The Drug War’s Immorality and Abject Failure by Anthony Gregory July 1, 2006 If the idea is to create a drug-free America, then we can safely say that after hundreds of billions of dollars spent, millions of arrests, and decades of escalating police and military efforts, the war on drugs is a complete failure. The reason is clear if you think about it. The ...
Better Surfing Comes with Property Rights by Bart Frazier July 1, 2006 Property rights have long been recognized as a cornerstone of individual liberty and economic prosperity. As long as people are secure in their right to use, alter, and trade their belongings as they see fit, freedom and an ever-increasing standard of living are the result. However, not all rights to property are clearly defined. When property rights are unclear ...
A Man’s Home Is His Castle by Wendy McElroy July 1, 2006 The Castle is a tacky tract house in Melbourne, Australia, where the quirky Kerrigans live in the firm belief that they are the luckiest family in the world. Their house is so close to the airport that planes almost scrape their roof. But instead of complaining, patriarch Darryl feels lucky to have such an up-close view of man’s conquest ...
Thank You … for a Free Market by Jacob G. Hornberger June 30, 2006 Have you ever noticed how often both sides to an economic transaction say, “Thank you” to each other? For example, when the cashier at the grocery store says to the customer, “Thank you,” more often than not the customer responds, “Thank you,” rather than “You’re welcome.” Why is this so? The reason has ...
Government Keeps People Poor by Sheldon Richman June 28, 2006 Washington reruns are boring. A Democrat beholden to Big Labor proposes an increase in the mandated minimum wage. Republicans beholden to Big (and small) Business defeat the bill. End of episode. Each side has thus reestablished its bona fides with its respective constituency and thus can return to what it really ...
Americans Should Be “Anti-American” by Sheldon Richman June 21, 2006 “The Iraq war has also made anti-Americanism respectable again, as it was during the Cold War but had not been since the demise of the Soviet Union.” Those words come from Robert Kagan of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace, writing in the June 18 issue of the Washington Post. In his article ...
Killing Iraqi Children by Jacob G. Hornberger June 19, 2006 In a short editorial, the Detroit News asked an interesting question: “Some war critics are suggesting Iraq terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi should have been arrested and prosecuted rather than bombed into oblivion. Why expose American troops to the danger of an arrest, when bombs work so well?” Here’s one possible ...
Is This Really War? by Sheldon Richman June 16, 2006 In 1985, Wilson Goode became the first U.S. mayor to bomb his own city. In an effort to rid a West Philadelphia neighborhood of a ragtag, violent, back-to-nature organization called Move, which had engaged in a shootout with police, Goode ordered explosives dropped on the Move house from a helicopter. ...
Zarqawi and the Drug War by Jacob G. Hornberger June 12, 2006 After several consecutive months of bad news for U.S. officials — the Marine massacre at Haditha, the disclosure of secret CIA renditions and torture camps in former Soviet-bloc countries, the weekly deaths of American troops, and the daily kidnappings, beheadings, and suicide bombs in Baghdad — U.S. officials and pro-occupation supporters received a big ...
Iraqi Death by Political Abstraction by Sheldon Richman June 5, 2006 Try as they might, apologists for the war in Iraq wont be convincing when they insist that, at worst, the Haditha incident (or was it a mishap?) was the unfortunate work of a few bad Marines. It was something much worse. When men trained to kill on a battlefield this wasnt the Salvation Army, after all are ordered into civilian ...
The Cowardice of the Conservative by Scott McPherson June 2, 2006 Conservatives are an interesting bunch. In a desperate attempt to differentiate themselves from liberals, they like to mock folks on the Left while talking as if they themselves were in agreement with libertarians. “I just vote Republican because they’re the lesser of two evils” is a common excuse for their continued support of that ...
Independent Migrants Have Rights Too by Sheldon Richman June 2, 2006 You’d never know it from the recent public discussion, but the people disparaged as “illegal aliens” — in fact they are independent migrants — have the same natural rights to life, liberty, and property that Americans have. As long as they violate no one else’s natural rights, they should be free ...