In the third chapter of An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, economist Adam Smith observed the following: "In great empires the people who live in the capital, and in the provinces remote from the scene of action, feel, many of them scarce any inconveniency from the war; but enjoy, at their ease, the amusement of reading in the newspapers the exploits of their own fleets and armies. To them this amusement compensates the small difference between the taxes which they pay on account of the war, and those which they had been accustomed to pay in time of peace. They...

Last week, Pope Leo XIV renewed his calls for peace in the Gaza Strip, this time by commending the various Catholic organizations who registered their solidarity with the besieged population of the territory. Since assuming the papacy in April, Leo has consistently advocated for a permanent ceasefire, as well as the immediate return of hostages and the safe entry of humanitarian aid. Leo, to his great credit, has resisted the urge to view the bloodshed through a sectarian lens. Instead, he has approached the conflict in human terms, calling upon people of faith to reject the mass murder and...

On February 12, 2009, Dr. Ron Paul (R-TX) delivered one of his most striking speeches on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. Since referred to as the “What If…” speech, Paul’s remarks offer a precise distillation of the libertarian critique of U.S. foreign policy. At a time when military interventionism was still very much in vogue among Republican voters, Paul was willing to call a spade a spade and dismantle the faulty logic driving America’s misguided overseas adventures. Paul’s oratory is persuasive because he posits a series of hypotheticals that aren’t really hypotheticals....

In October 1945, George Orwell wrote an article titled “You and the Atom Bomb” for the socialist publication Tribune. Orwell’s piece makes a compelling argument against the atomic bomb, noting the myriad ways in which it maximizes state power and enables a handful of empires: "From various symptoms one can infer that the Russians do not yet possess the secret of making the atomic bomb; on the other hand, the consensus of opinion seems to be that they will possess it within a few years. So we have before us the prospect of two or three monstrous super-states, each possessed of a weapon by...