Hornberger's Blog

Reduce Police Abuse of Blacks

by Jacob G. Hornberger December 8, 2014

There are many good arguments for ending the war on drugs, including that drug laws constitute a grave violation of the principles of freedom, that the drug war is a manifest failure, and that the drug war has produced massive negative consequences, such as death, ruination of lives, official corruption, gang wars, kidnappings, muggings, thefts, and asset-forfeiture laws. All that ...

Leave Us All Alone! We Can’t Breathe!

by Jacob G. Hornberger December 5, 2014

The last words out of the mouth of strangling victim Eric Garner are actually a metaphor for how libertarians feel about the entire welfare-warfare state under which modern-day Americans have been born and raised. Don’t his words express precisely how we libertarians feel? Leave us alone, we say to the state. Get out of our faces. Get out of our ...

The Nazis Had Social Security Too

by Jacob G. Hornberger December 4, 2014

New York Times columnist Andrew Rosenthal is taking some jabs at the courageous members of Congress, which recently passed a bill denying Social Security to Nazis. Think about how much courage that took! Imagine the hate mail that must have flooded in from all the Holocaust deniers! Or as Rosenthal put it so eloquently, “The Nazi bill is a ...

Just like the Stasi

by Jacob G. Hornberger December 3, 2014

Don’t you just love those Americans who celebrate how free they are under America’s national-security state system? I wonder if such Americans also celebrated how free people were who lived under East Germany’s national-security state system. I just read an interesting story in the New York Times about how the East German Stasi was confiscating art from wealthy East Germans. ...

Congressional Fear of the National-Security State

by Jacob G. Hornberger December 2, 2014

During the 1973 military coup in Chile, Chilean national-security state goons murdered two American citizens, Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi. The purpose of the coup, which was headed by military strongman Augusto Pinochet, was to oust the democratically elected president of Chile, Salvador Allende, a self-described communist, from power and install a military dictatorship in his stead. The coup had ...

Why Not Pardon Drug-War Victims in Addition to Turkeys?

by Jacob G. Hornberger December 1, 2014

Prior to Thanksgiving, President Obama continued the presidential tradition of pardoning two turkeys. Too bad he didn’t use the occasion to also pardon every single victim of the U.S. government’s decades-long failed and destructive war on drugs. I’m referring, of course, to all the people who have been convicted of violating federal laws against the possession or distribution of drugs, ...

Virginia Is for Lovers of Liquor Monopolies

by Jacob G. Hornberger November 26, 2014

A Virginia court recently sentenced 26-year-old Daries Lamont Coles to five years in jail for violating Virginia’s drug laws. He joins a long line of other people who have met a similar fate in the decades-long war on drugs. Meanwhile, the State of Virginia is celebrating the 80th anniversary of the Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control (VABC), a monopoly ...

Hagel’s Departure Will Make No Difference

by Jacob G. Hornberger November 25, 2014

There’s one thing about statists. For them, hope springs eternal. Despite a century of ongoing failure, chaos, and crisis, they still believe that with the right person in charge or with the right reform plan, statism will finally prove to be successful. Time and again, we have witnessed this phenomenon in such areas as the drug war, healthcare, immigration, monetary ...

Rand Paul Is Wrong. Leave Iraq Alone!

by Jacob G. Hornberger November 24, 2014

Still opposing the Iraq War in 2003, Senator Rand Paul now wants Congress to declare war against the Islamic State and engage in military action in Iraq. He says that “national security” is at stake. I’ve got a better idea: Leave Iraq alone! Hasn’t the U.S. government done enough damage already in Iraq? Consider all the death and destruction that interventionists ...

What Good Would It Do to Reform the NSA and the CIA?

by Jacob G. Hornberger November 21, 2014

People who are trying to reform the NSA and the CIA are just wasting their time. After all, at the risk of belaboring the obvious, these two agencies operate in secret. Moreover, they know that they can do anything they want, including breaking the law, and that nothing will ever happen to them. Suppose, for example, that Congress were to enact ...

Thank the Troops for Their Service to Islam

by Jacob G. Hornberger November 20, 2014

Americans are often exhorted to thank the troops who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan for defending our rights and freedoms. Yet, I have never heard anyone thanking the troops for fighting and dying for Islam. Why not? Yeah, I know what interventionists are already saying: “Jacob, are you crazy? Our troops don’t fight and die for Islam. They’re Christian warriors! ...

The Biggest Threat to Democracy and Freedom

by Jacob G. Hornberger November 19, 2014

By all objective standards, Egypt’s government is a military dictatorship and a brutal one at that. Having ousted the democratically elected president of the country, Egypt’s national-security establishment has not only taken control over the reins of government, it is the government. In order to fortify its grip on power over the Egyptian people, it has done what dictatorships ...