Book Review: The Mind and the Market by Richard M. Ebeling June 1, 2003 The Mind and the Market: Capitalism in Modern European Thought by Jerry Z. Muller (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002); 487pages; $30. In the 1920s and 1930s, the well-known Italian classical-liberal historian Guglielmo Ferrero attempted to explain the reasons for the social disruptions and civil wars that European society had gone through from the time of the French Revolution in 1789. ...
What the Republicans Should Have Said by Scott McPherson May 28, 2003 According to the Washington Times, “Six Washington-area lawyers ... say they’d be happy to file suit against landlord ... who ... cited a prospective tenant’s Republican affiliation when rejecting request for housing.” “I assume someone will inform about the fair-housing laws,” one self-described ...
Phony-Baloney Constitutionalists by Sheldon Richman May 26, 2003 Conservatives favor strict construction of the U.S. Constitution. How do we know? They never stop telling us so. But judging by what they say about the late Iraq war, we may conclude that most conservatives are just phony-baloney constitutionalists. These politicians, such as Rep. J.D. Hayworth (R-Ariz.), and ...
Property Rights and the “Right of Return” by Richard M. Ebeling May 26, 2003 The Israeli government has been taking the position that any hope for a permanent peace settlement with the Palestinians must be preceded by a number of preconditions. One of the leading preconditions is that the Palestinian authority reject any claim for a “right of return.” What this refers to is the fact that, during the 1948 war ...
Moral Responsiblity for Iraqi Graves by Jacob G. Hornberger May 23, 2003 Given the failure of U.S. forces to find Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, the newest justification for the president’s invasion of Iraq has become the mass graves of Iraqis killed by Saddam Hussein’s forces after the Persian Gulf War in 1991. “If we hadn’t invaded,” the reasoning goes, “Saddam ...
Where are Saddam’s Weapons of Mass Destruction? by Jacob G. Hornberger May 23, 2003 The Mists of Falsehoods Wild Weapons Chase Iraqi Arsenal Now Seems a Phantom Menace Weapons Failure Weapons of Mass Doo-Daa The Absence of Weapons, and What It Means Something Fishy for Haddock WMD? MIA Bush's WMD ...
Better Late than Never on Sanctions by Sheldon Richman May 16, 2003 The Bush administration wants the United Nations to lift the economic sanctions against the now-Hussein-less Iraq because they impose cruel hardship on the Iraqi people. Better late than never. Some of us have been saying for years that the sanctions were a cruel and futile attempt to undermine Saddam Hussein’s regime ...
The O.P.S.B. by Jacob G. Hornberger May 16, 2003 Prior to and during President Bush's recent war on Iraq, there were multitudes of old American men (i.e., men more than 40 years old) who eagerly supported sending American troops into battle. Those American men who lacked the courage to “support the troops” in this way were denounced by ...
If They Hadn’t Been Breaking the Law, This Wouldn’t Have Happened by Jacob G. Hornberger May 16, 2003 The federal governments response to the deaths of those 18 illegal Latin American immigrants in South Texas was predictable because its the same response that the feds have made every time such a tragedy has occurred. The governments response: criticism, condemnation, and prosecution of either the immigrant for illegal entry or the transporter of the ...
Terrorism Déjà Vu in Saudi Arabia by Jacob G. Hornberger May 14, 2003 Monday’s terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia brings to mind the words of the famous New York Yankee catcher Yogi Berra: “It’s déjà vu all over again.” During the 1980s, Iraqi president Saddam Hussein was a friend and ally of the U.S. government, even to the extent that our own government authorized the delivery of weapons of ...
Leave Bill Bennett Alone by Scott McPherson May 9, 2003 Public revelations of former drug czar William J. Bennett’s penchant for high-stakes gambling has produced immediate reform for the Book of Virtues author: “It is true that I have gambled large sums of money.... I have done too much gambling, and this is not an example I wish to set. ...
Short-Sighted Bush by Sheldon Richman May 9, 2003 Advocates of big government sometimes say that politicians are superior to business people because the latter are shortsighted: they only care about the next quarter’s balance sheet. This was always nonsense, because while business has strong incentives to look farther up the road, politicians have little incentive to look beyond the next election. It turns out that ...