For Love of the State by Scott McPherson May 9, 2003 On April 25, the Washington Times ran a front-page story titled, Ashcroft asserts right to hold illegals, Says indefinite detentions aids security. And, with a taste for irony that couldnt possibly have been intentional, the Times ran an op-ed on the same day, by Jerome Cohen of the Council on Foreign Relations, and Jared Genser, president of Freedom Now, titled ...
Backpedaling on Iraqi Weapons by Sheldon Richman May 3, 2003 The campaign of deception continues, but the handwriting is on the wall. President Bush himself now says that so-called weapons of mass destruction may never be found in Iraq. But hes not yet willing to concede that perhaps Saddam Hussein was telling the truth when he said he had none. ...
Joining the Ranks of Aggressor Nations by Jacob G. Hornberger May 2, 2003 It really doesn’t matter whether U.S. military forces now find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq or not. From a moral standpoint, it’s too late for that. As everyone knows, in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, President Bush provided several justifications for the invasion, and people were ...
Economic Liberty and the Constitution, Part 12 by Jacob G. Hornberger May 1, 2003 Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Table of Contents Elsie Parrish, a chambermaid at the Cascadian Hotel in ...
An American Empire! If You Want It instead of Freedom, Part 2 by Richard M. Ebeling May 1, 2003 Part 1 | Part 2 Also making a case for an imperial role for the United States is Deepak Lal, professor of international development studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. Lal has long been a leading opponent of central planning and regulation in developing countries and a strong advocate of free markets and competition. On October 30, ...
Concentric Circles by Sheldon Richman May 1, 2003 Libertarians are always happy to get noticed in the mainstream media. It happens so seldom. But not all attention is good attention, even when it’s sympathetic. Susan Lee, of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, teaches this lesson in her article on the newspaper’s editorial page of February 12. Ominously titled “Sex, Drugs and Rock ’n’ Roll,” Lee’s article pays ...
Bush at War by James Bovard May 1, 2003 This article was posted March 5, 2003. Bob Woodward, the famed Watergate investigator and now a senior editor at the Washington Post, was granted unprecedented access to George W. Bush and to some of the top players in his administration in the wake of September 11. The result is a new book — ...
Free-Market Environmentalism by Bart Frazier May 1, 2003 One of the most important lessons that economics teaches is that incentives matter. Economics is not a field that is normally associated with the environmental movement, but the recognition of the importance of incentives has led to a schism in the movement between those environmentalists who turn to the state to protect the environment and those who instead rely ...
Étienne de La Boétie, Part 2 by Wendy McElroy May 1, 2003 Part 1 | Part 2 The beginning of a tyrant’s rule was the most difficult period because those who had not consented to his rule would obey reluctantly, and brute force might be necessary. Brute force could put down dissent in the short term but it was never a good option. Violence bred martyrs, it increased popular resistance against ...
A Historian Looks at Tax Havens by Charles Adams May 1, 2003 The recent attack on tax havens by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has depicted about 20–30 countries, called tax havens, as destructive of the high tax systems of the world, especially Europe. The OECD argues that its members should gang up on these nations and shut down their financial centers unless ...
Book Review: Bad Neighbor Policy by Richard M. Ebeling May 1, 2003 Bad Neighbor Policy: Washington’s Futile War on Drugs in Latin America by Ten Galen Carpenter (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003); 282 pages; $24.95. The U.S. government’s war on drugs has been going on since 1914, when new federal regulations were imposed making many narcotics illegal. Through most of the 19th century, opium and cocaine were obtainable legally from pharmacies with few ...
Building Democracy in Iraq by Sheldon Richman May 1, 2003 So the Bush administration is going to bring democracy to Iraq. Leaving aside the dubious connection between democracy and freedom (it wasnt Operation Iraqi Democracy), theres a rather large potential problem in realizing that ambition: what if the Iraqis want to do something contrary to the administrations wishes? Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has already declared that the U.S. government ...