Month: September 2000

ANOTHER EXERCISE IN ‘OLD TIMES THERE ARE NOT FORGOTTEN’? I suppose someone might reasonably ask the importance and relevance, at this late date, of the above-named topic. Someone might also ask what such an issue is doing in a column said to be mainly about foreign policy and war. And "Someone," to quote Lonzo and … Continue reading “Is the Union Older Than the States?”

Whether or not there is a runoff election, and even whether or not Slobodan Milosevic leaves office in the near future, it seems likely that the political leadership and perhaps even the political atmosphere in Yugoslavia is about to change seriously. It is still unclear whether the change is likely to be better for the … Continue reading “Promoting or Deterring Democracy?”

It remains to be seen whether the impulse has “legs,” as they say in show biz and in that branch of it that they call politics. But the freeing of physicist Wen Ho Lee from solitary confinement in New Mexico has focused renewed attention on the case of John Deutch, the former CIA director who … Continue reading “Wen Ho Lee, John Deutch and the Future of Intelligence”

SAXON INSIGHTS CAREFULLY SET FORTH How would our forefathers speak of the wild and crazy times in which we live? I mean, in sooth, our forebears in speech, who gave us our English tongue, wherewith we talk, write, wrangle, and broadly hoodwink one another. I spell this out, lest tightly-wound, high-minded busybodies within the wider … Continue reading “Some Unsaxon Chronicles”

Given Justin Raimondo’s enthusiasm for Pitchfork Pat, perhaps it is mildly out of line on this site. Still, this Web site has always been open to antiwar views from all sides of the spectrum, wheel or whatever metaphor one chooses to represent the variety of political inclinations. So it might not be out of line … Continue reading “A Libertarian Alternative for Voters”

AIN’T GONNA STUDY WAR NO MORE By now a large body of work exists which makes the claim that organized, large-scale war between nation-states is waning, obsolete, or just plain gone from the horizon. A good book which makes this argument is John E. Mueller’s Retreat from Doomsday: The Obsolescence of Major War (New York: … Continue reading “War Is Dead, Hooray, Hooray”

I have followed with great interest the events in Kosovo this past year and I was particularly intrigued by both accounts written by Officer Vincent duCellier that were published in the Washington Times. Officer duCellier, a former Maryland police officer, has selflessly volunteered his time and separation from his family to command the prison in … Continue reading “Other Side of an Ugly Story”

President Clinton’s national security adviser Sandy Berger insists the U.S. incursion into a long-running civil war – er, excuse me, $1.3 billion worth of assistance to the government in fighting the drug war – in Colombia is not like Vietnam. Not at all. "The fact is, this is nothing similar whatsoever," he told the Associated … Continue reading “Colombia Morass”

‘CONSERVATIVE’ SOCIOLOGIST The work of the late Robert Nisbet (1913-1996), conservative and sociologist, still goes unappreciated by many people, libertarians among them, who could learn much from it. At a time when most practitioners of the sociological arts were, at best, bureaucratic liberals, if not outright Marxists and commies, it was remarkable that there were … Continue reading “The Under-Appreciated Robert Nisbet”