Truth Matters to the Government, Sometimes by Jacob G. Hornberger February 21, 2020 In yesterday’s sentencing hearing for Roger Stone, a friend and former advisor to President Trump, federal Judge Amy Berman Jackson misspoke. According to the New York Times, prior to sentencing Stone to serve 3 years in jail for various offenses, including lying under oath to Congress, Jackson stated: In government inquiries, “the truth still exists. The ...
Immigration Interventionism by Jacob G. Hornberger February 20, 2020 Ludwig von Mises pointed out that one government intervention into economic activity inevitably leads to another intervention, which then leads to more and more interventions. That’s because the first intervention inevitably produces problems, which then require another intervention to fix those problems. That new intervention then produces a set of new problems, which then necessitates new interventions. The process ...
Drug War Obtuseness by Jacob G. Hornberger February 19, 2020 Sometimes I wonder how super-smart people can be so obtuse when it comes to the drug war. A recent example of this phenomenon is Ioan Grillo, a contributing editor for the New York Times. Grillo is the author of two books on the drug war: El Narco: Inside Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency, which was translated into five languages and was ...
Has the Constitution Failed? by Jacob G. Hornberger February 18, 2020 Given the massive welfare-warfare state system under which Americans live, the natural assumption is that the Constitution failed in its mission to constrain the powers of the federal government. Actually, though, that isn’t the case. How, then, can these two points be reconciled? How can the Constitution be said to have succeeded in its mission given that, at the same time, ...
The CIA’s Role in Operation Condor by Jacob G. Hornberger February 17, 2020 The Washington Post is reporting today that top secret documents confirm the role that the CIA played in Operation Condor, the international state-sponsored assassination, kidnapping, torture, and murder ring run by U.S.-supported military dictatorships in South America in the late 1970s. The documents confirm that the CIA’s role in the operation was to provide communications ...
Socialism in Education by Jacob G. Hornberger February 14, 2020 It would be virtually impossible to find a better example of socialism here in the United States than the public schooling systems that exist in every U.S. state. Ironically, it is this socialist system that is primarily responsible for the widespread belief among non-libertarians that “the United States has never been a socialist country,” as New York ...
Socialism in America, 31 Years Ago by Jacob G. Hornberger February 13, 2020 In my article “A Life of the Lie on Socialism,” I pointed out that one of the big challenges we libertarians face is the fact that so many Americans are still suffering from the indoctrination that has led them to falsely believe that the welfare-warfare state serfdom under which we live is “freedom” and “free enterprise.” I cited an ...
A Life of the Lie on Socialism by Jacob G. Hornberger February 12, 2020 A contributing opinion writer for the New York Times, Timothy Egan, reflects one of the major problems we libertarians face in America: a life of the lie, a life that embraces a false reality. This life of self-deception is not intentional. It is entirely unwitting. Nonetheless, it is a root cause of much of the dysfunctional nature of American ...
Brain Injuries from Interventionism by Jacob G. Hornberger February 11, 2020 The number of U.S. soldiers who have suffered traumatic brain injuries from the Iranian missile attack last month in Iraq has now risen to more than 100. The injuries demonstrate the sheer inanity of foreign interventionism. The Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises pointed out that when a government intervenes in economic affairs, the intervention inevitably produces a bad result, which ...
U. S. Lies and Deaths in Afghanistan by Jacob G. Hornberger February 10, 2020 Last December the Washington Post published secret Pentagon documents showing the official lies that have undergirded the U.S. war on Afghanistan for the past 18 years. The opening paragraph of the article puts the matter bluntly: “A confidential trove of government documents obtained by The Washington Post reveals that senior U.S. officials failed to tell the truth about the ...
Social Security Insults the Young by Jacob G. Hornberger February 6, 2020 Contrary to popular opinion, especially among seniors, Social Security is not a retirement program. There is no fund into which people have been contributing their money. Instead, from the very beginning Social Security has been nothing more than a welfare program, one in which the federal government taxes younger people and gives the money to seniors. The question, of course, ...
Should the State Mandate Tipping? by Jacob G. Hornberger February 5, 2020 When I was in law school, I waited tables in a restaurant in Texas for a couple of months. The tips were good, but every once in while a customer would stiff me. The customer would be nice and friendly and never complain about the service but then just walk out of the restaurant without leaving a tip. It ...
