A Dysfunctional and Unfree Society by Jacob G. Hornberger August 5, 2019 Responding to the weekend massacres in El Paso and Dayton, President Trump announced his opinion that the shooters must be mentally ill. Well, doh, Captain Obvious! But there have always been people in American society who have been off-kilter mentally. Until recently, most of these off-kilter people haven’t gone out on massive killing sprees against people they don’t even know. Thus, the ...
Donald Trump, Trade Dictator by Jacob G. Hornberger August 2, 2019 President Trump has suddenly announced that he is upping his trade war against China by imposing another $300 billion of tariffs on Chinese goods. According to the Washington Post, Trump said that his tariffs would begin at 10 percent on such products as cellphones, television sets, toilet seats, and pillows but could increase to 25 percent. As ...
The Moon Landing Was One Big Socialist Project by Jacob G. Hornberger August 1, 2019 Amidst all the hoopla over the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, it’s easy to forget that this was just another 20th-century massive public-works project, no different in principle from federal dams, the Interstate Highway System, Amtrak, the Tennessee Valley Authority, public housing, and other socialist projects. As such, except for libertarians, everyone fails ...
Open Borders Are Compatible With a Welfare State by Jacob G. Hornberger July 31, 2019 For some time now, there has been a conservative faction within the libertarian movement that has advocated that libertarians abandon their position in favor of open borders and instead join up with conservatives and progressives in support of government-controlled borders. In doing so, these conservative-oriented libertarians always fail to address one of the principal costs of abandoning libertarian principle on ...
Immigration Control Follies by Jacob G. Hornberger July 30, 2019 Sometimes the debate over the decades-long immigration crisis becomes amusing. In a July 26 editorial entitled “Trump’s Wall Gets America Nowhere on Border Security,” which takes the Trump administration to task for its cruel, brutal, destructive, and failed immigration enforcement measures, the New York Times writes, “There must be a way to house the migrants, ...
Gun Violence in California by Jacob G. Hornberger July 29, 2019 Upon hearing that a man dressed in a military-style outfit was shooting people with an assault rifle at the Gilroy Garlic Festival in California on Sunday, I imagine that there were at least some Californians saying to themselves, “That’s impossible. It’s illegal in California to take an assault rifle into a public festival.” Indeed, according to Wikipedia, “The gun ...
They Are All Socialists Now by Jacob G. Hornberger July 26, 2019 Good for Catherine Rampell. The Washington Post columnist has just hit Republicans with a strong dose of reality. She’s done the same for anyone who reads her column in yesterday’s Post. The title of Rampell’s column is “Trump Is the True Socialist.” She cites Iowa Republican U.S. Senator Joni Ernst, who just launched her ...
The Failure of Impeachment Regime Change by Jacob G. Hornberger July 25, 2019 With what most everyone is calling a stunningly disjointed and extremely disappointing presentation before Congress by Special Counsel and former FBI Director Robert Mueller, it is becoming increasingly clear that the effort to achieve regime change through impeachment is going to fail. Democrats are going to have to rely on the traditional electoral means to remove President ...
Donald Trump, Big Spender by Jacob G. Hornberger July 23, 2019 As much as conservatives would like to believe that the Trump administration has been different from the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations, the fact is that all three administrations have been one long disastrous continuum. Not only has Trump continued the forever wars that Bush and Obama waged, he has also continued every single socialist, ...
Ruler of the World by Jacob G. Hornberger July 22, 2019 Recently released secret documents from Chinese company Huawei provide insights into how the U.S. Empire rules the world. According to the Washington Post, the documents reveal that Huawei secretly helped North Korea “build and maintain the country’s commercial wireless network.” What’s wrong with that? you ask. It violates U.S. sanctions against North Korea! ...
Immigration Hypocrisy, Left and Right by Jacob G. Hornberger July 19, 2019 You couldn’t find a better example of hypocrisy among both conservatives and liberals (i.e., progressives, leftists) than in the area on immigration. Conservatives love to wrap themselves in free-market, capitalist lingo. They tell us that they are fierce opponents of socialism. Their favorite mantra is “free enterprise, private property, and limited government.” You might even ...
Hating America After 9/11 by Jacob G. Hornberger July 18, 2019 Listening to President Trump accuse Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar of supporting al-Qaeda reminds me of how conservatives behaved toward libertarians who dared talk about motive immediately after the 9/11 attacks. At the time of those attacks, some of us libertarians understood that this was a watershed event in U.S. history, one that would inevitably adversely affect ...
