Thank You, Ron Paul by Sheldon Richman May 18, 2007 Ron Paul, a Republican congressman running for president, is saying what needs to be said about the 9/11 attacks and the Iraq war. Clearly, his rivals and the news media can’t handle the truth. At the most recent Republican debate Paul not only repeated his opposition to the illegal and unconstitutional war, ...
Giuliani’s Attack on Ron Paul Falls Flat by Jacob G. Hornberger May 16, 2007 Ron Paul once again roiled Republican presidential politics on the issue of foreign policy during last night’s debate, finishing second in the post-debate poll conducted by Fox News and first in the poll conducted by MSNBC. Pointing out that U.S. foreign policy is the root cause of the anger and hatred that ...
Empire or Freedom? by Jacob G. Hornberger May 1, 2007 The 9/11 attacks brought to the surface a dilemma that everyone, especially libertarians, must now confront: whether to choose a pro-empire, pro-intervention foreign policy or a free society. No one can deny that we now live in a country in which the president, on his own initiative, has the omnipotent power to send the nation into war against any country ...
What the Warfare State Really Costs by Thomas E. Woods Jr. May 1, 2007 Estimates of the cost of the Iraq war continue to escalate to levels well beyond what its optimistic architects once promised. Most notable, perhaps, has been the estimate of Columbia University’s Joseph Stiglitz, who, in a January 2006 paper with Harvard’s Linda Bilmes, put the full cost at around $2 trillion. ...
Preventing Opposition to War by Sheldon Richman April 13, 2007 The idea, discussed by me and others, that it is good that most Americans are not directly touched by the President Bush’s wars is of course not the whole story. Our rulers could have forced us to be more involved. They could have passed a special war tax, launched a high-profile “Buy ...
Thank Goodness We Can Ignore the Wars by Sheldon Richman March 28, 2007 New York Times foreign-affairs columnist Thomas Friedman laments that most Americans are disengaged from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. During a recent radio appearance, Friedman cited comedian Bill Maher’s complaint that “the enemy” has had to fight only 140,000 Americans rather than all 300 million of us. You hear this a ...
War, Civil Liberties, and Libertarianism by Anthony Gregory March 16, 2007 For more than 12 years, since I was a high-school freshman, I have counted the champions of freedom as my greatest heroes. I have long admired those who, throughout history as well in the present, have spoken truth to power and stood up against tyranny, especially when it mattered most, and especially when it was ...
Bush and Chavez: A Marriage Made in Hell by Sheldon Richman March 12, 2007 If President Bush didn’t exist, Hugo Chavez would have to invent him. Chavez, of course, is the dictator-president of Venezuela who in recent months has taken steps to centralize control of the country’s economy. His accumulation of power is based on the need to resist U.S. hegemony. Some people think that his ...
Stop Them! by Sheldon Richman February 26, 2007 What is going on in America? The Bush administration’s own National Intelligence Estimate says the situation is so bad in Iraq that the term “civil war” is inadequate to describe it. A government inspector confirms what we already knew: that serious doubts about Iraq’s putative weapons of mass destruction and ...
Imperial Hopefuls by Sheldon Richman February 22, 2007 As the parade of presidential wannabes grows longer, the people paying attention this early are probably asking themselves, “Can I picture so and so as president?” This is a bad question on many levels. Politics, and presidential politics most especially, is little more than theater. The candidate who can create the right ...
The Critical Dilemma Facing Pro-War Libertarians by Jacob G. Hornberger February 14, 2007 Also see: The Pentagon's Power to Arrest, Torture, and Execute Americans It Can't Happen Here The Islamo-Fascist Rationale for Abandoning Liberty The 9/11 attacks exposed a major fault line in the libertarian movement. On one side of the divide were those libertarians who contended that the 9/11 attacks were a direct consequence of U.S. foreign policy specifically the bad things that ...
The Second Anniversary of Bush’s Worst Bosh by James Bovard February 1, 2007 Two years ago last month, Bush gave his second inaugural address. As I watched the speech on television, I and perhaps millions of other Americans struggled to answer the obvious question about the speech: Is it puerile or is it merely tripe? Bush was hailed throughout the greater Washington metropolitan area for ...