If Robert Higgs had written only one book, the magisterial Crisis and Leviathan, his place would be forever secure in the libertarian firmament. In the 1987 book, Higgs makes the case -- and documents it with countless examples -- that government power always grows in response to crises (real, imagined, or exaggerated) such as war and economic downturns. After the crisis de jour passes, government remains bigger, more expensive, and more powerful.

In an interview with syndicated columnist Paul Craig Roberts (February 1, 2003) Higgs elaborated on the theme of the book. "In countless ways, the warfare state has proved inimical to the preservation of liberty," he said. "War brings higher taxes, greater government debt, increased government intrusion in markets, more pervasive government surveillance, manipulation, and control of the public. Going to war is the perfect recipe for expanding the size, scope, and power of the federal government."

As a January 21, 2003 article in NewsMax.com noted about Crisis and Leviathan: "In the end, Higgs concludes, governments will always act like governments, seeking to expand their power... When everything becomes a crisis and the standard American response is to demand that the government do something, despotism ensues."

Crisis and Leviathan earned raves from libertarian readers. Nobel Prize winner James M. Buchanan called it "an important, powerful, and profoundly disturbing book." Liberty magazine called it "a blockbuster of a book, one of the most important of the last decade. It is...scholarly and hard-hitting, lucid and libertarian." The Orange County Register called it "masterful and persuasive."

In addition to Crisis and Leviathan, Higgs is the author of The Transformation of the American Economy 1865-1914 (1971) and Competition and Coercion: Blacks in the American Economy, 1865-1914 (1977). He edited Hazardous to Our Health? FDA Regulation of Health Care Products (1995), Emergence of the Modern Political Economy (1986), and Arms, Politics and the Economy: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (1990). More than 100 of his articles and reviews have been printed in academic journals. He has also had essays published in The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, and Reason magazine.

A Senior Fellow in Political Economy at The Independent Institute, Higgs is the editor of the quarterly journal, The Independent Review. He has taught at the University of Washington, Lafayette College, and Seattle University, and has been a visiting scholar at Oxford University and Stanford University.

Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the message of Crisis and Leviathan is more timely than ever, said Higgs -- and the short-term prospects for liberty are bleak. In an interview with NewsMax.com, he said, "Times such as the present are most difficult because crisis conditions always make the general public more submissive to authority than usual. We may have to endure terrible tyranny before a sufficient number of people understand the current situation."

-- Bill Winter

Quotable

"From the Civil War onward, engagement in war has left Americans less free when the war was over than they had been before the war. In countless ways, the warfare state has proved inimical to the preservation of liberty, just as patriots such as James Madison warned us long ago that it would. War brings higher taxes, greater government debt, increased government intrusion in markets, more pervasive government surveillance, manipulation, and control of the public. Going to war is the perfect recipe for expanding the size, scope, and power of the federal government. You have to wonder why so many conservatives, who claim to cherish liberty, enthusiastically embrace the government's schemes for plunging the nation into war." -- Robert Higgs in an interview with syndicated columnist Paul Craig Roberts (February 1, 2003)

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