Recently I ran into a colleague from the Naval Postgraduate School, where I teach, and got into an interesting conversation. It highlighted the differences between how I think of the world and how many pro-U.S. government people, and pro-government people in general,...
One of the late Gerald Ford's favorite sayings during his first few weeks of office was that he was "a Ford, not a Lincoln." Ford meant it as a statement of his humility. Ford's humility was, in fact, one of his best character traits. But in pardoning...
Imagine you're selling a product and a large gang – call it Gang A – comes along and tells you to stop and threatens to kill you, or at least destroy your property, if you don't. Gang A, though far way geographically, is very well-funded: I'll tell you why...
"In the course of his [General Westmoreland's] testimony, he made the statement that he did not want to command an army of mercenaries. I [Milton Friedman] stopped him and said, 'General, would you rather command an army of slaves?' He drew himself up and said, 'I...
In one of my early columns on Antiwar.com, "Who Is 'We'?," I pointed out that people often mistakenly use the term "we" when talking about the actions of government officials. So, for example, if the government of country X bombs people in country Y, many people who...
Imagine that you have an oil well that contains enough oil to supply annually three times the amount you would ever want to use in a year. Suppose that one of your main current uses of oil is to generate electric power for your ranch. Would you want to buy electric...
It's fitting, on the first anniversary of my Antiwar.com column, to go back to the first issue I wrote about: the awarding of the 2005 Nobel prize in economics to game theorist Thomas Schelling. In particular, I want to highlight Schelling's acceptance speech of Dec....
In a recent article, "Sustaining Our Resolve" (Policy Review, August/September 2006), George Shultz, former secretary of state under Ronald Reagan and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, argues for keeping up the war on terror. He also argues that if...
My favorite war movies are the ones where people – soldiers or civilians – escape from a prison camp or a concentration camp. I saw The Great Escape when it first came out in 1963, and have seen it at least five times since. I still remember my mother, as...
In a recent article, "Will the U.S. Defend Itself?", economist Walter Williams seems to make a case for nuclear war on Syria and Iran. His case cries out for a response. Here's mine. I preface by noting that Williams and I both earned our Ph.D.s in economics at UCLA...
