Hardheaded analysis, not romantic fantasizing or emotional uplift, is what gives free-market economics its strength, as Buchanan’s corpus abundantly illustrates. Fortunately, Buchanan’s call for classical liberals to invigorate their work with a renewed sense of humanity and urgency is fully consistent with this truth.

Dwight R. Lee is a Research Fellow at the Independent Institute and Affiliated Visiting Faculty Fellow in the Institute for the Study of Political Economy in the Miller College of Business at Ball State University.
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Other Independent Review articles by Dwight R. Lee
Summer 2023 Fiscal Recklessness, Path Dependence, and Expressive Voting
Summer 2019 The Fifth Risk: Undoing Democracy
Spring 2019 The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture
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