Hornberger's Blog

Pardon Martha Stewart and Joseph Nacchio

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 28, 2014

The Get Out of Jail Free card that the Justice Department has given to national-security state official James R. Clapper can’t help to bring to mind what the feds did to Martha Stewart. Clapper commits perjury before Congress and nothing happens to him. Stewart lies to some federal agent when she’s not even under oath and she’s indicted, prosecuted, convicted, and ...

A Misguided Attack on The Future of Freedom Foundation

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 27, 2014

In an article at PJMedia.com, writer Keith Farrell suggests that libertarians should support foreign interventionism and specifically takes The Future of Freedom Foundation and LewRockwell.com to task for opposing foreign interventionism. Acknowledging that some U.S. interventions have proven to be absolute disasters, Farrell feels that libertarians should nonetheless be supporting U.S. foreign interventionism in selected cases. Farrell is wrong. ...

Ukraine and the Deferential Press

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 26, 2014

One of the distinguishing characteristics between libertarian commentators and the mainstream statist press is, once again, on display in the latest crisis, this one between President Obama and Russian President Putin. You see the standard knee-jerk rally to the government on the part of the mainstream press  while, at the same time, you see independent, critical analysis on the ...

Morsi, Allende, and Kennedy

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 25, 2014

Portuguese The military coup in Egypt provides a fascinating insight into the mindsets of the national-security establishments in both Egypt and the United States. After all, don’t forget: It has been the U.S. national-security state that has, over the decades, funded, built up, fortified, trained, and closely worked with the Egyptian military-intelligence establishment. Thus, it should come ...

Let’s Raise Our Vision to a Higher Level

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 24, 2014

Given the myriad problems afflicting America under the welfare-warfare state way of life, the American people living today have a choice: They can continue devoting their efforts to coming up with reforms in the hopes of fixing all those problems, or they can raise their vision to a higher level and lead the world out of the statist morass ...

Drug Warriors Just Don’t Get It

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 21, 2014

Portuguese U.S. Marine Corps General John F. Kelly, commanding general of the U.S. Southern Command, just doesn’t get it. Testifying before Congress, he lamented the movement toward legalizing drugs here in the United States. He suggested that Latin American officials, who have long been exhorted to fight the war on drugs, are losing faith in ...

Treating People Like Garbage

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 20, 2014

Portuguese As English colonists living in America understood, living under an empire is not a pleasant experience. Empire officials are inevitably arrogant, pretentious, pompous, haughty, big-headed, insufferable type of people. They believe that others should bow down them, pay them homage, and behave subserviently to them. American colonists, of course, haven’t been the only ones who have ...

Kennedy’s “Weakness” during the Cuban Missile Crisis Saved Our Lives

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 19, 2014

The Obama-Putin faceoff on Ukraine inevitably brings to mind the Kennedy-Khrushchev faceoff during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The confrontation between Kennedy and Khrushchev, of course, was much more dangerous given that it brought the United States and the Soviet Union to the brink of all-out nuclear war. But the two confrontations are similar with respect to the pressure brought ...

The Government’s Inflation Scam

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 18, 2014

What is happening in Argentina provides a valuable lesson in why governments in every country on earth control the education of the nation’s children. Argentina is suffering the ravages of government debasement of the currency — i.e., inflation, the process by which government pays for its ever-increasing debts and bills by simply printing more paper currency. The expanded money supply ...

Disband NATO

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 17, 2014

In a recent New York Times op-ed, John McCain, the man who hoped to be president, said that Russia’s invasion of Crimea has nothing to do with NATO expansion into Eastern Europe and the Balkans. Oh? Well, now, let’s see how McCain would be responding if the shoe were on the other foot. Let’s assume that when the Cold War ...

Why No More Talk about the Debt Ceiling?

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 14, 2014

Have you noticed that there’s no more talk about the debt ceiling? That’s because those congressional big spenders recently raised the debt ceiling to permit the feds to continue adding onto the mountain of federal debt that they’re piling on the backs of the American people for decades. Once the debt ceiling is lifted, all the talk about it ...

America’s Cold War Socialism

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 13, 2014

During the Cold War, the U.S. national security state — i.e., the military and CIA — used the dire threat of communism and socialism as a justification for its assassination program and its pro-coup program in Latin America and other parts of the world. Two notable examples were Guatemala and Chile. In both countries, the U.S. national-security state helped ...