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On May 4, 1970, Ohio National Guardsmen killed four college students and wounded nine others – one of them, Dean Kahler, is paralyzed below the waist – on the campus of Kent State University. Nobody was found guilty of the bloodletting. On that awful day, Guardsmen fired M-1 rifles, .45 pistols and a shotgun for … Continue reading “The May 4th Deaths: Kent State 30 Years Ago”

I am often asked what inspired me to help launch Antiwar.com, turn it into the focal point of anti-war activities on the Internet, and write literally hundreds of columns in a little over a year. I can only point to the picture hanging over my desk: a portrait of a man sitting at a typewriter … Continue reading “Murray M. Rothbard–An Enemy of the War Party”

Vice President Gore, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, has outlined in some detail his views on foreign policy in a speech Sunday before the International Press Institute in Boston. Not surprisingly, his views differ little from the administration in which he serves. If anything, however, he has a more expansive view of the "global responsibilities" … Continue reading “Gore’s Gory Plans”

The twenty-fifth anniversary of the fall of Saigon has been the occasion for a whole series of retrospectives, reassessments, and general all-around breast-beating, and everyone seems to be having a grand old time of it. The Left – or what passes for the Left in this post-Marxist era – is busy slapping itself on the … Continue reading “Vietnam War Revision on the Right”

War infects and weakens our republican form of government, spreads social and political diseases throughout the body politic – but is, as Randolph Bourne put it, “the health of the State.” The State, in wartime, is glorified and empowered: the militarization of society means that all resources are mobilized and placed at the disposal of … Continue reading “Tale of a ‘Seditionist’–The Lawrence Dennis Story”

Perhaps, alongside thankfulness that against the odds nobody was hurt, one should be almost grateful to the national government for clarifying matters. Political scientists define government as the institution in a given society with a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. That means that government authority, when you get to the heart of the … Continue reading “The State’s True Colors”

On the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the fall of Saigon and the end of the Vietnam war the airwaves are full of special programs, and the op-ed pages are packed to the gills with articles and symposia – all opining about the “lessons” of that conflict. Naturally, the New York Times takes this … Continue reading “Lessons of Vietnam–When Will They Ever Learn?”

From Miami to Mitrovica, from Ruby Ridge to Iraq, the US government propaganda machine is geared up to put the best “spin” on the violence at the core of its power. In the assault on Iraq, TV viewers in the West were entertained by the “Nintendo war” as American missiles launched from ships hundreds of … Continue reading “Propaganda Wars: from Miami to Mitrovica”

I know, at least in theory, that we are governed by criminals: after all, what kind of a person would bomb an aspirin factory in an effort to divert attention from his own sickening perversions? Who else would slaughter thousands in the former Yugoslavia in the name of “human rights”? What sort of government demonizes … Continue reading “Elian’s Persecutors–A Government of Criminals”

One of the pleasures of keeping fat files – sometimes outweighed, sometimes not by the general air of messiness on the desk – is the opportunity to compare what officials said they expected at various times in the past to what has actually occurred. In the case of NATO officialdom’s hopes/expectations/predictions about how things were … Continue reading “NATO’S SHEER INCOMPETENCE: A LARGER MEANING?”