Empire and the Economy by Jacob G. Hornberger January 18, 2008 It’s quite amusing to watch U.S. officials, presidential candidates, and mainstream-media types presenting their pet plans to “revive the economy.” Except for Ron Paul, they all operate on the assumption that a recession, like terrorism, is some sort of mysterious disease that periodically afflicts societies. Their diagnosis of the problem is similar to ...
Conservative Blind Eye on Empire by Jacob G. Hornberger January 17, 2008 One of the things that has long fascinated me about conservatives is how eager they always are to criticize foreign regimes while, at the same time, steadfastly maintaining a blind eye to wrongful policies and practices of the U.S. government. For example, a conservative will rail against the evils of socialism but then use the educational and health care ...
Empire, Interventionism, and the Wall Street Journal by Jacob G. Hornberger January 16, 2008 On January 15, the Wall Street Journal carried a strange article entitled “Ron Paul and Foreign Policy” by Bret Stephens, a member of the Journal’s editorial board, which criticized Ron Paul’s libertarian foreign-policy views. Taking libertarians to task for embracing a policy of non-intervention in the Middle East (and the rest of the world), Stephens pointed to ...
A Strange Way to Spread Peace and Democracy by Jacob G. Hornberger January 15, 2008 During his current trip to the Middle East to spread peace and democracy, President Bush announced that the U.S. Government is selling 900 satellite missiles to Saudi Arabia as part of a $20 billion arms sale to that country. Pardon me, but don’t U.S. officials tell us that Saudi Arabia is one of the threats to ...
Anti-Immigrant Attacks on Free Enterprise and Private Property by Jacob G. Hornberger January 14, 2008 Have you noticed that the anti-immigrant crowd is remaining remarkably silent about the latest battle over their beloved Berlin Wall that they are constructing along the entire Southern border of the United States? The battle is between the U.S. government and private owners of private property along the Rio Grande south of Laredo, Texas. ...
Toward Militarism, War, Empire, Caskets, and Bankruptcy by Jacob G. Hornberger January 11, 2008 When U.S. intelligence agencies recently surprised the nation with their National Intelligence Estimate announcement that Iran had ceased its nuclear-weapons program several years ago, many people, including ardent supporters of the president, felt that the announcement put to rest any chance of a war against Iran. Not so fast! After all, did the disintegration of the ...
Dying to Kill U.S.-Produced Terrorists by Jacob G. Hornberger January 10, 2008 Yesterday, I wrote about the U.S. military offensive that is currently taking place against Iraqi insurgents in Diyala Province in Iraq. The New York Times is reporting that six U.S. soldiers were killed yesterday in that operation. Let’s examine the meaning of their deaths in the larger context of U.S. foreign policy. The first thing to keep in mind is that ...
Bad Policies Bring Bad Consequences by Jacob G. Hornberger January 9, 2008 No matter how the election results continue to go in the Democratic and Republican primaries, one thing is clear: The U.S. government is going to continue occupying Iraq for the indefinite future and killing Iraqis in the process. For example, just this week U.S. forces conducted a major offensive operation against ...
Why Is the Media Ignoring the Racist War on Drugs? by Jacob G. Hornberger January 8, 2008 One of the unfortunate aspects of the presidential race, so far, has been the refusal of the media to bring up one of the most important issues of our time — the drug war, especially given its racist consequences. While the decades-long drug war has destroyed countless American families, the part of American society that has ...
The “Change” Claptrap by Jacob G. Hornberger January 7, 2008 Amidst all the claptrap about “change” among both Democratic and Republican presidential candidates, perhaps we should remind ourselves what the candidates (except Ron Paul) mean by the term “change.” What they mean is simply a change in the identities or party affiliations of those who wield the levers of the omnipotent government they support. As I ...
181 Dead People Obeyed D.C.’s Gun-Control Law by Jacob G. Hornberger January 4, 2008 Last Saturday, the Washington Post reported a statistic that cannot possibly be true. The Post said that gun violence rose in Washington, D.C., in 2007, resulting in 181 killings. Non-fatal shootings were also up. How can that possibly be true? Everyone knows that there is very strict gun control in Washington. How can there be gun violence where ...
Conservatives Are Responsible for the Plummeting Dollar by Jacob G. Hornberger January 3, 2008 Since yesterday, I caught snippets of interviews by two well-known Fox News conservatives — Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity. The interviews showed once again what strange and unusual creatures conservatives are. Both of them were criticizing the libertarian position of non-intervention in foreign affairs, actually arguing that the U.S. government needed to continue intervening in the Middle East and the ...
