The Causes and Consequences of World War II, Part 1 by Richard M. Ebeling November 1, 1991 Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 When World War II ended in 1945, most of Europe lay in ruins. German cities like Dresden and Hamburg had practically been cremated from day-and-night Allied fire-bombings. Warsaw had been almost leveled to the ground by the Germans. The scorched-earth policies of both the Nazis and the Soviets had left much of European Russia, the Ukraine and the Baltic States almost totally destroyed. The Nazi death camps had consumed not only the lives of six million Jews, but an equivalent number of Poles, Gypsies and other undesirables. Two Japanese cities — Hiroshima and Nagasaki — lay incinerated from atomic blasts. Eight years of war and Japanese occupation in China had uprooted millions of Chinese who had taken refuge in the wild and hostile regions of western China; and tens of thousands had died trying to make their escape. Fifty million lives were consumed by the war. The words of English historian Robert Mackenzie, ...
The Consequences of World War II by Sheldon Richman November 1, 1991 World War II is often viewed as the last good war. In contrast to the wars that followed it — Korea and Vietnam, primarily World War II is said to have had a clear purpose: the smashing of Nazism and fascism and all the horrible things for which they stood. The description "last good war" also implies that the outcome, unlike those of later wars, was an unambiguous victory for America and its Allies — a victory for freedom and democracy. Korea remains divided. Vietnam was unified under Ho Chi Minh. But in World War II, good triumphed over evil. Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, and imperial Japan were completely defeated and then transformed into unthreatening democracies that then took their places among the world's peace-loving nations. And France and the rest of Western Europe were liberated from tyranny. Unfortunately, history is not so simple, and the consequences of World War II are much more complex. A full accounting is a ...
A Liberal World Order by Richard M. Ebeling September 1, 1991 The 20th century opened with great hopes for the future. For almost a hundred years, a major war had not disturbed the peace of Europe. And when military conflicts had broken out among the European nations, they had been localized and limited in both their duration and destruction. Most of the governments of Europe were either democracies or constitutional monarchies. The concept of the rule of law was almost universally endorsed. And throughout most of Europe, individuals could generally feel secure in their life and property. Even the colonial empires seemed benign; the British Empire was the leading example: the British ran their empire as one world-encompassing, free-trade zone — with Englishmen, colonial subjects and foreign traders more or less having the same legal protections and commercial liberty. The 19th century, of course, was not a paradise of freedom and limited government. Governments transgressed their legitimate bounds more often than is remembered. In the last decades of the 19th century, for ...
Players and Pawns: The Persian Gulf War by Jacob G. Hornberger July 1, 1991 For the greater part of this century, the United States government has plundered, looted, and terrorized the American people through the Internal Revenue Service. It has surreptitiously stolen people's income and savings through the Federal Reserve System. It has brutally enforced — through fines and imprisonment — rules and regulations governing people's peaceful economic activities. In a very real ...
A New World Order: Economic Liberalism or the New Mercantilism by Richard M. Ebeling July 1, 1991 In the days immediately following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, the Bush Administration declared that a vital interest of the United States was at stake. American economic wellfbeing was threatened by Iraqi control of the Kuwaiti oil fields. However, when a growing number of economists pointed out that the U.S. economy had the capacity to adjust ...
We’d Rather Fight by Lannon Stafford July 1, 1991 We're a peace-loving people — everybody says so. Well, maybe not everybody, but we sure say so. Hardly a week goes by without one of our national leaders referring to Americans as a peace-loving people. What can they be thinking of? In the past fifty years, we have fought four major wars; that is, wars that ...
A Capitalist Looks at Free Trade by William L. Law June 1, 1991 Protectionists seeking relief from the rigors of foreign competition bring to mind Milton Friedman's dictum, "The great enemies of face enterprise are businessmen and intellectuals — businessmen because they want socialism for themselves and free enterprise for everyone else; intellectuals, because they want free enterprise for themselves and socialism for everyone else." I speak from personal experience. Baseball-glove leather was ...
Man’s Mobility by Leonard Read June 1, 1991 Mobility of goods and services is an elaboration or extension of man's own mobility. It cannot be said that man has mobility except as the manifestations of his labors are free to move.... That the general welfare is served by the free mobility of man's goods and services domestically is generally ...
The Preservation of the Bureaucracy by Jacob G. Hornberger February 1, 1991 Two hundred years ago, our American ancestors instituted the most unusual political system in history. The Constitution called into existence a government whose powers, for the first time ever, were extremely limited. Thus, unlike other people throughout history, Americans lived without such things as income taxation, welfare, licensure, immigration ...
The Sanctity of Private Property, Part 2 by Jacob G. Hornberger January 1, 1991 Part 1 | Part 2 The last thing which Americans of today wish to face is that they have abandoned the principles of private property on which the United States was founded. In last August's Freedom Daily, I pointed to two examples of where the American people have permitted their public officials to assume absolute and total control ...
Foreign Policy and Foreign Wars by Richard M. Ebeling November 1, 1990 When the Founding Fathers wrote and then defended the case for passage of the Constitution in 1787-1788, they did so with a strong belief in the natural rights of man, rights that Thomas Jefferson had so eloquently expressed in the Declaration of Independence in 1776. But their idealism was tempered with stark realism, based on ...
Conscription by Daniel Webster November 1, 1990 This bill indeed is less undisguised in its object, and less direct in its means, than some of the measures proposed. It is an attempt to exercise the power of forcing the free men of this country into the ranks of an army, for the general purposes of war, under color of a military service. It is ...
