A Mind-Blowing Book on the Vietnam War by Jacob G. Hornberger January 24, 2013 A book I read over the weekend absolutely blew my mind. It’s one of those types of books that shakes your world view about something, in this case the U.S. government’s war in Vietnam. It is an absolutely shocking book. It is entitled Kill Anything that Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam by Nick Turse. Most every one ...
What an Inaugural Shame by Jacob G. Hornberger January 22, 2013 What an inaugural shame. President Obama had a chance to raise the country’s vision to a higher level and to move American into an entirely new direction. He instead made it clear that he intends to keep the nation mired in its statist morass. No libertarian ever expected Obama to embrace the libertarian paradigm of economic liberty. As a dyed-in-the-wool ...
Republicans Cave Again on the Debt Ceiling by Jacob G. Hornberger January 21, 2013 As I predicted, the Republicans are caving again on the debt ceiling. After weeks of huffing and puffing, House Republicans have announced that they’re now willing to enact a 3-month extension of the debt ceiling. What that means is that they will once again permit more debt to be incurred by the already deeply indebted federal government, debt that ...
Germany’s Repatriation of Gold by Jacob G. Hornberger January 18, 2013 Germany has announced that it’s going to repatriate 374 metric tons of its gold that it has stored with the Federal Reserve in New York City. While Germany claims that it will continue leave 1200 tons of gold in the United States, this might actually be the start of a full removal of its gold and its return to ...
Crises: A Gun-Grabber’s Best Friend by Jacob G. Hornberger January 17, 2013 After President Obama’s election in 2008, gun buyers went on a buying spree. Prices of assault rifles, ammunition, and high-magazine clips soared. The buying continued unabated for the four years of Obama’s first term. Throughout that time, gun-control advocates ridiculed the gun buyers. They called them overreacting paranoids, pointing out that Obama was doing nothing to initiate gun-control measures and ...
What about the Torture of Innocents? by Jacob G. Hornberger January 16, 2013 It is shocking enough that the United States is even engaged in a debate over whether the U.S. government should be torturing or not. Historically, torture has been committed by evil, medieval regimes, whose methods of brutally torturing people are memorialized in torture museums in various parts of Great Britain and Europe, or ...
The Drug War Makes Government the Master and Citizen the Servant by Jacob G. Hornberger January 15, 2013 Matthew R. Davies is a 34-year-old father of two young girls who has a master’s degree in business and has worked in various real-estate, restaurant, and mobile-home enterprises. He’s also a man who has no criminal record but who is now facing 15 years in the federal penitentiary. Davies’ crime? He established one of the most reputable and best-run medical ...
Foreign-Policy Pickle by Jacob G. Hornberger January 14, 2013 It’s becoming increasingly clear that the U.S. interventionist crowd is finding itself in a pickle with respect to the U.S. government’s 12-year occupation of Afghanistan and 12-year “war on terrorism. “ On the one hand, we have President Obama’s announcement that he’s going to end the Afghan occupation by 2014. On the other hand, we all know that there are ...
Dying from Green on Blue by Jacob G. Hornberger January 11, 2013 Do you ever wonder about the final thoughts of a U.S. soldier who has just been shot by one of his compatriots in the Afghan army? After all, his killer is one of the guys he’s been training and supporting in the Pentagon’s 12-year project to “rebuild Afghanistan.” The GI turns his back, finds himself riddled with bullets from ...
Minimum-Wage Folly by Jacob G. Hornberger January 10, 2013 One of the most interesting, albeit frustrating, aspects of being a libertarian is having to repeatedly show the fallacies behind statist thinking. No matter how many times we libertarians destroy statist reasoning behind statist policies, the statists just keep coming back and proposing the same fallacious and destructive policies. Perhaps the best example of this phenomenon involves the minimum wage, ...
How to Balance the Budget without Raising Taxes by Jacob G. Hornberger January 9, 2013 John Cornyn, the U.S. Senator from Texas, has ignited a firestorm with an op-ed in which he stated that it might be necessary to “partially shut down the government” as part of the upcoming debt-ceiling debate in “our ongoing fight to bring fiscal sanity to Washington.” Cornyn correctly points out that the “biggest fiscal problem in Washington is excessive ...
The Corrosive Effects of the National-Security State by Jacob G. Hornberger January 8, 2013 Last Sunday besieged Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad delivered a public speech at which he condemned the Syrians who are trying to oust him from power as “murderous criminals” and “terrorists.” According to a Syrian shopkeeper quoted in a New York Times article about the speech, Assad “divided Syrians in two camps, one with him who are patriots and ...
