{"id":12264,"date":"2018-07-05T22:18:52","date_gmt":"2018-07-06T02:18:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=12264"},"modified":"2018-07-05T22:18:52","modified_gmt":"2018-07-06T02:18:52","slug":"laurence-vances-new-book-the-free-society","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2018\/07\/05\/laurence-vances-new-book-the-free-society\/","title":{"rendered":"Laurence Vance’s new book, The Free Society"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>At the Mises Institute<\/a> conference in Auburn in\u00a0March, Laurence Vance<\/strong><\/a> kindly gave me a copy of his latest book, The Free Society<\/strong>. Laurence is one of the hardest working writers I know, and this is his 27th book.\u00a0 Laurence is also the editor of the Classic Reprints series and the director of the Francis Wayland Institute. He holds degrees in history, theology, accounting, and economics. He has written for a wide array of libertarian and religious publications, including the Independent Review, Freedom Daily,\u00a0 Liberty, Chronicles, the Journal of Libertarian Studies, the Journal of the Grace Evangelical Society, and the Review of Biblical Literature.<\/p>\n

The Free Society<\/strong> is a 468 page collection of 127 hard-hitting libertarian pieces previously published by the Future of Freedom Foundation and LewRockwell.com.\u00a0 He points out that Americans \u201care complacent when it comes to government edicts\u201d and \u201cignorant as to what a free society really means.\u201d<\/p>\n

Laurence is a devout Christian and he gracefully explains why libertarianism should be embraced by people of faith.\u00a0 His perspective is a welcome contrast to that of some freedom activists who sound as if they would like to cast all believers into Purgatory.\u00a0 His Christianity and his libertarian beliefs combine to spur criticisms of U.S. militarism.\u00a0 As Professor Paul Gottfried observed, “Vance is a staunch opponent of American military ventures and combines his religious opposition with carefully wrought arguments against the effects of the interventions that he criticizes. To his credit he lost an academic post at a Baptist college in Pensacola for being too vocal in his criticism of our Iraqi adventure.”<\/p>\n

The book has a wealth of information on public schools, taxes, drug policy, freedom of association, prostitution laws, pornography bans, and a bevy of other topics. I have written about the idiocy of the Reagan administration dictate prohibiting people under the age of 21 from drinking alcohol, but I learned a lot from Laurence\u2019s analysis of how that particular fiasco was hatched.\u00a0 His article on \u201cBeards and a Free Society\u201d defends the New York Yankees\u2019 ban on players with beards, explaining that freedom of association permits both players and team owners to reach agreements without federal meddling.\u00a0 Given my feelings about both baseball and New York, I was not tempted to shave after reading his piece.<\/p>\n

Paperback versions of The Free Society<\/strong> are available for $19.95 from Amazon.<\/a>
\n\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At the Mises Institute conference in Auburn in\u00a0March, Laurence Vance kindly gave me a copy of his latest book, The Free Society. Laurence is one of the hardest working writers I know, and this is his 27th book.\u00a0 Laurence is also the editor of the Classic Reprints series and the director of the Francis Wayland […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12266,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1594,36,1593,1595,1598,1597,1596],"class_list":["post-12264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-free-society","tag-iraq","tag-laurence-vance","tag-libertarianism","tag-paul-gottfried","tag-purgatory","tag-religion"],"yoast_head":"\nLaurence Vance's new book, The Free Society - James Bovard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2018\/07\/05\/laurence-vances-new-book-the-free-society\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Laurence Vance's new book, The Free Society - James Bovard\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"At the Mises Institute conference in Auburn in\u00a0March, Laurence Vance kindly gave me a copy of his latest book, The Free Society. 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