Politics

On Winning and Losing Wars

by Sheldon Richman July 25, 2008

The campaign of presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain has already gotten tedious. In a campaign appearance the other day, he said in his characteristically sanctimonious way, I had the courage and the judgment to say I would rather lose a political campaign than lose a war. It seems to me that Obama would rather lose a war in ...

Whats Wrong with Selling Your Vote?

by Sheldon Richman July 9, 2008

Poor Max Sanders. The 19-year-old University of Minnesota student faces five years in jail and a $10,000 fine; he is accused of putting his vote in the presidential election up for auction on eBay. He started the bidding at $10. The charge is bribery, treating, and soliciting. Im confused. Arent all our votes for sale? Each candidate tries to bribe ...

Reaching Out to the Left, Part 1: The Basics

by Anthony Gregory July 1, 2008

Part 1 | Part 2 Should libertarians reach out to the Left? Why might it be important? And what approach should we take in doing it? As libertarians, we have a goal of a freer world. Despite what some might think, the degree of human freedom in a society is not ...

On the Limits of Government, Part 1

by Scott McPherson July 1, 2008

Part 1 | Part 2 Where reason cannot instruct, custom may be permitted to guide; and every nation seems to consult the dictates of prudence, by a faithful attachment to those rites and opinions which have received the sanction of ages. — Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire A pillar of American constitutional ...

Barack Obama: The Peace Candidate?

by Sheldon Richman June 25, 2008

Why would anyone think that presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama is the peace candidate? True, before President Bush sent an invasion force to Iraq and before Obama was in the Senate, he made a speech saying intervention would be a mistake. But after the invasion, in 2004, he said he wasnt sure how he would have voted when the ...

Clinton and Obama Struggle for Power

by Sheldon Richman June 21, 2008

Many Americans are spellbound by the historic contest for the Democratic presidential nomination between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Forgetting the political context, it is indeed something spectacular, even inspiring. A woman and a black man have reached a pinnacle that just a few years ago seemed impossibly far off. If it were happening outside politics, it would be something ...

The New Politics: Squaring the Circle

by Sheldon Richman May 12, 2008

How many times will people be fooled by a presidential contenders claim that he is a new kind of politician? Sen. Barack Obama has made this the centerpiece of his campaign. He strives to hold himself above the partisan fray and talks about changing Washington. As a result, some people look on Obama as a savior who needs to be ...

One-Party System

by Sheldon Richman May 2, 2008

I can predict the winner of the presidential election even now: the government. In a one-party system, that's how things work. One-party system? Yes. The American political scene makes much more sense if you think of the two parties as two divisions of the same party. Admittedly that is hard to do at first. All American politics is presented as ...

George Bush, Big-Government Man

by Sheldon Richman April 14, 2008

In an unscripted and candid moment, a top spokesman for President-elect Barack Obama let the cat out of the bag. On Meet the Press, interviewer Tom Brokaw asked transition co-chair Valerie Jarrett, I wonder if, as a Democrat, which has always represented the party of big government, ... there will be a kind of paradigm shift this time, that ...

GOP Statists

by Sheldon Richman April 1, 2008

Any remaining pretense that the Republican Party is the party of free markets has been blown to smithereens in the election season. Even the lip service to free enterprise has become scarce, as the major candidates threw their arms around flagrantly statist economic proposals. This is vividly illustrated by the Bush-Pelosi “stimulus package,” which was ...

The Capsizing of American Democracy

by James Bovard April 1, 2008

American democracy is capsizing as a result of the vast increase in the number of government dependents and government employees. This has created a voting bloc that overwhelms every other potential force. H.L. Mencken quipped in the 1930s that the New Deal divided America into “those who work for a living and those who ...

The Demise of Conscience, Part 1

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 1, 2008

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 As libertarians have long pointed out, both the welfare state and the warfare state have brought immeasurable damage to our country. With its various programs of confiscatory taxation of income and capital to accomplish its coercive redistribution of wealth, the welfare state has brought standards of living lower than otherwise would ...