Declare War before Waging War, Part 1 by Doug Bandow January 1, 2002 Part 1 | Part 2 LIKE MOST CRISES, the shocking attack on the World Trade Center caused a rush to government for protection. People seemed willing to accept almost any new restriction on liberty or new spending program in the name of fighting terrorism. Few seem willing to criticize the president should he decide to expand the war to Indonesia, ...
A Foreign-Policy Primer for Children: The Fable of the Hornets by Jacob G. Hornberger December 15, 2001 Once upon a time in a faraway land there was a happy and prosperous village filled with industrious and fun-loving people. To protect the villagers from occasional thieves and marauders, the village council had hired a policeman named Oscar. One day Oscar got bored and took a long walk into the woods, where he discovered some ...
Let’s Join the Pope by Jacob G. Hornberger December 1, 2001 After the 1993 terrorist bombing of the World Trade Center, one of the convicted terrorists told a New York federal judge before sentencing that one of the principal reasons he had committed the attack was because of all the Iraqi children who had died as a result of the U.S. government's ...
Self-Inflicted Violence by Sheldon Richman December 1, 2001 IN OUR RUSH justice for the perpetrators of the horrors of September 11, we seem to have forgotten another kind of violence that is ready to befall America: the self-inflicted violence of an open-ended, comprehensive, and essentially secret global war conducted by the U.S. government against an enemy so amorphous it apparently cannot be ...
A New Foreign-Policy Paradigm for America by Jacob G. Hornberger November 25, 2001 Ludwig von Mises observed that government intervention inexorably leads to more government intervention until the point comes that government assumes total control over the affairs of the citizenry. The idea is that since government interventions always produce perverse consequences, government officials will inevitably enact new interventions designed to fix the problems resulting from the ...
An Unkeepable Promise by Sheldon Richman November 20, 2001 President Bush should be wary of making promises he may not be able to keep. He’s vowed to prosecute a long and victorious war against “terrorism,” an amorphous “entity” if there ever was one. But before he extends his campaign beyond Afghanistan, which will have as its inevitable casualties a long list of civil liberties, ...
Patriotism and War by Jacob G. Hornberger November 15, 2001 In every war, controversies over patriotism inevitably arise. Most everyone would agree that patriotism involves the loyalty that a person has toward his country. But there are two conflicting concepts arising out of the application of that principle. One concept dictates that a citizen has a duty to make an independent, reasoned judgment of whether the ...
Winning the Battle and the War (short version) by Richard M. Ebeling November 9, 2001 The tragic events of September 11, 2001, have aroused a degree of sympathy for the victims and a demand for justice against the perpetrators that have not been seen in America in relation to any other event for many decades. But in this understandably emotional moment it is necessary for every American to step back and ...
A Republic, If You Can Keep It by Jacob G. Hornberger November 1, 2001 AT THE CLOSE OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION, a woman asked Benjamin Franklin what type of government the Constitution was bringing into existence. Franklin replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.” Regardless of one’s judgment concerning the type of government that the Constitution brought into existence in 1787, no one can deny that it was truly the most unusual and ...
Winning the Battle and the War by Richard M. Ebeling November 1, 2001 THE TRAGIC EVENTS OF SEPTEMBER 11, 2001, have aroused a degree of sympathy for the victims and a demand for justice against the perpetrators that have not been seen in America in relation to any other event for many decades. But in this understandably emotional moment it is necessary for every American to step back and weigh carefully what should ...
Libertarian Splits in the War on Terrorism by Jacob G. Hornberger November 1, 2001 Responses to the September 11 attacks have split the libertarian movement like no other issue I have seen since I discovered libertarianism almost 25 years ago. Limited-government libertarians have always maintained that one of the essential functions of government is to protect the nation from invasion or attack. The corollary to that duty is the government's ...
Why Do They Want to Kill Us? by Jacob G. Hornberger October 20, 2001 Ever since the September 11 attacks, it has almost been taboo, within both the U.S. government and the mainstream press, to openly examine and analyze the three specific reasons that Osama bin Laden has given for his holy war against the U.S. government and the American people. Suppose someone has told me that he intends to kill me. Even though ...