Jacob Hornberger | The Libertarian Institute

The Stronger the Government, the Weaker the Nation

by Jacob Hornberger | Feb 14, 2024 | Featured Articles

For all of our lives, it has been the aim of most Americans to make the federal government stronger, especially with respect to the warfare state. The principal justification for an ever more powerful government is that it keeps the American people safe from the likes of terrorists, drug dealers, communists, illegal immigrants, Russians, Chinese, Iranians, North Koreans, and Muslims. Moreover, it is argued, a powerful military-intelligence establishment enables the U.S. government to violently police the world and thereby earn respect and credibility from foreign regimes. What hardly anyone...

Let’s Talk About America’s Unprovoked War Against Iraq

by Jacob Hornberger | Feb 20, 2023 | Featured Articles

Referring to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, an editorial in Saturday’s Washington Post exclaims that Ukraine’s “struggle is also a crucible for Europe and an assault against the most basic precept on which the Western system rests: the impermissibility of unprovoked wars of aggression.” In a follow-up editorial today, the Post calls for an international tribunal to try Vladimir Putin and his “henchmen” for waging a “war of aggression” against Ukraine. The Post quotes the Nuremberg tribunal: “To initiate a war of aggression … is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international...

Roosevelt’s Infamy

by Jacob Hornberger | Dec 12, 2022 | Featured Articles

Eighty-one years ago today [December 7], Japanese forces attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The attack killed 2,335 military personnel and 68 civilians. It also damaged or destroyed 19 U.S. Navy ships, including 8 battleships. December 7, 1941, was, President Franklin Roosevelt stated, a “date that would live in infamy.” What will also live in infamy is that Roosevelt wanted the Japanese to attack the United States, so that he could achieve his objective of embroiling the United States in World War II. Even since the attack on Pearl Harbor, there has been a running controversy over whether...

Chilean Lessons for the American People

by Jacob Hornberger | Sep 19, 2022 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

In a nationwide vote, Chilean voters recently rejected a new constitution that was being proposed to them. The rejection was surprising because Chileans had previously voted in favor of having a new constitution to replace the constitution put into place by Chilean military general Augusto Pinochet after he took power in a coup in 1973. It’s worth revisiting that coup because it provides valuable lessons for the American people. In 1970, the Chilean people democratically elected a socialist named Salvador Allende to be their president. Allende did not receive a majority of the votes and,...

The Insurrection That Wasn’t

by Jacob Hornberger | Feb 25, 2021 | Featured Articles

Somebody still needs to get a memo to the Justice Department about the so-called insurrection at the Capitol on January 6 because it has yet to charge anyone with that offense. All I is see is a range of criminal offenses like disorderly conduct, assault, trespass, illegal gun possession, and “conspiracy” to commit these types of offenses. (Question: How come no one ever accuses the Justice Department of being a “conspiracy theorist,” given the countless times it charges people with conspiracy?) Yet, all we continue to hear from the mainstream press and the liberal (i.e., progressive,...

Why Statists Despise Trump

by Jacob Hornberger | Jan 18, 2021 | Featured Articles, Politics

In the words of Ronald Reagan, here we go again. The unbelievable hatred that Democrats, liberals, progressives, and the mainstream press have toward President Trump continues to consume them, with the latest manifestation being a second impeachment of President Trump, just a few days before he leaves office. Isn’t the purpose of an impeachment to remove a public official from power? Trump is out of power on January 20. The impeachment trial won’t even be held until after January 20. What’s the point? I’ll tell you the point: hatred—deep, unfathomable, all-consuming hatred for Donald Trump....

End the Fed

by Jacob Hornberger | Mar 5, 2020 | Economics, Featured Articles

In response to the potential economic downturn in the economy arising from the spread of the Coronavirus, the Federal Reserve dropped the federal funds rate by half a point — to a range of 1% to 1.25%. Ironically, after the Fed’s announcement, the stock market dropped 786 points or 2.9%. The Fed’s aim is to stimulate economic activity. By lowering interest rates, the idea is to get businesses to expand operations with more loans and to get consumers to go deeper into debt by purchasing more items. The result of the Fed’s artificial economic “boost” will be the same as it has been since...

Socialism in Education

by Jacob Hornberger | Feb 16, 2020 | Featured Articles, Libertarianism

It would be virtually impossible to find a better example of socialism here in the United States than the public schooling systems that exist in every U.S. state. Ironically, it is this socialist system that is primarily responsible for the widespread belief among non-libertarians that “the United States has never been a socialist country,” as New York Times columnist Timothy Egan stated in a recent NYT op-ed. (See my two recent articles “A Life of the Lie on Socialism” and “Socialism in America, 31 Years Ago.”) It is worth noting that public schooling is a core feature of the educational...

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