Throughout history, personal liberty, free markets, and peaceable, voluntary exchange have been roundly denounced by tyrants and often greeted with suspicion by the general public.

The War That Must Never Be Fought borrows its title from President Ronald Reagan's State of the Union message of 1984 in which he declared "a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”  He was prepared to challenge theories about nuclear deterrence, which were even then outdated. The essays in this book reveal how much more complex the issue that Reagan raised has become.

The United States today is hopelessly polarized; the political Right and Left have hardened into rigid and deeply antagonistic camps, preventing any sort of progress. Amid the bickering and inertia, the promise of the 1960s—when we came together as a nation to fight for equality and universal justice—remains unfulfilled.

The recent financial crisis had a profound effect on both public and private universities, which faced shrinking endowments, declining charitable contributions, and reductions in government support. Universities responded to these stresses in different ways.