Hornberger's Blog

Conservatives Are a Disaster on the Cuban Embargo

by Jacob G. Hornberger July 8, 2014

A classic example of what a disaster conservatives are when it comes to the U.S. embargo against Cuba is found in an article entitled “Lift the Embargo – But Liberate Cuba First” by Jeff Jacoby, which is posted on Townhall.com, a premier conservative website. Like most other conservatives, Jacoby supports the continuation of the U.S. embargo against Cuba so ...

A Perfect Racket

by Jacob G. Hornberger July 7, 2014

As the continuing debate about the NSA’s massive surveillance scheme continues, let’s not forget the justification that the NSA relies on to justify its scheme. The NSA says that its scheme is necessary to protect the United States from “terrorists.” Why is it important that we keep that in mind? Because it’s the U.S. government that is the cause of the ...

Libertarians Are the Real Fourth of July Patriots

by Jacob G. Hornberger July 4, 2014

Today, Independence Day, we will be treated to all sorts of paeans to the military, the CIA, and other parts of the U.S. national-security state. We will especially be exhorted to praise and thank the troops for defending our rights and freedoms in foreign countries thousands of miles away. All this devotion to big government, militarism, standing armies, empire, ...

Needed: A U.S. Truth Commission on Horman and Teruggi

by Jacob G. Hornberger July 3, 2014

For the past several years, the Chilean and Argentine people have been confronting their dark pasts under military dictatorships during the 1970s. They have been conducting official investigations into the dirty wars the dictatorships waged under the guise of a “war on communism” and a “war on terrorism,” including disappearances, kidnappings, incarcerations, torture, rapes, executions, secret prisons, and assassinations. Among ...

The U.S. National-Security State’s Murder of Two Americans

by Jacob G. Hornberger July 2, 2014

A Chilean court ruled this week that the U.S. national-security state conspired to murder American citizens Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi in Chile in 1973. The brutal act occurred during the violent military coup in which the Chilean military, with the full support of the U.S. government, ousted the democratically elected president of the country, Salvador Allende, and ...

Catholics, Libertarians, and Statism

by Jacob G. Hornberger July 1, 2014

This is the final segment of my series on Catholics and Libertarians, which I have written in response to a conference at the Catholic University of America entitled “Erroneous Authority: The Catholic Case Against Libertarianism.” The other six segments are posted at the end of this article. So, the question naturally arises: What are statists and statism? A statist is ...

Catholics, Libertarians, and the Poor

by Jacob G. Hornberger June 30, 2014

In a previous post in this series, I detailed the hypocrisy that pervades statists with respect to the poor. While they claim to love the poor, needy, and disadvantaged, they abuse, mistreat, insult, incarcerate, round up, fine, and deport undocumented immigrants, who are among the poorest people in the world, people who are just following the God-given drive ...

Catholics, Libertarians, and Foreign Policy

by Jacob G. Hornberger June 27, 2014

It would be difficult to find a better example of the difference between statists and libertarians than foreign policy. It is this realm that confronts the Catholic with an extremely important choice: “Will I exercise the free will that God has given me by choosing to participate in or support a direct violation of God’s sacred commandment — Thou ...

Catholics, Libertarians, and Foreign Aid

by Jacob G. Hornberger June 26, 2014

Here are the links to the first three articles in this series, which is being published in response to a recent conference at the Catholic University of America entitled “Erroneous Autonomy: The Catholic Case Against Libertarianism”: Catholics, Libertarians, and Coerced Charity by Jacob G. Hornberger Catholics, Libertarians, and the Drug War by Jacob G. Hornberger Catholics, Libertarians, and ...

Catholics, Libertarians, and Immigration

by Jacob G. Hornberger June 25, 2014

This week, I have been focusing on why Catholics who wish to remain true to Christian principles should be libertarians rather than statists. This series of articles is in response to an conference recently held at the Catholic University of America entitled “Erroneous Authority: The Catholic Case Against Libertarianism.” In the first two segments of this series, I focused ...

Catholics, Libertarians, and the Drug War

by Jacob G. Hornberger June 24, 2014

In my blog post of yesterday, I asked how any Catholic, in good conscience, could choose to embrace statism rather than libertarianism, given statism’s embrace of coerced charity, a concept that denigrates and destroys God’s great gift of free will. This was in response to a conference recently held at the Catholic University of America entitled “Erroneous ...

Catholics, Libertarians, and Coerced Charity

by Jacob G. Hornberger June 23, 2014

A few weeks ago, the Institute for Policy Research & Catholic Studies at the Catholic University of America hosted a conference entitled, “Erroneous Autonomy: The Catholic Case Against Libertarianism. Unfortunately, I learned about the conference too late to attend, but for the life of me I cannot understand how a Catholic can be anything but a libertarian. Let’s consider, first ...