Thank Goodness We Can Ignore the Wars by Sheldon Richman March 28, 2007 New York Times foreign-affairs columnist Thomas Friedman laments that most Americans are disengaged from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. During a recent radio appearance, Friedman cited comedian Bill Maher’s complaint that “the enemy” has had to fight only 140,000 Americans rather than all 300 million of us. You hear this a lot. Commentators seem to long for World War II, when “the whole country was at war.” They criticize President Bush for letting most Americans shirk their responsibility. When he’s queried about what sacrifices he’s asked of the American people, Bush says they have forgone peace of mind and paid higher gasoline prices. Naturally, this does not satisfy his critics. Let me suggest that Friedman and Maher couldn’t be more wrong. (Neither could Bush, of course.) It is a good thing that the current wars are not total ...
Bush and Chavez: A Marriage Made in Hell by Sheldon Richman March 12, 2007 If President Bush didn’t exist, Hugo Chavez would have to invent him. Chavez, of course, is the dictator-president of Venezuela who in recent months has taken steps to centralize control of the country’s economy. His accumulation of power is based on the need to resist U.S. hegemony. Some people think that his goading of Bush — for example, calling him a “devil” at the UN — shows he’s crazy, but that is plain wrong. We’ll never understand people if we attribute their actions to insanity. Chavez is crazy like a fox — he knows the formula for success: portray oneself as the valiant resister of U.S. power. George W. Bush seems willing to accommodate Chavez by continuing the American tradition of treating Latin America like a backyard. This is epitomized by the U.S. policy of pressuring Latin American countries ...
Clinton’s Job Performance Puzzle by Sheldon Richman August 2, 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 results are accurate, it may be possible to make sense of this strange combination of opinions. First, we can dismiss the theory that most Americans are cynics who care about nothing but money. Of course, they do value the economic well-being of themselves and their families. No one should object to that. Contrary to the pundits, who make their living writing and chattering about government, the world does not revolve around Washington, D.C. The rest of us know there are more important things than government. Nevertheless, Americans do think character is important. That's why they frown on ...
The Failed Attempt to Leash the Dogs of War by Bart Frazier December 1, 2006 Of the many powers that government is granted, none has more potential for disaster than the power to wage war. Not only does warfare cost a country in terms of lost lives, it also has detrimental effects on the economy and society itself. In order to keep the country out of senseless and unjust ...
Thinking about Foreign Policy by Sheldon Richman December 1, 2006 The reason there is so much sloppy thinking about foreign policy among libertarians (not to mention nearly everyone else) is that most people don’t know how to approach the subject. You can see this whenever someone uses analogies such as the bully on a playground or the madman with a baby ...
Emergencies: The Breeding Ground of Tyranny by William L. Anderson November 1, 2006 When the New York Times recently reported that the Bush administration was routinely tracking international and domestic financial transactions, the president said he was doing these things under emergency powers granted to him by Congress. While many commentators have openly questioned the legality of Bush’s actions, there are deeper questions to be asked than simply “Is this legal?” Indeed, as ...
Killing in the Name of Democracy by James Bovard June 1, 2006 President George W. Bush perpetually invokes the goal of spreading democracy to sanctify his foreign policy. Unfortunately, he is only the latest in a string of presidents who cloaked aggression in idealistic rhetoric. Killing in the name of democracy has a long and sordid history. The U.S. government’s first experience with forcibly spreading democracy came in the wake of the ...
Why They Hate Us by Jacob G. Hornberger February 13, 2006 When U.S. officials condemn the violence arising out of the anti-Mohammed cartoons published by the European press, they fail to recognize that the anger in the Middle East goes a lot deeper than the adverse reaction to the cartoons reflects. For example, read the transcript of the federal court sentencing ...
Where Are the Isolationists? by Sheldon Richman February 6, 2006 President Bush’s State of the Union address was one odd speech indeed. Besides his silly statement about our being “addicted to oil” and his messianic declarations in response to the “call of history,” he referred to isolationism four different times. Who favors isolationism? That of course depends on what it means. The ...
Hate-Crime Laws Threaten Our Liberty by Jeffrey A. Singer February 1, 2000 Recent front-page news stories about racist gunmen attacking innocent minorities in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas have led to calls for new federal hate-crime legislation, and for the expansion of hate-crime laws already on the books in many states. In short, these laws place additional penalties on those found guilty of committing a ...
The Hero’s Hero by Sheldon Richman March 2, 2000 We can judge a person by his heroes. John McCain would no doubt agree. Revealingly, the hero McCain most often invokes is Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt, a Progressive Republican, was a key figure in America's passage from a Jeffersonian republic to a Hamiltonian despotism. He embodied the late-19th- and early-20th-century vision in which the citizen is ...
The Hero’s Hero by Future of Freedom Foundation April 2, 2010 We can judge a person by his heroes. John McCain would no doubt agree. Revealingly, the hero McCain most often invokes is Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt, a Progressive Republican, was a key figure in America's passage from a Jeffersonian republic to a Hamiltonian despotism. He embodied the late-19th- and early-20th-century vision in ...
