Gun-Ban Shenanigans at the UN by James Bovard January 1, 2002 LAST JULY 9, the United Nations Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects convened in New York. To celebrate the event, the UN and several member governments held public bonfires of guns. The mere sight of gun bonfires was supposed to somehow convince people that the United Nations would protect them. ...
Declare War before Waging War, Part 1 by Doug Bandow January 1, 2002 Part 1 | Part 2 LIKE MOST CRISES, the shocking attack on the World Trade Center caused a rush to government for protection. People seemed willing to accept almost any new restriction on liberty or new spending program in the name of fighting terrorism. Few seem willing to criticize the president should he decide to expand the war to Indonesia, ...
What Good Are Regulations? by Jacob G. Hornberger January 1, 2002 Have you ever noticed how advocates of the regulated society never admit that their regulations have failed? Consider the Enron case, in which one of the biggest companies in the United States has gone belly up as a result of questionable financial practices. I thought the purpose of government regulation was ...
Book Review: Fool’s Errands by Richard M. Ebeling January 1, 2002 Fool’s Errands: America’s Recent Encounters with Nation Building by Gary T. Dempsey with Roger W. Fontaine (Washington, D. C.: Cato Institute, 2001); 224 pages; $19.95 THE CONCEPT OF “nation building” became widely used in the 1960s as a growing number of former European colonies around the world were given independence. The concept was most frequently applied in the context of Africa. ...
Military Tribunals: Another Step Away from Our Principles by Jacob G. Hornberger December 29, 2001 President Bush's plan to form military tribunals to punish suspected terrorists is one more step away from the civilized principles of constitutional government and the rule of law that have long distinguished the United States from other nations in history. The president's tribunals would apply to two classes of accused terrorists: those captured as part of ...
A Victory for Freedom by Jacob G. Hornberger December 22, 2001 Kudos to President Bush and Attorney General Ashcroft for ultimately deciding to comply with the Constitution in the U.S. government's prosecution of suspected terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui, who is accused of having participated in the September 11 attacks. Bush and Ashcroft had threatened to try Moussaoui before a secret military tribunal whose Star Chamber and ...
The Ultimate Tragedy by Sheldon Richman December 22, 2001 It will be the ultimate tragedy for the American people if our rational desire for justice -- even vengeance -- is transmogrified into an undated blank check to our government officials. The violence that such a thing would inflict on American society would not be of the metaphorical variety. It would be real, and the ...
The Implications of Forfeiting Our Freedoms Today by Richard M. Ebeling December 20, 2001 We are witnessing in America today the consequences from a weakened appreciation of the purposes and importance of this constitutional order under the emotional shock of a terrible and evil act on September 11, 2001. Our fear and anger is clouding our reason, a reason that should guide us to first think whether the individual ...
The Free Market Is Indomitable by Sheldon Richman December 15, 2001 Deep in the November 14 New York Times report on the liberation of Kabul there was this perhaps little-noticed paragraph: "Food appeared plentiful. A central market that lines the road leading into the city had large amounts of fresh meat for sale, fruit juices from Iran and even Coca-Cola, a testament to the strength of ...
A Foreign-Policy Primer for Children: The Fable of the Hornets by Jacob G. Hornberger December 15, 2001 Once upon a time in a faraway land there was a happy and prosperous village filled with industrious and fun-loving people. To protect the villagers from occasional thieves and marauders, the village council had hired a policeman named Oscar. One day Oscar got bored and took a long walk into the woods, where he discovered some ...
The White Rose: Dissent and Justice in Wartime Germany by Jacob G. Hornberger December 3, 2001 Justice was swift in the case of Hans and Sophie Scholl and their best friend, Christoph Probst. Only four days after they were arrested and accused of treason in the midst of World War II, they were put on trial before the special "People’s Court" that the Nazi regime had established in 1934, during the ...
Half a Win Is Better than None by Sheldon Richman December 1, 2001 Fans of the Second Amendment are rejoicing because a federal appellate court has affirmed that the right to keep and bear arms belongs to individuals, not collectives. Anyone who can read plain English already knew that. But now we have a U.S. appellate court saying so. That can't hurt.