Hunter DeRensis | The Libertarian Institute

James Douglass, the Kennedy Assassination, and a Missed Dinner in Austin

by Hunter DeRensis | Dec 31, 2020 | Book Reviews, Featured Articles

“Austin All Agog Over Kennedy Visit Friday” read the headline of the Austin American Statesman. The Texas capital was sparing no expense in welcoming the President of the United States. City schools were set to close early so that children could see the motorcade, and the excitement could be felt building in the weeks before. Preparations were in motion for a grand welcoming dinner at the city’s Municipal Auditorium. Hosted by the State Democratic Executive Committee, it would be the largest concentration of state and national leaders in the history of Texas. Nearly 2,500 people were...

Walter Q. Gresham, America’s Anti-Imperialist Secretary of State

by Hunter DeRensis | Dec 9, 2020 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

President-elect Joe Biden will soon finish selecting the men and women who will staff his incoming administration. The first announcements comprise the core of his foreign policy team, including the nomination of his longtime confidant Antony Blinken to be the next Secretary of State. Blinken, as both a former deputy national security adviser and deputy secretary of state under Barack Obama, is highly qualified for the position. But as The American Conservative’s Daniel Larison explained on this website, experience does not equal judgement. For over two decades Blinken has been a proponent...

On Tuesday, Antiwar Voters Might Decide the Presidential Election

by Hunter DeRensis | Nov 1, 2020 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy, Politics

On Monday [two weeks ago], on the 19th anniversary of U.S. soldiers hitting the ground in Afghanistan, dozens of people gathered in West Chester, Pennsylvania, with the goal of ensuring that our men and women in uniform won’t be in Afghanistan for another anniversary. The event was organized by the conservative veteran’s organization Bring Our Troops Home, founded in January 2019 by former Sgt. Dan McKnight, who served 10 years in the Idaho National Guard with an 18-month tour in Afghanistan, the organization advocates a military withdrawal from “endless wars” in the Middle East and a...

Kamala Harris and the Rise of the NatSec Dems

by Hunter DeRensis | Oct 23, 2020 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

Last week, in the 2020 campaign’s sole vice presidential debate, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) presented herself as part of a growing wing of “national security Democrats” who are quickly populating Congress and—depending on next month’s election results—the White House. Harris’s positioning is no sudden revelation. As previously reported in The Washington Post, “Those close to Harris describe her as a ‘Truman Democrat,’ a nod to her willingness to use American power to promote American values and interests.” The comparison to the 33rd commander-in-chief is appropriate. As America’s first...

A History of Libertarian Party Presidential Messaging, 1972-1996

by Hunter DeRensis | Oct 15, 2020 | Featured Articles, Libertarianism, Politics

Friends of liberty inside and outside the Libertarian Party are waiting patiently—some passively—for three more weeks until the conclusion of the November presidential election. Not to find out whether Donald Trump or Joe Biden will come in first, but how many votes their own candidate will receive on the margin. Jo Jorgensen, a businesswoman, university lecturer, and longtime party activist received the presidential nomination in May, with the (virtual) convention selecting activist and podcaster Spike Cohen as her running mate. Not long afterwards, the Jorgensen/Cohen ticket became the...

President Trump Labels Generals as Pawns of the Military-Industrial Complex

by Hunter DeRensis | Sep 17, 2020 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

Once again, the whispers of phantoms masquerading as administration officials have attempted to put Donald Trump on the defensive only two months before the fall election. And in typical fashion, the roused president has gone on an immediate rhetorical offensive. Trump has doubled down on his affirmations towards the U.S. military and the American soldier, while simultaneously confronting the class of generals who command them. “I’m not saying the military’s in love with me—the soldiers are,” Trump said at a Labor Day press conference. “The top people in the Pentagon probably aren’t because...

What Bernie Goetz Can Teach Us About Vigilante Violence

by Hunter DeRensis | Sep 4, 2020 | Criminal Justice, Featured Articles, Libertarianism

How many times can something be divided before it permanently breaks? In a matter of months, the edifice of a United States has become more and more cracked, after repeated blows from a pandemic virus, state-imposed lockdowns, mass unemployment, police shootings, and subsequent riots. The national mood is one of exhaustion and frustration, if not outright anger. On August 25, Americans were given another thing to divide themselves over. In response to yet another contested police shooting, riots erupted in the city of Kenosha, Wisconsin. During the ensuing chaos, video was taken of an...

Imagining a Memorial for the Veterans of the Global War on Terror

by Hunter DeRensis | Jul 29, 2020 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

Memorials are intrinsically meant to be a community fixture. There is a reason they are placed in the public square, made the focal points of parks and included alongside bustling streets instead of being kept away for private eyes or individual observance. Memorials are a collective means of commemorating and honoring past events, leaders, and sacrifices. This utility of unity has been contradicted in the past decade as monuments from the previous century have aroused a maelstrom of controversy and sometimes vandalism. The primary examples are monuments to the Italian explorer Christopher...