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Order by Agreements or by Iron Fists

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In his 1651 classic, Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes warned: "To obey the King who is God's lieutenant, is the same as to obey God. We shall have no peace till we have absolute obedience." Many contemporary statists share Hobbes's assumption that near-total control is the only way to avoid near-certain destruction — that without a policeman, a bureaucrat, and a politician watching over their every move, citizens would beat their wives, starve their children, poison their customers, and blow up city hall. Supposedly, it is only the restraining hand of government that prevents the total dissolution of civilization, and the more power the restraining hand possesses, the safer civilization becomes. How much subjugation is necessary to preserve civil peace? At what point do force and threat of force subvert order? French philosopher Pierre Bayle wrote, "It is not tolerance, ...

The Causes and Consequences of World War II, Part 3

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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 In 1945, Nazi totalitarianism was destroyed by the military might of the wartime allies. But within a few months of victory, our comrade-in-arms, "Uncle Joe" Stalin (as he was affectionately referred to by President Franklin Roosevelt), was making it clear that the postwar period would not be an era of global peace and international harmony. Within months of the German surrender, Stalin was tightening his grip on the Eastern European countries that had been "liberated" by the Red Army. There would be no free elections, no democratic pluralism, no market economies in the nations now in Moscow's orbit. By 1948, with the communist coup in Czechoslovakia, every one of the Eastern European countries had been turned into a socialist "People's Republic." We now know that this was Stalin's intention from the beginning, despite the promises he gave to President Roosevelt at the Yalta Conference in February 1945. In early April 1945, less ...

American Foreign Policy — The Turning Point, 1898–1919, Part 1

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American Foreign Policy — The Turning Point, 1898–1919 Part 1 by Ralph Raico, February 1995 Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 With the end of the twentieth century rapidly approaching, this is a time to look back and gain some perspective on where we stand as a nation. Were the Founding Fathers somehow to return, they would find it impossible to recognize our political system. The major cause of this transformation has been America's involvement in war and preparation for war over the past hundred years. War has warped our constitutional order, the course of our national development, and the very mentality of our people. The process of distortion started about a century ago, when certain fateful steps were taken that in time altered fundamentally the character of our republic. One idea of America was abandoned and another took its place, although no conscious, deliberate decision was ever made. Eventually, this change affected ...

Covering the Map of the World — The Half-Century Legacy of the Yalta Conference, Part 2

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On the evening of February 8, 1945-the fifth day of the Yalta Conference — the Big Three — Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin — adjourned from the official meetings of the day and gathered for a formal dinner, hosted by Stalin, at Koreis Villa. In his account of the conference, Roosevelt and the Russians, Secretary of State ...

Covering the Map of the World — The Half-Century Legacy of the Yalta Conference, Part 6

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In 1940, the Japanese consul general in Harbin, Manchuria, intercepted several messages sent from the Soviet foreign minister, Vyacheslav Molotov, to the Soviet ambassador in Tokyo. In one of these messages, Molotov told his ambassador: "We concluded an 'Agreement with Germany' because a war is required in Europe" between the capitalist nations, to open the door for the future ...