus ever could. Combined with the fact that scientific knowledge of the virus was limited, the fear of infection eclipsed every other argument in the public debate. Naturally, the call to...

BOOK REVIEW - John S. Mill "On Liberty, Utilitarianism, and Other Essays" By Nayeli Riano How does one introduce a classic? The renown of work such as On Liberty leaves plenty of room for commentary from everyone familiar with John Stuart Mill, a fact that is itself indicative of the sheer popularity of this relatively short work and Mill’s intellectual impact. English philosopher Maurice Cranston wrote of  Mill that he “held the attention of the reading public of the Western world longer...

BOOK REVIEW - Wilhelm von Humboldt "The Limits of State Action" By Nayeli Riano Here is a book with which not many liberals may be familiar. It is a work that articulates a distinct shift in the history of liberalism and merits revival. When we consider liberalism as a political philosophy that theorises about the ends of the state and the nature of political society,  proto-liberal philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Charles de Montesquieu, and Jean Jacques Rousseau1 are...

BOOK REVIEW - Frederic Bastiat "The law" By Mara Pepine Lately,  all around us, there is talk of tariffs,  subsidies,  and embargoes.  The markets grow less and less free each day and those who would see our economic life freed from the influence of government grow more and more worried. About 300 years ago in France, in the midst of an emerging socialist and communist doctrine, one French political philosopher took it upon himself to make his contemporaries look around and realise that the...

BOOK REVIEW - Eric Adler "The Battle of the Classics How a Nineteenth-Century Debate Can Save the Humanities Today" By Mara Pepine It is already become clichéd to say that the humanities are quickly losing in popularity around the world. For Eric Adler, steeped in the American academic environment, this discussion hits particularly close to home. He recounts a short anecdote that is symptomatic of the way the humanities are treated today:  an economics professor disparages them whilst a...