Foreign Policy
by Dr. Mary Ruwart
The good doctor answers tough questions about the foreign policy of
a free country.
Foreign Policy and the Non-Aggression Principle: Conceptual
Versus Perceptual Non-Aggression
by E. G. Ross
Foreign Relations for a Free Nation
by Richard O. Hammer
Thoughts on ambassadors, immigration policy, and a decentralized
military defense for a free nation.
International Relations for a Free Nation
by Phil Jacobson
A "free nation" might have nationalities but no nation-state.
International relations would then include relations among the
nationalities within the free nation as well as external relations.
Notes on Foreign Relations Concerns in a Hypothetical Entrepreneurial (Landlease) Community
by Michael van Notten and Spencer Heath MacCallum
Foreign policy considerations for a mixed use, multiple tenant,
income property operated as a long-term, managed investment.
A Paper Tiger for a Free Nation
by Roy Halliday
A proposal for a pseudo-government to act as the face of a free
nation to the outside world.
The Role of Non-Government Actors in Shaping the Foreign Policy in a "Free Nation"
by Gordon Neal Diem
The media, businesses, financial institutions, philanthropic
organizations, the clergy, the traveling public, and individual
citizens all help to shape the foreign policy of a free nation.
U.S. Foreign Policy: Question All Assumptions
by Ivan Eland
"The USG’s propaganda machine excessively demonizes the motives of anyone or any
country that takes actions the United States does not like and asserts that U.S. motives
are only idealistic and pristine. No one in the Islamic world—or in the entire world,
for that matter—believes the latter. The USG’s propagandistic “hoo-ha” is really meant
for the American public, the only party that has been bamboozled into believing it."
Where the Left Goes Wrong on Foreign Policy
by Murray N. Rothbard
Originally published in Inquiry, July 1982.
"Fortunately, there is little remaining of the old left’s adulation of Stalin, and it is
difficult for anyone, even Russians, to get particularly excited about Brezhnev or whoever
his stolid successor may be. But romantic revolutionaries like Castro and Ho Chi Minh are
another story altogether, and, despite the salutary criticisms of Cuba by Ronald Radosh,
we have seen numerous apologias by the left of the Castro regime, by Barnet and others of
the Vietnamese regime, and, in earlier years, by Gareth Porter (an ex-IPSer) of the
odious Pol Pot regime in Cambodia."
Whose Foreign Policy?
by Dmitry Chernikov
"Freedom means: let the common man decide for himself how he should act with respect
to the French, the Iraqis, and the Japanese. What we need to do is destroy the
government's ability to decide for all of us what our attitudes and relations with
non-'Americans' should be. In other words, there should be no such thing as
US 'foreign policy.'"
Should We Stop Selling Real Estate to Foreigners?
by C. Brandon Crocker
"There is no basis for the fear that foreign real estate holdings threaten our
sovereignty. And given that we have a free market in real estate, the charge that
foreign purchases harm us economically also has no basis. We cannot be harmed if we
freely exchange one asset for another which we view as having a better risk-adjusted
rate of return. This simple fact of economics-that deals take place in a free market
only when all parties involved believe them to be beneficial—applies to real estate
just as it applies to all other assets."
The Conquest of the United States by Spain
by William Graham Sumner
"My patriotism is of the kind which is outraged by the notion that the United States
never was a great nation until in a petty three months’ campaign it knocked to pieces
a poor, decrepit, bankrupt old state like Spain. To hold such an opinion as that is to
abandon all American standards, to put shame and scorn on all that our ancestors tried
to build up here, and to go over to the standards of which Spain is a representative."
An Enlightened Foreign Policy
by R. J. Rummel
Chapter 8 of The Miracle That Is Freedom. He argues that
American foreign policy should promote democracy.
Liberalism and Colonialism
by Arthur Shenfield
Private-Property Strategy:
What Iraq needs now.
September 18, 2003
by Gerald P. O'Driscoll Jr. & Lee Hoskins
"If the White House loses the peace, it will be for reasons wholly unrelated to the
current political fracas over the reasons for America's invasion. The administration
appears committed to maintaining a Leninist-style economic model for the Iraqi economy.
Such a course will ensure the failure of Bush's Iraq policy."
Why We Must Stay in Iraq (or Not)
March 30, 2005
by Harry Browne
"Let me see if I have this right. Hundreds - if not thousands - more Americans will
have to die, thousands more Iraqis will have to die, and we at home will have to cough
up hundreds of billions of dollars more out of our pockets because a thoughtless,
insensitive President decided to invade a foreign country without having the good sense
to personally check the evidence justifying the invasion."
Beware putting all eggs in EU basket
June 12, 2003
by John Redwood
"The likely decline in the relative size of the EU economy, the
shrinking of its importance in world trade, and the enthusiasm for high
taxes should make us wary of hitching all our wagons to the EU. The US and
Asia are the probable winners over the years ahead. While Mr Brown
concentrates on whether there are enough similarities between the UK and
euroland in the short term, we should remember these larger differences. The
trends tell us to keep our options open, and to be friends with Asia and the
US as they surge ahead."
Entangling Alliances: For and Against
by Roderick T. Long
How should a free nation interact with foreign governments?
A Few Words on Non-Intervention
1859
by John Stuart Mill
For a New Isolationism
by Murray N. Rothbard
"… I thought you might be interested in the enclosed article, ‘For a New Isolationism,’
which was, predictably, turned down by Bill Buckley. (Bill loftily though in friendly
fashion declared that I should have refuted Burnham, W. H. Chamberlin, and Janeway; I
think I did anyway, but even if I had specifically dealt with them, it is clear Bill
would not have published it.) In this article, I don’t at all deal with the
moral-libertarian reasons for pure isolationism such as I had treated in the 1954
Faith and Freedom symposium, but solely on the grounds of ‘national interest’ [thereby
meeting] the Right-wingers on their own terms, with their own weapons."
Isolationism
by Frank Chodorov
"'Foreign policy' is the euphemism which covers up this inclination toward
interventionism. About the only foreign policy consistent with the natural
isolationism of a people would be one designed to prevent interference of
a foreign power in the internal affairs of the country; that is, protection
from invasion."
New Countries and the Case for Keeping One's Cards Close to One's Chest
by Spencer Heath MacCallum
A new free nation should keep a low profile.
The Real Aggressor
by Murray N. Rothbard
"If some Americans wish to liberate the people of China or Poland, let them raise a
private expeditionary force and private finances to go over and attempt liberation – but
let them not try to commit the United States, and as a result, myself, to any such scheme.
For a second wrong simply will not make a right; we should not add to oppression at home
in a hope to effect some sort of "liberation" elsewhere."
12 Reasons to leave the United Nations
June 15, 2003
by William F. Jasper
"1. The UN's basic philosophy is both anti-American and pro-totalitarian."
U.S. can sit back watch Europe implode
March 6, 2005
by Mark Steyn
"Europe's problems - its unaffordable social programs, its deathbed demographics, its
dependence on immigration numbers that no stable nation (not even America in the
Ellis Island era) has ever successfully absorbed - are all of Europe's making. By some
projections, the EU's population will be 40 percent Muslim by 2025. Already, more
people each week attend Friday prayers at British mosques than Sunday service at
Christian churches - and in a country where Anglican bishops have permanent seats in
the national legislature."
Ignoring Reality in Iraq
December 19, 2004
by Ron Paul, MD
"The reality is that current-day Iraq contains three distinct groups of people who have
been at odds with each other for generations. Pundits and politicians tell us that a
civil war will erupt if the US military departs. Yet our insistence that Iraq remain one
indivisible nation actually creates the conditions for civil war. Instead of an
artificial, forced, nationalist unity between the Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds, we should
allow each group to seek self-government and choose voluntarily whether they wish to
associate with a central government. We cannot impose democracy in Iraq any more than
we can erase hundreds of years of Iraqi history."
Liberate America First
April 21, 2003
by James Ostrowski
"Freedom is a very simple concept. It means doing what you wish with what is yours. It
takes years of post-graduate study under PhD’s to unlearn what freedom means. Freedom
means that when you wake up in the morning, your life, liberty and property are yours
to do with them what you will. Of course, that means that no one else’s life, liberty,
or property is yours. That’s freedom. It’s real simple. It’s also a state of being I have
never experienced. And I have no reason to believe that any Iraqi under American rule
will ever experience it either."
The Real Aggressor
by Murray N. Rothbard
"If some Americans wish to liberate the people of China or Poland, let them raise a
private expeditionary force and private finances to go over and attempt liberation – but
let them not try to commit the United States, and as a result, myself, to any such scheme.
For a second wrong simply will not make a right; we should not add to oppression at home
in a hope to effect some sort of "liberation" elsewhere."
The Right of Self-Determination
by Ludwig von Mises
"The right of self-determination in regard to the question of membership in a state
thus means: whenever the inhabitants of a particular territory, whether it be a single
village, a whole district, or a series of adjacent districts, make it known, by a
freely conducted plebiscite, that they no longer wish to remain united to the state
to which they belong at the time, but wish either to form an independent state or to
attach themselves to some other state, their wishes are to be respected and complied
with. This is the only feasible and effective way of preventing revolutions and civil
and international wars."
Anti-War Propaganda
More articles are linked to here in the Memory Hole.
Are Pro-War Libertarians Right?
May 25, 2003
by Robert Higgs
"In response, I would emphasize at the outset that it is wrong to take
actions that kill and maim innocent people. Period. It's just wrong,
whether one's ideological outlook be libertarian or anything else half
civilized. The best face one might put on taking such actions is that by
committing these wrongs even greater wrongs will be prevented. In the
present case, making such a judgment with anything approaching
well-grounded assurance calls for powers that none of us possesses."
Are Questions of War and Peace Merely One Issue Among Many for Libertarians?
by Robert Higgs
"Although I generally eschew quarrels with fellow libertarians over doctrinal
matters – my crucial dispute is with the government, not with other libertarians – I
draw the line at the question of war and peace. In my judgment this issue is
fundamental; it well-nigh defines a genuine libertarian ideology. Professed
libertarians who support an aggressive warfare state are, in effect, giving up
the ship. They are making the same mistake that has long condemned conservatives
to serving as de facto buttresses of Leviathan, no matter how much they might
complain about high taxes and excessive regulation."
The Claims for Total War Revisited
December 2002
by Joseph Stromberg
"In any case, it does not at all follow—even if Total War brings with it such benefits
as shortening the war and saving unspecified people’s lives—that it could ever be moral
to use the means to which Total Warriors are addicted. They will naturally say that with
mass conscription, complex industrial economies, and the rest, no one can be asked to
make a strict distinction between combatants and noncombatants or between military and
civil production. As one authority put it in the 1920s: “To require aviators to single
out the one class of persons and things from the other and to confine their attacks
‘exclusively’ to one of them will in many cases amount to an absolute prohibition of
all bombardment” [my italics].
Precisely!—And where’s the problem?"
Democracy and War
by Ted Galen Carpenter
"In Power Kills: Democracy as a Method of Nonviolence, political scientist
R.J. Rummel forcefully argues that democracies by nature are less warlike than
non-democracies because they become adept at managing domestic conflict. Unfortunately,
Rummel greatly overstates his case, ignoring numerous occasions when democracies have
taken arms against each other and giving short shrift to “realist” strategic reasons
for why they usually opt for peace."
Democracy and War: Rejoinder
by Ted Galen Carpenter
Rejoinder to
Democracy and War: Reply.
Democracy and War: Reply
by R. J. Rummel
Reply to
Democracy and War.
Democracies Are Less Warlike Than Other Regimes
by R. J. Rummel
"The degree to which a regime is democratic is inversely correlated
with the severity of its wars, 1900-1987."
The Democratic Peace: A New Idea?
by R. J. Rummel
Political systems are quantitatively related to violence and war.
Empirical research confirms that "those political systems that
maximize and guarantee individual freedom (democracies) are least
violent prone; those that maximize subordination of all individual
behavior to state control (totalitarian systems) the most, whether
socialist or not; and wars do not occur between democracies."
Democratization
by R. J. Rummel
Empirical research supports the argument that democracy
institutionalizes a means of nonviolent conflict resolution.
Democracy, Spontaneous Order and Peace: Implications for the Classical Liberal
Critique of Democratic Politics
by Augustus diZerega
"The democratic peace hypothesis which states that democracies rarely or never go to war
against one another and that democracies do not commit democide raises issues penetrating
to the core of modern liberalism, classical and otherwise. If democracies are unique
from other forms of government, as claims for their peacefulness towards citizens and
one another suggest, then possibly the classical liberal and libertarian critique of
democratic government needs re-examination. By separating liberal democracy from
undemocratic states, the democratic peace hypothesis separates the classical liberal and
libertarian critique of the state from a straight forward application to liberal
democracy. The work of F. A. Hayek and Michael Polanyi holds the key to understanding
the democratic peace, and thereby leads to rethinking the classical liberal and
libertarian critique of politics. To jump ahead, democracies are spontaneous orders in
Hayek's sense of the term. Consequently democracies are not states in the usual sense,
and often do not act like them."
The Economics Of War
by Ludwig von Mises
"There is perfect agreement with regard to the fact that total war is an offshoot of
aggressive nationalism. But this is merely circular reasoning. We call aggressive
nationalism that ideology which makes for modern total war. Aggressive nationalism is
the necessary derivative of the policies of intervention and national planning. While
laissez faire eliminates the causes of international conflict, socialism and government
interference with business create conflicts for which no peaceful solution can be found.
While under free trade and freedom of migration no individual is concerned about the
territorial size of his country, under the protective measures of economic nationalism
nearly every citizen has a substantial interest in these territorial issues. The
enlargement of the territory subject to the sovereignty of his own government means
material improvement for him or at least relief from restrictions which a foreign
government has imposed upon his well-being. What has transformed the limited war
between royal armies into total war, the clash between peoples, is not technicalities
of military art, but the substitution of the welfare state for the laissez-faire state."
The Effects of War on Liberty
by Anthony Gregory
"It is a wonder, then, that many who favor liberty, spontaneous order, voluntary human
action, free trade and markets, and as little government as humanly and practically
possible, do not see the full force of both the ethical and practical arguments against
an interventionist foreign policy. In war, many friends of liberty have been tempted
into siding with big government, with central planning, and with collectivist, rather
than individualist, ethics. This exception to libertarian theory and ethics in the realm
of foreign policy is a peculiar blind spot, and one that unfortunately has serious and
negative implications for our work for liberty, since the warfare state has most likely
been the biggest, most dangerous, most expansive and most disastrous government
enterprise in modern American history."
The Ethics of War: Hiroshima and Nagasaki After 50 Years
by Gregory P. Pavlik
"Oddly enough, many apologists are conservatives, who should be the first to recognize
that the essence of government is its monopoly on violence. This is a paramount
consideration in their analysis of the role of the government in domestic affairs.
Consistency demands that conservatives begin to apply their principles across the
board—to foreign policy as well as domestic policy. The alternative is the road we
now travel, and it leads to total war and the total state."
Fool Me Once . . .
May 2, 2005
by Harry Browne
"There probably never will be an authoritative body count. But we do know that it's at
least in the tens of thousands of Iraqis - including thousands and thousands of civilians.
Who are we to condemn those people to death - just to fulfill the fantasy of an American
President who knows virtually nothing about Iraq, its people, its culture, or its history?
And when did it become the business of the U.S. government to decide which foreign
countries should have their governments violently deposed?"
Free Enterprise and War, a Dangerous Liaison
by Robert Higgs
"For conservatives who now claim to support both free enterprise and a U.S. war of
conquest against Iraq, the lesson ought to be plain: they cannot foster free enterprise
and support war—the greatest of all socialistic undertakings—at the same time.
Unfortunately, it appears that once again they are willing to sacrifice free enterprise
on the altar of Mars."
The Futility of War
by Ludwig von Mises
"What distinguishes man from animals is the insight into the advantages that can be
derived from cooperation under the division of labor. Man curbs his innate instinct
of aggression in order to cooperate with other human beings. The more he wants to
improve his material well-being, the more he must expand the system of the division
of labor. Concomitantly he must more and more restrict the sphere in which he resorts
to military action. The emergence of the international division of labor requires the
total abolition of war. Such is the essence of the laissez-faire philosophy of
Manchester."
Just War
by Murray N. Rothbard
"My own view of war can be put simply: a just war exists when a people tries to
ward off the threat of coercive domination by another people, or to overthrow an
already-existing domination. A war is unjust, on the other hand, when a people
try to impose domination on another people, or try to retain an already existing coercive
rule over them."
Just War? Moral Soldiers?
by Laurie Calhoun
"If tyrants and liberators alike can rally their troops by invoking the theory of just
war, can the theory be all that good? If a soldier’s primary duty is to follow orders,
is he any less responsible for his conduct?"
Libertarianism and International Violence
by R. J. Rummel
Empirical evidence indicates that the most libertarian states
have no violence between themselves. The more libertarian two
states are, the less their mutual violence. The more libertarian
a state is, the less its foreign violence.
Libertarian Just War Theory
by Wendy McElroy
"To conclude: a libertarian just war would have to be declared in response to an act
of aggression that could not be remedied by a lesser level of defensive violence. It
would have to be declared by a State to whom people had assigned their rights of
self defense. And the war could be declared on behalf of those assignees alone.
Dissenters would have to be left in peace to defend themselves, or not. The declaration
of war would be against the enemy State, but not against the enemy civilian population.
And, finally, the war would have to be conducted with strategies and weaponry that
would not knowingly involve damaging or killing innocent parties.
Given these requirements, a libertarian just war is virtually unimaginable."
Libertarian Propositions on Violence within and between Nations: A Test
Against Published Research Results
by R. J. Rummel
"This article subjects the following propositions to systematic
tests against the quantitative literature: that violence does
not occur between libertarian states; that the more libertarian
two states are the less violence there is between them; and that
the more libertarian a state is the less it will be involved in
foreign and domestic violence."
The Myth of 'Just' War
by Andrew Young
"War is an enterprise that denies the sanctity of human life, produces acts of
extreme violence from men who believe they are not responsible for their actions, asks
us to trust people who, throughout history, have lied to us about war, and, even when
undertaken with the best of intentions, only leads to more violence. I believe it is
time for the world to conclude that “just war” is an oxymoron before it is too late."
Peace and Freedom: Rothbard on War and Foreign Policy
May 9, 2003
by Stephen W. Carson
"At a time when many people's support of or opposition to the current war seems to be
based on whether they "trust the President," it's a good time to consider a systematic
approach to war and foreign policy based on principles that don't change depending on
whether "our guy" is in the White House.
Building on medieval Just War theory, the libertarian theory of the State and the
republican ideals of the Founders, Murray N. Rothbard (1926–1995) developed just such
a systematic approach."
Peace on Earth
December 1, 1994
by Robert Higgs
"Opponents of global interventionism are often smeared as “isolationists” and
“appeasers.” Better to call them wise students of history. If we place a premium on
human liberty and an unhampered market economy, there is no greater policy priority
than staying out of war."
The Real Aggressor
by Murray N. Rothbard
". . . there always arises the difficulty of spotting the "real aggressor" in any
particular war. When both sides are armed camps, when there are many provocations,
secret treaties, deals and frontier incidents, the question of unraveling the actual
starter of war, let alone who is the more morally wrong, becomes a matter for the
careful research of future historians."
Rudolph Rummel Talks About The Miracle of Liberty and Peace
by Rudolph Rummel
"Concentrated political power is the most dangerous thing on earth. During this
century's wars, there were some 38 million battle deaths, but almost four times more
people – at least 170 million - were killed by governments for ethnic, racial, tribal,
religious, or political reasons. I call this phenomenon democide, and it means that
authoritarian and totalitarian governments are more deadly than war."
The Rule of Law: Towards Eliminating War and Democide
by R. J. Rummel
We live in a utilitarian age in which the natural law argument
for individual rights is incomprehensible to many people.
Fortunately, we have enough data on the consequences of democratic
versus authoritarian and totalitarian regimes to conclude that
democratic regimes do a better job of preserving human life.
We can exploit this fact to encourage utilitarians around the
world to favor democracy and individual freedom.
The State
by Randolph Bourne
"War is the health of the State."
They fight and die
But not for their country.
April 28, 2005
by Unknown
"When we hear that soldiers fight for our country, we immediately think of their role
guarding our borders, protecting us from invaders. Yet the U.S. has only been invaded
twice, when Great Britain attempted to bring us back into the colonial fold during the
War of 1812 and in 1846, when Mexico launched a brief incursion across the disputed
Rio Grande. During the ensuing 158 years, no member of the U.S. military has fought or
died while repelling an invader. 9/11 demonstrated that the Pentagon doesn't consider
a foreign incursion a major threat; that's why they assigned 12 "ground-based" Air
National Guard jets to guard the the entire country."
To Make War, Presidents Lie
October 1, 2002
by Robert Higgs
"When American presidents prepare for foreign wars, they lie. Surveying our history,
we see a clear pattern. Since the end of the nineteenth century, if not earlier,
presidents have misled the public about their motives and their intentions in going to
war. The enormous losses of life, property, and liberty that Americans have sustained
in wars have occurred in large part because of the public's unwarranted trust in what
their leaders told them before leading them into war."
To the Antiwar Left
by Max Raskin
"Opposition to war must go beyond current incompetence and mismanagement; it must cut to
the fundamental heart of what war is. Leftists have seen the group of murdering thieves
behind the current regime, so why not go one step further and recognize that by
nature the State is this tool for evil and it doesn’t matter how benevolent our
dictator happens to be. This is the lesson of libertarianism."
War
by Ludwig von Mises
"Our age is full of conflicts which generate war. However, these conflicts do not
spring from the operation of the unhampered market society. It is not capitalism that
produces them, but precisely the anticapitalist policies designed to check the
functioning of capitalism. They are an outgrowth of the various governments’ interference
with business, of trade and migration barriers and discrimination against foreign labor,
foreign products, and foreign capital."
War!
by Peter Kropotkin
"Each one labouring for all and all for each--that is the only talisman that can
bring peace to the hearts of the nations that cry for peace with earnest entreaty
but cannot win it, for the hurrying of the vultures that prey on the wealth of
the world."
War and Foreign Policy
by Murray N. Rothbard
"We come to the view that since modern air and missile weapons cannot be pinpoint-targeted
to avoid harming civilians, their very existence must be condemned. And nuclear and air
disarmament becomes a great and overriding good to be pursued for its own sake, more
avidly even than the demunicipalization of garbage."
War and Justice
July 26, 2002
by Gene Callahan
"It would seem to me that libertarians, whether favoring a minimal state or no state,
must always regard any State activity with the utmost skepticism, and all claims of
"necessity" as claims that must be publicly demonstrated. Furthermore, if we do not
hold the State to the core principle of libertarianism, not to initiate aggression,
in just the same way we hold individuals to it, then libertarianism becomes absolutely
meaningless."
War and Morality
October 9, 2005
by Lew Rockwell
"Of all forms of collectivist central planning, war is the most egregious. It is
generated by the coercive force of taxation and monetary depreciation. Its means
are economic regimentation and the violation of the freedom to associate and trade. Its
ends are destruction and killing - crime on a mass scale."
War: Collectivism at Its Worst
by Roy Halliday
This article was originally published in The Abolitionist: A Publication of the
Radical Libertarian Alliance Vol. I, No. 11, February 1971, pp. 4-5. Roy Childs
called it "a masterpiece" and got me to read it aloud to the other members of the
Radical Libertarian Alliance. Murray Rothbard objected to the unrealistic restrictions
it places on revolutionaries.
War Is Horrible, but . . .
by Robert Higgs
Rebuttals to common arguments for war.
War or Liberty
A pamphlet from the Movement of the Libertarian Left.
War, Peace, and the State
by Joseph R. Stromberg
"This essay lists essential historical readings on wars (and related matters) which have
involved or affected the United States (plural), starting in 1776. The framework is a
Rothbardian one, in which wars are not sealed off from domestic politics, the ambitions
of state bureaucrats, economic life and motives, and ideological currents. The
perspective chosen is broadly "revisionist," although general works are included which
will add to the reader’s overall knowledge of the subject."
War, Peace, and the State
by Murray N. Rothbard
"If nuclear warfare is totally illegitimate even for individuals defending themselves
against criminal assault, how much more so is nuclear or even "conventional" warfare
between States!"
War Prosperity: The Fallacy that Won’t Die
by Robert Higgs
"It is high time that we come to appreciate the distinction between the government
spending, especially the war spending, that bulks up official GDP figures and the
kinds of production that create genuine economic prosperity. As Ludwig von Mises wrote
in the aftermath of World War I, 'war prosperity is like the prosperity that an
earthquake or a plague brings.'”
War’s Other Casualty
July 1, 1999
by Wendy McElroy
"In essence, Bourne addressed the moral consequences of war on a postwar society that
had abandoned individualism in favor of “the herd-machinery.” He eloquently argued that
postwar America would be morally, intellectually, and psychologically impoverished. By
this observation, Bourne did not mean that peacetime America would struggle under the
increased bureaucracy that never seems to roll back to prewar levels. Many historians
have made this point. Bourne addressed the less tangible, though arguably more
significant, costs of war. Post-1918 America, he predicted, would be burdened by
intellectuals who had “forgotten that the real enemy is War rather than imperial
Germany.” In converting World War I into a holy war, the intellectual and psychological
groundwork was being laid for future instances of what he termed “the sport of the upper
class”-global conflict."
What Is the Democratic Peace?
by R. J. Rummel
Democracy is a general method of nonviolence in that democracies
do not make war on each other and democracies have the least severe
foreign violence and war, the least severe collective domestic
violence, and the least foreign and domestic democide.
What Liberals Can Learn from the War
October 14, 2003
by Harry Browne
"If liberals want to stop tyrannical adventures like the invasion of Iraq, they must do
everything possible to whittle big government down to a small, limited, constitutional
government. Not the "limited government" the Republicans pay homage to in campaign
speeches and ignore in practice, but the constitutional straight-jacket envisioned by
the likes of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson."
Would You Kill A Kid?
August 21, 2005
by Douglas Herman
"A young man (or his parents) needs to ask himself: Would I kill a kid to preserve my
country? That question should be asked of all soldiers who enter the military. Just as
important is the second question: How does killing a kid preserve my country? "
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