Foreign Policy & War

Conservatives Flunk Logic

by Sheldon Richman June 4, 2007

“Hello. I’m from the government and I’m here to help you.” Conservatives love to use this line to mock the idea that government can do constructive things for you. Nothing gets a bigger laugh at conservative gatherings. The sentence has two meanings. First, it makes fun of the notion that politicians have ...

Saving the Republic, Resisting the Imperial Temptation (video)

by Doug Bandow June 2, 2007

Doug Bandow is a Washington-based political writer and policy analyst and Robert A. Taft Fellow with the American Conservative Defense Alliance. He served as a special assistant to President Ronald Reagan and as a senior policy analyst in the 1980 Reagan for President campaign. He has been widely published in leading newspapers and periodicals and has appeared on numerous radio ...

An Imperial Presidency, Part 1

by Gregory Bresiger June 1, 2007

Part 1 | Part 2   Congress has the power “To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water....”   — U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 8 The doctrine of energy in government, as I said before, ...

The Case for an America-First Foreign Policy (Video)

by Ralph Raico June 1, 2007

Ralph Raico on "The Case for an America-First Foreign Policy" at the Future of Freedom Foundation's Restoring the Republic, 2007.

The Diagnosis of a Dying Republic, Part 1

by Anthony Gregory June 1, 2007

Part 1 | Part 2 Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic by Chalmers Johnson (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006), 368 pages; $26. About 10 years ago, we libertarians were accustomed to hearing constitutionalist conservatives voicing our shared concern about the American ...

Why Ron Paul’s Answer Terrifies Them

by Jacob G. Hornberger May 23, 2007

In one short answer to a moderator’s question in the South Carolina debate in which Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul suggested that U.S. foreign policy motivated the 9/11 terrorists, Paul produced an earthquake that is shaking the Republican establishment. The chairman of the Michigan Republican Party proposed banning Paul from future ...

Thank You, Ron Paul

by Sheldon Richman May 18, 2007

Ron Paul, a Republican congressman running for president, is saying what needs to be said about the 9/11 attacks and the Iraq war. Clearly, his rivals and the news media can’t handle the truth. At the most recent Republican debate Paul not only repeated his opposition to the illegal and unconstitutional war, ...

Giuliani’s Attack on Ron Paul Falls Flat

by Jacob G. Hornberger May 16, 2007

Ron Paul once again roiled Republican presidential politics on the issue of foreign policy during last night’s debate, finishing second in the post-debate poll conducted by Fox News and first in the poll conducted by MSNBC. Pointing out that U.S. foreign policy is the root cause of the anger and hatred that ...

Empire or Freedom?

by Jacob G. Hornberger May 1, 2007

The 9/11 attacks brought to the surface a dilemma that everyone, especially libertarians, must now confront: whether to choose a pro-empire, pro-intervention foreign policy or a free society. No one can deny that we now live in a country in which the president, on his own initiative, has the omnipotent power to send the nation into war against any country ...

What the Warfare State Really Costs

by Thomas E. Woods Jr. May 1, 2007

Estimates of the cost of the Iraq war continue to escalate to levels well beyond what its optimistic architects once promised. Most notable, perhaps, has been the estimate of Columbia University’s Joseph Stiglitz, who, in a January 2006 paper with Harvard’s Linda Bilmes, put the full cost at around $2 trillion. ...

Preventing Opposition to War

by Sheldon Richman April 13, 2007

The idea, discussed by me and others, that it is good that most Americans are not directly touched by the President Bush’s wars is of course not the whole story. Our rulers could have forced us to be more involved. They could have passed a special war tax, launched a high-profile “Buy ...

Thank Goodness We Can Ignore the Wars

by Sheldon Richman March 28, 2007

New York Times foreign-affairs columnist Thomas Friedman laments that most Americans are disengaged from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. During a recent radio appearance, Friedman cited comedian Bill Maher’s complaint that “the enemy” has had to fight only 140,000 Americans rather than all 300 million of us. You hear this a ...