All Posts Tagged With: "foreign policy"
New Threats to Freedom: From Banning Ice Cream Trucks in Brooklyn to Abandoning Democracy Around the World
New Threats to Freedom, edited and introduced by HarperCollins’s executive editor Adam Bellow, is an ambitious anthology. Its premise: The twentieth century faced unique threats to freedom, such as communism and fascism, and the 21st century equally confronts unique challenges to the preservation of freedom. Thirty renowned authors examine 30 of those “threats,” which include [...]
4Jan2012 | Wendy McElroy | 3 comments | ContinuedPearl Harbor: The Seeds and Fruits of Infamy
For decades the prevailing view among historians has been that because the American people were too stubborn and stupid to concern themselves with foreign wars, President Franklin Roosevelt had to lie for a noble cause—namely, waging war against imperialist Japan and Nazi Germany. Seldom have historians asked themselves why Americans would want to stay out [...]
30Nov2011 | Jim Powell | 5 comments | ContinuedIs a Nation Something That Can Be Built?
In the wake of both the collapse of the Soviet empire and the more recent U.S. interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, we have seen a lively debate on nation-building. Many people who are ordinarily skeptical about the power of the U.S. government as a force for good, either at home or around the world, have [...]
25May2011 | Steven Horwitz | 10 comments | ContinuedStop the Bad Guys
It’s not too much of a simplification to say that modern American conservatives believe the national government to be ignorant, bumbling, and corrupt when it meddles in the U.S. economy, but sagacious, sure-footed, and righteous when it meddles in foreign-government affairs. Nor are the boundaries of acceptable simplification breached by saying that modern American “liberals” [...]
25May2011 | Donald J. Boudreaux | 19 comments | ContinuedThe Politics of Cocaine: How U.S. Foreign Policy Has Created a Thriving Drug Industry in Central and South America
William L. Marcy has written an extensive and cogent historical critique of the U.S. war against the cocaine trade originating in Latin America. As the title indicates, he shows how this counterproductive war has led to a thriving drug industry in the Americas. Marcy criticizes U.S. policy for conflating the drug war and the Cold [...]
25May2011 | Ivan Eland | 0 comments | ContinuedWar Is a Government Program
Libertarians and conservatives who argue for economic freedom and against government control tend to make both principled and practical arguments for their positions. Take health insurance, for example. The principled argument against government regulation of health insurance is twofold: (1) No government has the right to dictate to someone what kind of insurance he should [...]
23Mar2011 | David R. Henderson | 22 comments | ContinuedDeficit Hawks or War Hawks?
Last month I asked if the American people can afford a world-girdling foreign policy more befitting an empire than a republic. Look at it this way: War hawks make poor deficit hawks. Facing a $13 trillion national debt and trillion-dollar-plus annual budget deficits, we can’t afford to be complacent about foreign interventions costing $12 billion [...]
22Oct2010 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedWilson’s War: How Woodrow Wilson’s Great Blunder Led to Hitler, Lenin, Stalin and World War II
It is difficult for many of us to understand the almost euphoric enthusiasm with which millions of Europeans marched off to war in the summer of 1914. For almost a century the people of Europe had, in general, lived through an amazing time in which living standards for practically everyone reached heights never before known [...]
9Jul2010 | Richard M. Ebeling | 3 comments | ContinuedLiberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto
The election of Barack Obama in 2008 led to a gusher of books in 2009 by writers opposed to the new President’s philosophy and agenda. If you judge by sales figures, one of the most successful of those books was Liberty and Tyranny by Mark Levin, president of Landmark Legal Foundation and a nationally syndicated [...]
20Apr2010 | George C. Leef | 3 comments | ContinuedAmerican Exceptionalism: Is it Nationalism in Disguise?
I’ve been disturbed lately by the increased usage of the phrase “American Exceptionalism.” One longstanding critique of conservatism is that the word “conservative” has no substantial meaning beyond indicating a resistance to change. Conservatives therefore spend too much time trying to backfill an empty concept with whatever ideas they need to pass the popular agenda item [...]
9Mar2010 | Mike Van Winkle | 4 comments | ContinuedThe Balance-of-Payments Deficit: Not to Worry
Quick. What’s the trade deficit between California and the rest of the world? Don’t try Googling it because you won’t find an answer. No government agency—or private entity—computes the dollar value of goods that people in the rest of the world sell to or buy from Californians. Why not? Because it doesn’t matter. Yet governments [...]
5Jan2010 | David R. Henderson | 7 comments | ContinuedA World Superpower. So what?
There are very likely differing opinions among readers of this blog as to just what American foreign policy should look like. I’m personally not a total isolationist, but like most libertarians, I am skeptical about military power in today’s world.But what really drives me up the wall is when talk-show divas like Rush Limbaugh (who [...]
24Sep2009 | Mike Van Winkle | 7 comments | ContinuedBook Reviews – November 2008
Opposing the Crusader State: Alternatives to Global Intervention Edited by Robert Higgs and Carl P. Close Independent Institute • 2007 • 291 pages $15.95 papeerback Reviewed by Doug Bandow It doesn’t seem to matter how badly America’s foreign policy of global intervention has failed. The governing elite advocate more and more extensive intervention. Virtually every [...]
1Nov2008 | George C. Leef | 0 comments | ContinuedCommerce, Markets, and Peace: Richard Cobden’s Enduring Lessons
Edward Stringham is a visiting associate professor of economics at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. A longer version of this article won second prize (faculty division) in the 2003 Olive W. Garvey Fellowship Program for the Independent Institute and is reprinted in Opposing the Crusader State: Alternatives to Global Interventionism, edited by Robert Higgs and [...]
1Oct2008 | Edward P. Stringham | 0 comments | ContinuedHands Off “Windfall” Profits
You don’t have to like the oil companies to reject the windfall-profits tax. All you have to know is that if you tax something, you’ll get less of it. No one can seriously dispute this piece of common sense. That leaves the strong suspicion that the motive for the tax is punitive: those companies are [...]
1Jul2008 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedHow U.S. Economic Warfare Provoked Japan’s Attack on Pearl Harbor
Ask a typical American how the United States got into World War II, and he will almost certainly tell you that the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and the Americans fought back. Ask him why the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and he will probably need some time to gather his thoughts. He might say that the [...]
1May2006 | Robert Higgs | 12 comments | ContinuedBook Reviews – November 2003
Adam Smith’s Marketplace of Life by James R. Otteson Cambridge University Press • 2002 • 338 pages • $70.00 hardcover; $26.00 paperback Reviewed by Robert Batemarco One of the puzzles confronting students of the history of economic thought is the apparent inconsistency of the two masterworks of Adam Smith: The Theory of Moral Sentiments and An Inquiry into the Nature and [...]
1Nov2003 | FEE Admin | 0 comments | Continued-
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