The Washington Post Is Wrong on Foreign Interventionism by Jacob G. Hornberger May 6, 2014 Last Sunday, the Washington Post published an editorial on U.S. foreign policy that would astound any self-respecting libertarian. It sure astounded me! I found the piece to be absolutely incredible. If that’s the best reasoning that interventionists can come up with to support the continuation of a foreign policy of militarism, interventionism, and empire, they could be in deep ...
Déjà Vu in Ukraine by Jacob G. Hornberger May 5, 2014 Pardon me, but I’m experiencing déjà vu with respect to Ukraine, specifically relating to the CIA. As everyone knows, the CIA’s business involves regime change, operations in which the CIA oftentimes secretly and surreptitiously ousts democratically elected regimes that are independent of or unfriendly to the U.S. government and replaces them with regimes that will do the bidding of the ...
The Cold War Continues Against Cuba by Jacob G. Hornberger May 2, 2014 Why in the world does the United States still maintain an economic embargo against Cuba? The popular answer is that a few Cuban-American members of Congress from Florida won’t permit Congress to lift the embargo. That excuse has always struck me as odd given that the congressmen who aren’t Cuban-Americans far outnumber those who are. There is another possibility — ...
What About Racism in Government Programs? by Jacob G. Hornberger May 1, 2014 With all the furor over racial bigotry stirred up by the Donald Stirling/Los Angeles Clippers controversy, my question is: How come all the people who condemn Stirling’s racial bigotry continue to support government programs that inflict great harm on African Americans? I’m referring in particular to three such programs: the drug war, minimum-wage laws, and occupational-licensure laws. While there are undoubtedly ...
Racial Bigotry and the Free Market by Jacob G. Hornberger April 30, 2014 Statists have long taken libertarians to task for opposing mandatory integration laws and defending the right of bigoted owners of business establishments to discriminate against people on the basis of race. They inevitably accuse of libertarians of being racists themselves or supporting racial bigotry by virtue of libertarian opposition to mandatory integration laws. What statists just don’t get, however, is: ...
Venezuela and Egypt by Jacob G. Hornberger April 29, 2014 It would be difficult to find a better example of U.S. government double-dealing and hypocrisy than U.S. foreign policy toward Venezuela and Egypt. The U.S. government funnels millions of dollars in foreign aid into both countries — aid that has been forcibly taken from the pockets of the American people by the Internal Revenue Service. In Venezuela, this is accomplished with ...
Drug-War Corruption by Jacob G. Hornberger April 28, 2014 It’s hard to conceive of a more corrupting government program than the drug war. It corrupts everything it touches. According to the Associated Press, a former sheriff’s commander in Hidalgo County, Texas, recently pled guilty to taking cash from an accused drug trafficker in return for advising him on what law enforcement was doing. The sheriff of Hidalgo County ...
Another Key to Higher Standards of Living by Jacob G. Hornberger April 25, 2014 In my blog post of yesterday, “The Reason for America’s Economic Decline,” I wrote about the critical importance of savings and capital to achieving a high standard of living, especially for those people at the bottom of the economic ladder. Today, I’d like to point out another key factor in raising people’s standard of living—trade. But before I do ...
The Reason for America’s Economic Decline by Jacob G. Hornberger April 24, 2014 The New York Times is reporting that “the American middle class, long the most affluent in the world, has lost that distinction…. After-tax middle-class incomes in Canada — substantially behind in 2000 — now appear to be higher than in the United States. The poor in much of Europe earn more than poor Americans.” Statists would argue that the ...
What about the U.S. Annexation of Mexico? by Jacob G. Hornberger April 23, 2014 Railing against Russia’s annexation of Crimea and vowing that the United States would never recognize Russia’s “illegal occupation,” Vice President Biden angrily exclaimed yesterday that “no nation has the right to simply grab land from another.” Oh? What about the U.S. government’s annexation of the northern half of Mexico or, to be more precise, the land grab that encompassed California, ...
Engendering Crises to Justify the National Security State by Jacob G. Hornberger April 22, 2014 The latest issue of Time magazine, one of the very models of the mainstream press, says it all: “NATO’s Back in Business, Thanks to Russia’s Threat to Ukraine.” The basic theme of the article is that we should be thankful that NATO didn’t go out of business when the Cold War ended. Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, the article ...
Operation Parrot and the Crisis in Ukraine by Jacob G. Hornberger April 21, 2014 One of the fascinating aspects of the crisis in Ukraine is the response of the mainstream media in both Russia and the United States. The response is precisely the same, with the press in each country offering unconditional support to the official line of its own government. The U.S. mainstream press pokes fun at the Russian mainstream press for ...
