Beware the Conservationists by Jacob G. Hornberger March 21, 2010 When politicians and political activists talk about conservation, I know I am about to be mugged. New calls for conservation have come out of the power fiasco in California. The great urban legend of our time is that California’s problem resulted from deregulation of electricity. That’s a laugh. What kind of deregulation would include control of retail prices, forced sale of generating plants, bans on long-term wholesale contracts, and environmental regulations that preclude the building of new generating capacity in the face of a doubling of demand? There’s an inversion Orwell didn’t think of. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Regulation is deregulation. The opinion molders, however, have been able to shape public discussion so effectively that the average person apparently believes that California is suffering blackouts because of free ...
Is “the Environment” a Collectivist Idea? by Sheldon Richman February 1, 2006 No issue has been more prominent the last several decades than “the environment.” Almost every day a new environmental “threat” arises, spelling the end of life as we know it, if not literally. We are being poisoned by polluted water and air; man-made carcinogens hide in our food; our ozone protection from the sun is eroding. And then there’s the Big One: global warming dooms us in any number of ways. It’s hardly an exaggeration to say that virtually every ill today is blamed on the greenhouse effect on the climate. The newest danger is that because of the man-made climate change, less warm tropical water is moving to northern Europe. That’s right: global warming somehow is causing northern Europe to cool. Go figure. The idea of a mounting environmental catastrophe ought to be harder to maintain in light of the fact that people throughout the world are living longer, healthier lives. Six billion people live better than a billion ...
An Open Letter to Russell Kirk by Jacob G. Hornberger April 1, 1990 Friends of mine recently shared with me your two articles, "Libertarians: The Chirping Sectaries" and "A Dispassionate Assessment of Libertarians." In these articles, you claimed that an unbridgeable gulf separated the moral and philosophical positions of conservatives and libertarians. You concluded, therefore, that there was little hope for these two groups to form a united front against the over-arching state in America. While I have only the utmost regard for your scholarship and your dedication to the principles of freedom, I firmly believe that much of what you wrote in your articles is erroneous. In the hope that you, and perhaps other conservatives, might re-examine and re-consider some of your antipathies towards libertarians and libertarianism, I am writing to share my thoughts with you. In so doing, I believe that it is ...
An Open Letter to Russell Kirk by Jacob G. Hornberger March 21, 2010 Friends of mine recently shared with me your two articles, "Libertarians: The Chirping Sectaries" and "A Dispassionate Assessment of Libertarians." In these articles, you claimed that an unbridgeable gulf separated the moral and philosophical positions of conservatives and libertarians. You concluded, therefore, that there was little hope for these ...
The Failure of the Republican “Revolution,” Part 1 by Jacob G. Hornberger February 1, 1996 Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 There have been four significant non-violent revolutions in American history: the Revolution in 1776, the Industrial Revolution in the 1800s, the constitutional amendments of 1913, and ...
The Conservative Descent into Moral Bankruptcy by Jacob G. Hornberger October 1, 2001 Nineteen ninety and 1991 were critical years for conservatives, years that accelerated their decades-long descent into moral bankruptcy. The Berlin Wall came down in 1990, signaling the end of the Soviet Empire. The Persian Gulf War ended in 1991. It is impossible to overstate the radical nature of the philosophy ...
Bush Countenances Middle East Violence by Sheldon Richman July 21, 2006 The administration of George W. Bush has done some contemptible things in its five and a half years, but what it’s doing now in the Middle East could be a new low. Innocent civilians are dying in Lebanon and Israel, but the administration’s position is that the time is ...
The Moral Rot of Middle East Intervention by Jacob G. Hornberger July 28, 2006 Of one thing we can be certain after decades of the U.S. government’s interventionist foreign policy in the Middle East: it has not brought peace to that part of the world. Another thing we can be certain of: the federal government’s interventionist foreign policy is at the center of the ...
Clinton’s Job Performance Puzzle by Sheldon Richman August 1, 1998 The pundits are bewildered over the public's apparently contradictory response to President Clinton during his recent troubles. Most people have a low opinion of his character. Yet at least 60 percent of those polled think he's doing a terrific job and should not resign. How can this be? Assuming the polling ...
FDR – The Man, the Leader, the Legacy, Part 2 by Ralph Raico May 1, 1998 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 Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, whom Franklin took as his wife ...
FDR – The Man, the Leader, the Legacy, Part 5 by Ralph Raico November 1, 1998 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 As he was constitutionally mandated to do, Woodrow Wilson ...
A Different Look at World War II by Jacob G. Hornberger August 1, 2001 Prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, although many people supported giving aid to England, most Americans opposed entry into the war against the Nazis. Americans still remembered the ravages of World War I (“the war to end all wars”), when American soldiers were drafted and sent ...
