Covering the Map of the World — The Half-Century Legacy of the Yalta Conference, Part 7 by Richard M. Ebeling September 1, 1995 Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 Franklin Roosevelt was fascinated by the communist experiment in Russia. In a conversation with Secretary of Labor Francis Perkins in 1933, FDR admitted: "I don't understand the Russians. I just don't know what makes them tick. I wish I could study them. " In a later exchange, Perkins told Roosevelt about an American who had worked in the Soviet Union for a long time. Perkins had asked him what made the Russians "tick." The man answered: "The desire to do the Holy Will." FDR excitedly replied: "You know, there may be something in that. It would explain their almost mystical devotion to this idea which they have developed of the Communist society. They all seem really to want to do what is good for their society instead of ...
Book Review: The Collected Works of F.A. Hayek, Vol. 9 by Richard M. Ebeling September 1, 1995 The Collected Works of F.A. Hayek, Vol. 9: Contra Keynes and Cambridge, Essays and Correspondence edited by Bruce Caldwell (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995) 269 pages; $37.50. In 1941, American economist Kenneth Boulding reviewed Friedrich A. Hayek's The Pure Theory of Capital. He contrasted Hayek's views with those of John Maynard Keynes, and observed: "Mr. Keynes's economics of ... short-run ... like Hitler's, may be admirable in producing spectacular immediate successes. But we need Puritan economists like Dr. Hayek to point out the future penalties of spendthrift pleasures and to dangle us over the hell-fire of the long run." What Professor Boulding was referring to was that throughout most of the 1930s, Friedrich Hayek and John Maynard Keynes had been the two leading protagonists in a grand debate over the nature and causes of the Great Depression and the public policies likely to be most efficacious in bringing the depression to an end. By the 1930s, Mr. Keynes was one of ...
Repatriation — The Dark Side of World War II, Part 6 by Jacob G. Hornberger August 1, 1995 Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 The U.S. government's cry to the American people during recent wars has been: "Support the troops." A person might disagree with the war itself. Or the president may have failed to secure the constitutionally required congressional declaration of war. But, the government says, put all objections aside once the shooting starts. What matters then is that the people support the troops. The strategy is always effective in diminishing opposition to the war. Unfortunately, however, the U.S. government has not always followed its own exhortation. Sometimes, not only has it failed to support its own troops, it has actually knowingly and deliberately abandoned them to imprisonment and death. The best example of this is what happened to American soldiers who had been captured by the Nazis and who were "liberated" by Russian forces at the end ...
Covering the Map of the World — The Half-Century Legacy of the Yalta Conference, Part 6 by Richard M. Ebeling August 1, 1995 Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 In 1940, the Japanese consul general in Harbin, Manchuria, intercepted several messages sent from the Soviet foreign minister, Vyacheslav Molotov, to the Soviet ambassador in Tokyo. ...
The Power to Declare War — Who Speaks for the Constitution? Part 3 by Doug Bandow August 1, 1995 Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 The favorite justification for presidents unilaterally wandering off to war around the globe seems to be: everyone else does it. Proponents of executive war-making contend that ample precedents — two hundred or more troop deployments without congressional approval — exist for the president to act without a congressional declaration. Yet, ...
The Vietnam War and the Drug War by Robert Higgs August 1, 1995 Maybe you have never thought about the similarities between the Vietnam War and the Drug War. You may believe that although the former really was a war, the latter is only called a war. But the recently published memoirs of Robert S. McNamara, defense secretary for Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, call to mind many parallels. At ...
Repatriation — The Dark Side of World War II, Part 5 by Jacob G. Hornberger July 1, 1995 Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 When Franklin Roosevelt assumed the presidency in 1933, Americans expected him to fulfill certain promises that he had made during the presidential campaign: balance the budget; lower taxes; reduce government spending; downsize government; and ...
Covering the Map of the World — The Half-Century Legacy of the Yalta Conference, Part 5 by Richard M. Ebeling July 1, 1995 Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 When Adolf Hitler's foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, came to Moscow on August 23, 1939, to sign the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, Joseph Stalin hosted a late-night ...
American Foreign Policy — The Turning Point, 1898–1919 Part 6 by Ralph Raico July 1, 1995 Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 The vast changes that the First World War was to bring about began to occur even while the war was still going on. In February 1917, the Tsarist Russian state collapsed, and a provisional government was established. But ...
American Foreign Policy — The Turning Point, 1898–1919 Part 5 by Ralph Raico June 1, 1995 Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 When the United States broke off diplomatic relations with Germany in February 1917, war did not immediately follow. President Wilson hesitated to take that final, fateful step, first asking Congress for authority to arm U.S. merchant ships. Since ...
The Power to Declare War — Who Speaks for the Constitution? Part 1 by Doug Bandow June 1, 1995 Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 When presidents lose domestic support, they invariably look overseas for crises to solve. President Clinton is no different. After the Republicans swept Congress, he immediately flew off to the Pacific for a series of meetings with foreign leaders. Aides predict that he will continue to pay greater attention to foreign policy, where ...
Book Review: Days of Infamy by Richard M. Ebeling June 1, 1995 Days of Infamy: MacArthur, Roosevelt, Churchill — The Shocking Truth Revealed by John Costello (New York: Pocket Books, 1994); 448 pages; $24. John Costello is a distinguished historian who has uncovered fascinating new evidence on a wide number of topics. Two of his previous works, Mask of Treachery: Spies, Lies, Buggery & Betrayal (1988) and Deadly Illusions (1993), unearthed ...
