Thirty years ago, FBI tanks smashed into the ramshackle home of the Branch Davidians outside Waco, Texas. After the FBI collapsed much of the building atop the residents, a fire erupted and 76 corpses were dug out of the rubble. Unfortunately, the American political...
As a state grows, it always tries to find more ways to limit the freedom of its people. In the best case, this might take the form of pervasive surveillance and perpetual nudges. Yet it rarely stops there. The state might decide to support ill-advised adventurism...
Future historians may say that the most significant event of 2023 had nothing to do with Donald Trump, other 2024 presidential candidates, or even the war in Ukraine. Instead, the event with the most long-term significance may be one that received little attention in...
In his 1899 essay "The Conquest of the United States by Spain," America’s foremost classical liberal William G. Sumner put forth a critique of the Spanish-American War that, in retrospect, was more horrifyingly accurate than he could have imagined. Reflecting on the...
When Congress discusses banning TikTok to keep our children safe from Chinese government spying, what do they really have in mind? And is it a pretext to bring back the military draft? The debate conjures up memories of when Congress adopted children’s interests in...
The election year of 1968 was a tumultuous one marked by the assassinations of Sen. Robert Kennedy and civil rights leader Martin Luther King, urban race riots, college antiwar demonstrations, and a Democratic National Convention that saw the Chicago police and the...
Ron DeSantis, who could be the next president of the United States, made his views frighteningly clear: "We understand that freedom is not just about the absence of restrictions.... I think we have to understand that the threats to freedom are not simply as a result...
The Frightened County is what Alan Renouf, one of Australia’s most prominent public servants, called Australia in his 1979 book of the same title. Renouf’s book is a delicate balance of criticizing past Australian alliances and military adventures while also embracing...
