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Acknowledgments

A GOOD MANY PEOPLE HELPED ME WITH THIS BOOK, AND I am very grateful. For his comments, and for our long conversations about Abraham Lincoln, I am greatly indebted to Allen Guelzo, the leading scholar on the sixteenth president, and who if pressed can provide a very credible imitation of Lincoln’s accent.

Jonathan Clark, the eminent historian of the long British eighteenth century, gave this book a close reading and his wise advice on British constitutional history was most helpful. Jeff Broadwater has written the best biography of the never-too-much-to-be-praised George Mason, and kindly helped me with questions I had about my school’s namesake.

My colleague, David Levy, was extremely helpful on regression analysis and for tips on where I might find bluegrass music. Dartmouth’s Jason Soren’s also gave very useful advice on the empirical portions of the book.

For their comments and help on questions of income inequality and immobility, I am indebted to Sarah Buckley, Miles Corak, Tyler Cowen, Chris DeMuth, Frank Fukuyama, Robin Hanson, Glenn Hubbard, Bob Levy, Tom Lindsay, Tom and Lorraine Pangle, and John Samples. Brian Lee Crowley and the Macdonald-Laurier Institute brought me to Ottawa to debate Chrystia Freeland, now the Candian Minister of International Trade, on the subject of income inequality, and we also debated on CBC. She and I gave it as good as we could, as proxies for Laurier and Macdonald, respectively.

For his advice on U.S. tax law I am indebted to my colleague, Terry Chorvat.

Academic lawyers are quick to pick up on whatever is trendy in other disciplines, and twenty years ago there was a spurt of interest in evolutionary biology. We’re due for a revival. As we age, and the “me” generation becomes the “them” generation, we’ll be taking a greater interest in who comes after us, especially our children. Evolutionary biology is not my field, but I was lucky enough to be able to meet Robert Trivers at a program I organized. Five hundred years from now, when everyone else around today is quite forgotten, he’ll be remembered.

Long talks with Tom Lindsay helped inform the chapter on education, and George Borjas has for many years been the person to whom I turned on questions about immigration policy. Ron Maxwell, the director of Gettysburg and Gods and Generals, is an astute student of politics and I enjoyed many helpful discussions with him on immigration matters. On criminal law matters, I was happy to rely on Jeff Parker and Ewan Watt, as well as Norm Reimer, the very able Executive Director of the National Center for Criminal Defense Attorneys.

On the rule of law, I owe a huge debt to George Priest, Michael Trebilcock, and Kip Viscusi for their help on our civil liability regime. Over bowls of pho, my friend Jim Wooton led me to understand how state courts treat out-of-state defendants unfairly, and what might be done to correct this. Stephen Magee’s work was particularly useful, and from friends such as Eric O’Keefe and Wallace Hall I learned that we can’t readily solve problems of corruption simply by passing more anti-corruption legislation.

Other friends, including Lord Black, Tom Pangle, Wlady Pleszczinski, Al Regnery, Jeff Sandefer, Roger Scruton, and Bob Tyrrell, heard me out and sharpened my ideas greatly. I owe a debt to Barre Seid, who gave me useful comments on the book, which I shall never be able to repay.

I also thank participants at workshops at the University of Texas, as well as the Texas Public Policy Foundation and the Heartland Institute for sponsoring book talks.

Sadly, two friends and colleagues from whom I learned so much about economics, Henry Manne and Gordon Tullock, passed away in the last year: Five other friends who strongly believed in the promise of America, Walter Berns, Jim Buchanan, Harry Jaffa, Leonard Liggio, and Douglass North, also died over the last two years. Les chênes qu’on abat . . .

The first injunction in the Hippocratic Oath is to hold one’s teachers dear to one, and as I myself have taught for more years than I care to remember this increasingly seems like wise advice. And so I acknowledge my debt and gratitude to Saul Schwartz, who taught me of the common law’s intrinsic excellence; and to Charlie Goetz, from whom I learned that economics can be fun, at least for its teachers.

George Mason law student Dan Schneider provided excellent research assistance, and if you’re a judge or lawyer you’d do very well to hire him. For regressions and graphs I employed STATA software.

I also thank George Mason School of Law and George Mason’s Mercatus Institute for their generous support. Cattelya Concepcion at the George Mason Law Library was extremely helpful in getting interlibrary loans and finding online materials for me.

My thanks as always go to Roger Kimball and to the superb editorial and marketing departments at Encounter Books, to Heather Ohle, Katherine Wong, Sam Schneider, and Lauren Miklos. For his very professional help editing the book I also thank James Hallman at WriteWorks. Dean Draznin and Anna Walsh were indefatigable publicists, from whom I could not have asked for more.

This book would not have been possible without the encouragement and invaluable organizational and editorial assistance offered from the very beginning by my wife, Esther Goldberg, whose help I cannot ever adequately acknowledge.

—F.H. BUCKLEY

Alexandria VA

October 14, 2015