Hornberger's Blog

Libertarians Are the Real Fourth of July Patriots

by Jacob G. Hornberger July 4, 2014

Today, Independence Day, we will be treated to all sorts of paeans to the military, the CIA, and other parts of the U.S. national-security state. We will especially be exhorted to praise and thank the troops for defending our rights and freedoms in foreign countries thousands of miles away. All this devotion to big government, militarism, standing armies, empire, ...

Needed: A U.S. Truth Commission on Horman and Teruggi

by Jacob G. Hornberger July 3, 2014

For the past several years, the Chilean and Argentine people have been confronting their dark pasts under military dictatorships during the 1970s. They have been conducting official investigations into the dirty wars the dictatorships waged under the guise of a “war on communism” and a “war on terrorism,” including disappearances, kidnappings, incarcerations, torture, rapes, executions, secret prisons, and assassinations. Among ...

The U.S. National-Security State’s Murder of Two Americans

by Jacob G. Hornberger July 2, 2014

A Chilean court ruled this week that the U.S. national-security state conspired to murder American citizens Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi in Chile in 1973. The brutal act occurred during the violent military coup in which the Chilean military, with the full support of the U.S. government, ousted the democratically elected president of the country, Salvador Allende, and ...

Catholics, Libertarians, and Statism

by Jacob G. Hornberger July 1, 2014

This is the final segment of my series on Catholics and Libertarians, which I have written in response to a conference at the Catholic University of America entitled “Erroneous Authority: The Catholic Case Against Libertarianism.” The other six segments are posted at the end of this article. So, the question naturally arises: What are statists and statism? A statist is ...

Catholics, Libertarians, and the Poor

by Jacob G. Hornberger June 30, 2014

In a previous post in this series, I detailed the hypocrisy that pervades statists with respect to the poor. While they claim to love the poor, needy, and disadvantaged, they abuse, mistreat, insult, incarcerate, round up, fine, and deport undocumented immigrants, who are among the poorest people in the world, people who are just following the God-given drive ...

Catholics, Libertarians, and Foreign Policy

by Jacob G. Hornberger June 27, 2014

It would be difficult to find a better example of the difference between statists and libertarians than foreign policy. It is this realm that confronts the Catholic with an extremely important choice: “Will I exercise the free will that God has given me by choosing to participate in or support a direct violation of God’s sacred commandment — Thou ...

Catholics, Libertarians, and Foreign Aid

by Jacob G. Hornberger June 26, 2014

Here are the links to the first three articles in this series, which is being published in response to a recent conference at the Catholic University of America entitled “Erroneous Autonomy: The Catholic Case Against Libertarianism”: Catholics, Libertarians, and Coerced Charity by Jacob G. Hornberger Catholics, Libertarians, and the Drug War by Jacob G. Hornberger Catholics, Libertarians, and ...

Catholics, Libertarians, and Immigration

by Jacob G. Hornberger June 25, 2014

This week, I have been focusing on why Catholics who wish to remain true to Christian principles should be libertarians rather than statists. This series of articles is in response to an conference recently held at the Catholic University of America entitled “Erroneous Authority: The Catholic Case Against Libertarianism.” In the first two segments of this series, I focused ...

Catholics, Libertarians, and the Drug War

by Jacob G. Hornberger June 24, 2014

In my blog post of yesterday, I asked how any Catholic, in good conscience, could choose to embrace statism rather than libertarianism, given statism’s embrace of coerced charity, a concept that denigrates and destroys God’s great gift of free will. This was in response to a conference recently held at the Catholic University of America entitled “Erroneous ...

Catholics, Libertarians, and Coerced Charity

by Jacob G. Hornberger June 23, 2014

A few weeks ago, the Institute for Policy Research & Catholic Studies at the Catholic University of America hosted a conference entitled, “Erroneous Autonomy: The Catholic Case Against Libertarianism. Unfortunately, I learned about the conference too late to attend, but for the life of me I cannot understand how a Catholic can be anything but a libertarian. Let’s consider, first ...

Needed: An Enlightened Citizenry That Values Liberty

by Jacob G. Hornberger June 20, 2014

President Obama has unilaterally decided to deploy U.S. troops to Iraq, where they will be embroiled in Iraq’s civil war by helping the government side kill the anti-government side. But where in the Constitution is such a power delegated to the president? Keep in mind that when the Constitution called the federal government into existence, it was with the understanding that ...

Who Were the Patriots Now?

by Jacob G. Hornberger June 19, 2014

Prior to the U.S. government’s invasion of Iraq in 2003, longtime supporters of The Future of Freedom Foundation will recall that we stood squarely against the operation. We emphasized that the excuse given for the operation — that Saddam Hussein was supposedly about to unleash nuclear weapons and other WMDs against the United States — was entirely bogus and was ...