Woods
There's a good interview with Thomas Woods at The Daily Bell.
I greatly enjoy Woods: Harvard graduate, Catholic convert, free-market thinker. I fear many of my fellow Catholics take unfair shots at him, but he's a big boy who can defend himself. The first book I read by him is still my favorite, The Church and The Market. I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in natural law and Austrian economics (as distinguished from the positivist Chicago School) and to anyone who wants to understand how the Austrian School's apparent conflicts with Catholic teaching can be reconciled . . . or not.
One notable excerpt from the interview:
In the old days there was a much greater willingness to consider that something other than patriotism and "national security" might have a teensy weensy bit to do with why the pressure for war builds and becomes irresistible. In 1934, for example, H.C. Engelbrecht and F.C. Hanighen wrote their famous book Merchants of Death: A Study of the International Armament Industry. In the ensuing decades it has been fashionable to reject the argument in that book ”“ why, only a crank would think arms manufacturers might have a vested interest in military conflict! More often, the book's thesis is caricatured by people who have never read it. In recent years historian Hunt Tooley has rehabilitated and extended its thesis. The fact is lots of people grow wealthy and powerful from war.
I also learned from the interview that Woods is rolling out his own website. He's going to present courses, further reading, and other items. I'll be keeping a steady eye on it.
