My Time in the Tower of London by James Bovard December 1, 2006 I visited the Tower of London in May on an overcast, dreary Friday afternoon. The home of so many famous executions and king-approved murders is kept in spiffy shape. The tour guide — a former British sergeant-military wearing a large “Beefeater”-style hat — regaled listeners with tales of beheadings gone wrong, drunks with axes hacking away at half-dead corpses, never quite getting a clean cut. Some of the lines of stone near the castle were remnants of the Roman conquest of England. The castle itself was begun in earnest in 1066, just after the Norman conquest of England. Within a few centuries, the castle went from being a symbol of foreign occupation to a symbol of legitimacy. By overshadowing the London landscape, the Tower put fear into the heart of anyone who considered resisting royal authority — no matter how murderous the king’s henchmen became. The tour guide ...
The Failed Attempt to Leash the Dogs of War by Bart Frazier December 1, 2006 Of the many powers that government is granted, none has more potential for disaster than the power to wage war. Not only does warfare cost a country in terms of lost lives, it also has detrimental effects on the economy and society itself. In order to keep the country out of senseless and unjust wars, the Framers wrote provisions into the Constitution that would make it difficult to enter into any but the most necessary of wars. As the 20th century progressed, however, the chains that the Framers used to bind the government began to break. The men who drafted the Constitution knew war well. For one thing, they had just recently engaged in warfare themselves. Fighting the American Revolution against their own government over the course of eight years had a direct impact on many of them. Of course George Washington had led the American forces against the British, ...
The Myth of War Prosperity, Part 1 by Anthony Gregory December 1, 2006 Part 1 | Part 2 Depression, War, and Cold War: Studies in Political Economy by Robert Higgs (Oxford University Press: 2006); 240 pages; $35. During the run-up to the Iraq war, along with all the other myths circulating about U.S. foreign policy, economic misconceptions abounded. Some suggested the war might be generally good for the American economy. This included both proponents and critics of the war, interestingly enough, and the pattern was not a new one. Hawks will sometimes argue that, along with securing justice and peace, a war will give a much-needed boost to production and thus bolster the economic health of the country. Leftist cynics will also sometimes say war benefits the economy, as if the United States were a classic imperial power that wages war primarily to loot resources and divert them to Americans. This cynicism is not hard to understand ...
Emergencies: The Breeding Ground of Tyranny by William L. Anderson November 1, 2006 When the New York Times recently reported that the Bush administration was routinely tracking international and domestic financial transactions, the president said he was doing these things under emergency powers granted to him by Congress. While many commentators have openly questioned the legality of Bush’s actions, there are deeper questions to be asked than simply “Is this legal?” Indeed, as ...
Hornberger’s Blog, October 2006 by Jacob G. Hornberger October 1, 2006 Tuesday, October 31, 2006 There’s a good reason that the deadline for filing federal income tax returns is April and Election Day is in November — so that when federal incumbents use federal “free” money to purchase votes from the voters, the voters will not realize that this “free” money is the money that they sent the IRS back in ...
A Legacy of Anti-Terrorist Failure in Lebanon by James Bovard October 1, 2006 The Bush administration is fond of favoring tough measures against terrorists. With the Bush team cheer-leading all the way, Israel reinvaded Lebanon in July in response to Hezbollah’s seizure of two Israeli soldiers. Israel and Hezbollah had been exchanging bombs and missiles for months — actually, years — prior ...
Hornberger’s Blog, September 2006 by Jacob G. Hornberger September 1, 2006 Friday, September 29, 2006 Do you recall when the neocons were justifying their war of aggression on Iraq and their subsequent military occupation of the country by saying, “The Iraqi people like our occupation because we’re bringing them peace and freedom”? Well, the Associated Press is reporting that 61 percent of the Iraqi people support attacks on U.S. troops in ...
A Century of Interventionism and Regime Change by Anthony Gregory September 1, 2006 Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq by Stephen Kinzer (New York: Times Books, 2006); 400 pages; $27.50. Since September 11, the U.S. government has overthrown the governments of Afghanistan and Iraq. Most Americans appear to think of these actions as defensible in principle ...
Iraqis Are Ingrates by Jacob G. Hornberger August 21, 2006 Poor President Bush. According to the New York Times, the president is frustrated by the lack of public support ... in Iraq. Apparently he’s lamenting that thousands of Iraqis were recently demonstrating in the streets in favor of Hezbollah and chanting, “Death to Israel! Death to America!” Those darned ...
Hornberger’s Blog, August 2006 by Jacob G. Hornberger August 1, 2006 Thursday, August 31, 2006 Obviously becoming more desperate given the ever-increasing degeneration of the situation in Iraq and the ever-increasing defections among previously pro-war and pro-occupation GOP congressional candidates, Vice President Dick Cheney has compared the Saddam Hussein regime and the “terrorists” in Iraq to the Adolf Hitler regime. Unfortunately, Cheney misses an important point. In World War II, ...
Lies and Leviathan by Future of Freedom Foundation August 1, 2006 Big government requires big lies and not just on wars but across the board. The more powerful government becomes, the more abuses it commits and the more lies it must tell. Interventions beget debacles that require cover-ups and denials. The more the government ...
Lucretia Coffin Mott (1793–1880) by Wendy McElroy August 1, 2006 In 1853, Lucretia Mott described the Quaker women of the Massachusetts community into which she had been born. “Look at the heads of those women; they can mingle with men; they are not triflers; they have intelligent subjects of conversation.” Quakers believed that all people were equal before God and, so, every human being’s autonomy deserved equal respect. They ...
