Month: June 2000

The worst news of the week from a substantive perspective was the U.S. Senate’s approval of the vast bulk of the Clinton administration’s request for more money to conduct the misbegotten and unwinnable "drug war" in Colombia. The worst news from the perspective of what it says about our political culture and its watchfulness over … Continue reading “Into a New Quagmire”

In my last two columns on Murray Rothbard, I named a couple of books as important contributions to a Rothbardian analysis of the connections between statism and war. One is Martin Van Creveld’s The Rise and Decline of the State (1999), around which the Ludwig von Mises Institute is organizing a scholarly conference to take … Continue reading “On State-Strengthening Wars: Part I”

To be sure, viewing last week’s meeting between President Kim Dae jung of South Korea and Kim Jong il, the dictator of North Korea as historic, heartening and a possible breakthrough for peace must be somewhat conditional. Mutual hostility stretching over 50 years cannot be erased in a day or a week. Anything resembling a … Continue reading “Korean Surprises”

I promised last week to go further into what the late Murray Rothbard (1926-1995) teaches us about foreign policy, peace, and war. Those who keep up with such things will have noticed that there exists a colossal and ever-growing body of writing on "what Marx really meant." I wish these folks good luck. In a … Continue reading “Murray N. Rothbard on States, War, and Peace: Part II”

I had called Leon Hadar, the libertarian Cato Institute‘s resident expert on the Middle East, to get some comments on the death of Syrian dictator-for-life Hafez-al-Assad, and he gave me plenty of information. But he kept pushing the conversation in a more interesting direction – namely, who is it these days who simply can’t stand … Continue reading “Who Could Deplore Peace Prospects?”

The sheer amount of writing done by the late Murray N. Rothbard (1926-1995) continues to astound. The quality of his work accounts for the impact it has had, and the attention it now draws, but its volume cannot have hurt, either. Rothbard spread the word about Austrian School economic theory, furthered those ideas, and helped … Continue reading “Murray N. Rothbard on States, War, and Peace: Part I”

General Barry McCaffrey now has some defenders of the actions during the Persian Gulf war for which Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker had criticized him. The more usual approach has been to ignore the Hersh allegations and act as if they had no credibility or held no interest. However, while Mackubin Thomas Owens, a … Continue reading “Defending General McCaffrey”

A WORTHY TRADITION? Many foreigners have written books about American culture, life, politics, foreign policy, and the like. Many of these works have been rather awful and, therefore, rudely received this side of the water. The exceptions would include those of Alexis de Tocqueville and Lord Bryce, writing in the early and late 19th century, … Continue reading “Onward and Upward”