“Robert Higgs is a prophet who deserves honor—and more importantly, urgent attention. The earliest pieces in this book, written a year and more before the onset of the Iraq War, prove uncannily accurate in their predictions of the terrible course of events. . .This book is well worth reading for anyone seeking a more peaceful, safer and freer world.”
—DANIEL ELLSBERG, author, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers

“Robert Higgs’s Resurgence of the Warfare State strikes a telling blow for liberty and merits a thunderous welcome by Americans. . . Nowhere is the probably fatal distance between the Founders’ design for America and the Federal Government’s lethal bastardization of it more ably and clearly presented than in this book.”
—MICHAEL F. SCHEUER, former CIA Senior Counter-terrorism Analyst; author, Imperial Hubris

Economist and historian Robert Higgs offers his real-time analysis of the U.S. government’s response to the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the three years that followed in Resurgence of the Warfare State: The Crisis Since 9/11 (The Independent Institute, October 2005).

Resurgence of the Warfare State presents commentaries about the aftermath of 9/11 by Dr. Higgs, that appeared in a variety of publications including the Financial Times, San Francisco Chronicle, National Post, and others. These pieces examine a wide range of events including the quick enactment of the USA PATRIOT Act, the federal takeover of airport security, the massive increase in defense and other government spending, and the carnage in Afghanistan and Iraq wrought by leaders unaccountable for their costly and deadly mistakes.

“Historically,” writes Dr. Higgs, Senior Fellow at The Independent Institute, “a large proportion of all government expansion has taken place as an emergency or crisis action. Government responses to crises have been—and will likely continue to be—a bonanza for political, corporate, and even religious opportunists who seek power and financial gain by exploiting the fears of the American public.”

Beginning with his 1987 landmark work, Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government, Higgs has chronicled how national “crises” such as the Great Depression, as well as major wars, have increased the size of government. The result is ever-increasing government power, which endures long after each crisis has passed, undermining civil liberties and economic growth, and fostering extensive corporate welfare and pork.

In Resurgence of the Warfare State, Higgs shows 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 billions of dollars on programs unrelated to national security, trampled civil liberties and due process at home, and pursued reckless military adventures that have produced new terrorist dangers and needlessly killed thousands of innocents abroad.

Resurgence of the Warfare State offers a thorough and penetrating critique of the government’s unchecked expansion of power at the expense of the public’s wealth, security, and civil liberties in this current time of crisis.

Dr. Robert Higgs is Senior Fellow at The Independent Institute and Editor of the Institute’s quarterly journal, The Independent Review. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Johns Hopkins University and has taught at the University of Washington, Lafayette College, and Seattle University. He is the author of The Transformation of the American Economy 1865-1914, Competition and Coercion, Against Leviathan, and Crisis and Leviathan, recognized as one of the classic works on the growth and abuses of government power.

RESURGENCE OF THE WARFARE STATE: The Crisis Since 9/11
By Robert Higgs
6 X 9 TRADE PAPER, $12.95, ISBN 0-945999-56-9
DATE OF PUBLICATION: OCTOBER 2005
PUBLISHED BY THE INDEPENDENT INSTITUTE
DISTRIBUTED TO THE TRADE BY INDEPENDENT PUBLISHERS GROUP

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