Month: August 2004

Rise of EmpireLoved your column on Garet Garrett’s book. Your columns are a frequent topic at our Libertarian/ Constitution Party lunch table discussions.As engineers and analysts, we have often speculated about how you (Raimondo) acquire the information and insight that you include in your columns. How do you go about your work? What is your … Continue reading “Backtalk, August 24, 2004”

It is not an enjoyable experience watching the Republican Party descend into the depths of propaganda and falsehood. Today’s disaffected Republicans once believed the GOP to be the party of principle. Any remaining claim to principle ended with Bush’s invasion of Iraq. No informed person believed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction or … Continue reading “How Do They Get Away With It?”

If you take only one book to the beach this summer, let it be Patrick J. Buchanan’s Where the Right Went Wrong: How Neoconservatives Subverted the Reagan Revolution and Hijacked the Bush Presidency. Marshalling his considerable ability as a polemicist, his wide reading – and his remarkable insight into the ways of men and nations, … Continue reading “Buchanan Against the Empire”

When the Warsaw Pact disintegrated in 1989 – and the Soviet Union two years later – most of us heaved a humongous sigh of relief. The Cold War was over! Our "containment" strategy had worked. Now we could begin dismantling thousands of "battlefield" nukes and the scores of overseas bases that had encircled the "Evil … Continue reading “Poor Choice for a Fake Casus Belli”

"The United States of America will not permit the world’s most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world’s most destructive weapons." This is the heart of the Bush Doctrine from the president’s "axis of evil" address to Congress. And the nations that constituted that axis were Iraq, Iran and North Korea. Under this doctrine, … Continue reading “Neocons Seek Vindication in Escalation”

It’s easy to avoid bigotry if you just remember that most of the time when our minds leap from the particular to the general, we are making an error in reasoning. Inductive reasoning, which goes from many, many particulars to the general, does not condone going from one or two particulars to the general. One … Continue reading “The Persistence of Bigotry”

Three U.S. senators have called on Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to account for $8.8 billion entrusted to the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Iraq earlier this year but now gone missing. In a letter Thursday, Senators Ron Wyden of Oregon, Byron L. Dorgan of North Dakota and Tom Harkin of Iowa, all opposition Democrats, demanded … Continue reading “‘Staggering Amount’ of Cash Missing in Iraq”

When I was a kid, I liked the musical band Devo, whose name was derived from their concept that man was devolving. It was funny at the time, but 30 years later I feel compelled to write why torture is wrong, so maybe Devo was right. I wrote about apparent torture at the U.S. naval … Continue reading “Abu Ghraib and the American Devolution”

Most conspiracy buffs underestimate human stupidity. They see people they consider smart and powerful do stupid things, and they think the people must have some hidden ulterior motive. Surely people in such high positions, they think, couldn’t do something that dumb. They should read more history. In the first place, lots of people are rich, … Continue reading “Conspiracy, or Stupidity?”

What’s going on at the State Department? Can’t Colin Powell keep Undersecretary John Bolton in his cage? Apparently, not, because last week Bonkers Bolton made a mind-boggling presentation at the Hudson Institute – which was carried live on CSPAN – entitled "Preventing Iran from Acquiring Nuclear Weapons." Virtually every paragraph in the inflammatory 2,800-word address … Continue reading “Bonkers Bolton Threatens Iran”