Ungovernable by Jacob G. Hornberger May 29, 2020 Notwithstanding all the death, violence, and corruption the U.S. government’s drug war has spawned in the United States, it has wreaked much more damage in Mexico. Since 2006, when Mexico began fiercely cracking down in the drug war at the behest of U.S. officials, the number of deaths and people who have disappeared because of the drug ...
Disingenuous Sympathy by Jacob G. Hornberger May 28, 2020 My article yesterday, “The Power of Military Indoctrination,” generated two different responses, not on the main thrust of the article but rather on the issue of sympathy. My article, for those who haven’t read it, detailed the grief that a young woman, Kelsey Baker, is suffering over the loss of her boyfriend, Diego ...
The Power of Military Indoctrination by Jacob G. Hornberger May 27, 2020 A sad article in the New York Times this week entitled “He Died at War. The Pandemic Gave Me Time to Grieve” by a young woman named Kelsey Baker is a testament to the success of the U.S. national-security establishment in indoctrinating soldiers and, well, lots of civilians as well. The article details Baker’s ...
Apology Day by Jacob G. Hornberger May 26, 2020 On Memorial Day yesterday, Americans were called upon to remember the American soldiers who have been killed in America’s many foreign wars. U.S. interventionists should have also used the day to apologize not only to the families of those veterans but also to the families who lost loved ones as a consequence of U.S. interventionism in their ...
How About Permanently Closing Public Schools? by Jacob G. Hornberger May 22, 2020 Amidst the death and suffering arising from the coronavirus crisis, people have an opportunity to ponder some important questions about life and liberty. One question arises in the context of when state and local officials should force children back into school: Why should the state be involved in education at all? Since all of us ...
Free Trade Raises Standards of Living by Jacob G. Hornberger May 20, 2020 I find it amazing that there are still people in life who favor trade restrictions and trade wars. If there is anything credible economists agree on, almost 145 years after the publication of Adam Smith’s treatise The Wealth of Nations, it is that free trade is a good thing. In every trade, both sides benefit. ...
Government Debt in Argentina and the U.S. by Jacob G. Hornberger May 19, 2020 Those who continue to celebrate the out-of-control spending, debt, and inflation spree on which U.S. officials have embarked should continue focusing on Argentina, a country whose government is now in the throes of an economic and financial crisis owing to an unsustainable debt burden. Take a look at the website usdebtclock.org to get a sense ...
The FDR Plan to Restore America by Jacob G. Hornberger May 18, 2020 Collin O’Mara, president and CEO of the National Wildlife Federation and a former participant in the AmericaCorps VISTA program, has a plan to restore America. It’s set forth in an article today published by the New York Times. Drawing on President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal during the Great Depression, he wants the federal government to ...
Early Americans Would Have Rejected the U.S. Government by Jacob G. Hornberger May 15, 2020 Even though most Americans are obviously unhappy with the federal government, many of them don’t question the structure of the government itself. Their ire is directed toward officials, not the governmental structure that such officials manage. They are satisfied with how the federal government is structured and just want “better people” managing it. The irony is ...
My Discovery of Freedom by Jacob G. Hornberger May 14, 2020 What surprised me most about discovering libertarianism is the fact that I wasn’t living in a free society, as I had been taught all my life. I was 28 years old when I discovered libertarianism. Up to that point, I “knew” I lived in a free country. That’s what I had been told and taught ever ...
Three Reminders from The Bill of Rights by Jacob G. Hornberger May 13, 2020 As a condition for accepting the Constitution, the American people demanded the enactment of the Bill of Rights immediately after ratification of the Constitution. They had been assured that the Constitution was calling into existence a national government whose powers were limited to those enumerated in the Constitution. But that did not satisfy them. They wanted a ...
Businesses, Employees, and the Coronavirus Crisis by Jacob G. Hornberger May 11, 2020 Throughout the long sordid history of socialism, socialists have decried the supposed conflict of interest between employers and employees. Employers exist just to exploit the workers, socialists claim. If it weren’t for government minimum-wage laws, employers would pay their employees no more than bare subsistence wages. Socialists have also long claimed that through their acquisition of profits, ...
