Intervention and Economic Crisis by Thomas E. Woods Jr. November 1, 2009 No supporter of the market economy could have been surprised when the recent financial crisis was inevitably blamed on “capitalism” and “deregulation.” The free market, we were told, was a recipe for financial instability. “Advocates of the free market must confront the fact that both the Great Depression and the current financial chaos were preceded by years of laissez-faire ...
Eight Years of Big Lies on Afghanistan by James Bovard October 10, 2009 It seems like only yesterday that President George W. Bush was bragging about having brought freedom and democracy to 25 million Afghans, a key theme in his second inaugural address. For 8 years, the American people have been fed one big lie after another regarding Afghanistan. Now, when the Pentagon is saber-rattling to vastly increase the number of U.S. troops ...
Exit Afghanistan and Leave Iran Alone by Sheldon Richman October 2, 2009 The Obama administrations quest to control the health-insurance industry has dominated the headlines for months, but finally with the news out of Iran and Afghanistan foreign policy has again asserted itself. It was almost easy to forget that the United States maintains a worldwide empire, but the reminders came leaping off the front pages and the television screens. Word that ...
Langdon, Stark, Bennington, and the Triumph of a Private Army, Part 2 by Scott McPherson October 1, 2009 Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 At the end of June, Burgoyne struck south with more than 7,000 men: 3,700 British regulars, 3,000 German mercenaries, 470 artillerymen, 400 Indians, and approximately 250 Canadian and American loyalists, and with the optimistic hope of gaining more Indian and loyalist troops as they went. As his forces approached the ...
How George W. Bush Redefined American Freedom by James Bovard September 1, 2009 George W. Bush is gone from Washington but his legacy, like an abandoned toxic waste dump, lingers on. Like President Franklin Roosevelt before him, President Bush helped redefine American freedom. And like Roosevelt’s, Bush’s changes were perversions of the clear vision the Founding Fathers bequeathed to us. What did freedom mean in the era of George Bush? In Iraq in ...
Langdon, Stark, Bennington, and the Triumph of a Private Army, Part 1 by Scott McPherson September 1, 2009 Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 Had we a standing army, when the British invaded our peaceful shores? Was it a standing army that gained the battles of Lexington, and Bunker’s Hill, and took the ill fated Burgoyne? Is not a well-regulated militia sufficient for every purpose of internal defence? And which of you, my fellow ...
Bombings Worse than Nagasaki and Hiroshima by Laurence M. Vance August 14, 2009 The world knows all too well about the atomic bombs the United States dropped on Hiroshima on Monday, August 6, 1945 (“Little Boy”), and on Nagasaki on Thursday, August 9 (“Fat Man”). “Dropping the bombs ended the war,” said President Harry Truman. They may have ended the war, but they did not end the bombing of Japan. On August 14, 1945, ...
The Media As Enablers of Government Lies by James Bovard August 1, 2009 Why do politicians so easily get away with telling lies? In large part, because the news media are more interested in bonding with politicians than in exposing them. Americans are encouraged to believe that the media will serve as a check and a balance on the government. Instead, the press too often volunteer as unpaid pimps, helping politicians deceive ...
A Prudent Foreign Policy by Doug Bandow August 1, 2009 Smart Power: Toward a Prudent Foreign Policy for America by Ted Galen Carpenter (Cato Institute, 2008); 352 pages. Change has come to Washington in the form of a new administration. Yet the cast of characters looks much the same. Their philosophies, while differing in degree, remain solidly interventionist. The question ...
McNamara’s Other Debacle by James Bovard July 9, 2009 Former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, who died on July 6, was best known for ratcheting up the Vietnam War thanks to the false claims he provided to President Johnson, Congress, and the American people. Despite his lies that vastly expanded an unnecessary conflict and cost more than a million American and ...
Still Meddling After All These Years by Sheldon Richman July 1, 2009 American presidents have long regarded Latin America as their “backyard.” The Monroe Doctrine warned the European powers to stay out — by what right? — and since then American chief executives have deemed it entirely proper to intervene when things did not go as they liked. Mexico, Nicaragua, Guatemala, the ...
The Early History of a Worldwide Nuisance by James Bovard July 1, 2009 Few federal agencies have as much bipartisan support as the National Endowment for Democracy. Created in 1983, NED’s stated mission is to “strengthen democratic institutions around the world through nongovernmental efforts.” In actuality, NED allows U.S. politicians to meddle in foreign elections at the same time they pretend ...