Laurie Calhoun | The Libertarian Institute

Libertarianism and Metaethics

by Laurie Calhoun | Aug 19, 2025 | Featured Articles, Libertarianism

I was intrigued by a recent manifesto here at the Libertarian Institute, “Libertarianism Requires a ‘Subjective Morality,’” by Sean Dolan. The author boldly denies that libertarianism is “an objective, universal code that dictates right from wrong.” I believe that I understand what is Dolan’s fundamental concern, namely, that libertarians may sometimes seem rather dogmatic about their moral views. I reject, however, the idea that libertarianism itself is an intrinsically or inherently “subjective” theory. What I regard as the confusion here turns in part on terminology, but also reflects a...

“Smart War” and State Terrorism

by Laurie Calhoun | Jul 1, 2025 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

On June 16, 2025, President Donald Trump threatened the 10 million inhabitants of Tehran, Iran, with death, for their government’s alleged nuclear aspirations: Iran should have signed the “deal” I told them to sign. What a shame, and waste of human life. Simply stated, IRAN CAN NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON. I said it over and over again! Everyone should immediately evacuate Tehran! (TS: 16 Jun 22:30 UTC) — Trump Truth Social Posts On X (@TrumpTruthOnX) June 16, 2025 The message was posted to the president’s Truth Social account, shared on X/Twitter, and then picked up by all major mass media...

The Golden Doom

by Laurie Calhoun | Jun 10, 2025 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

Back in the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan famously championed the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), referred to colloquially as “Star Wars.” Forty years later, in 2025, President Donald Trump has thrown his enthusiastic support behind what is tantamount to a rebranded, bright and shiny new version of SDI: the Golden Dome. It is surprising that so few commentators in the mainstream media have made the connection, apparently unaware of why the Star Wars program was abandoned. Instead, pundits, politicians, and government officials such as Vice President J.D. Vance and Secretary of Defense...

Klaus Schwab, Sophist

by Laurie Calhoun | May 1, 2025 | Featured Articles, Politics

The existence of Klaus Schwab became known to much of the thinking world during the Coronapocalypse, when so-called conspiracy theories began to flourish about the use of the novel COVID-19 virus as a pretext for reconfiguring the world. The “Great Reset” and the “New Normal” began to be spoken of fondly by bureaucrats back in 2020, shortly after the in some ways incomprehensibly influential Schwab co-authored with Thierry Malleret a short book extolling just those concepts: Covid-19: The Great Reset. The work, or paraphrased excerpts of it, must have been spam-emailed to every government...

Lethally Blind: Anti-Republican Legacies of the U.S. Drone Program

by Laurie Calhoun | Apr 7, 2025 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

The U.S. government has been using unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs), or lethal drones, to dispatch terrorist suspects with impunity for most of the twenty-first century. Committees of analysts and bureaucrats determine, based on HUMINT (human intelligence, or tips from bribed informants) and SIGINT (signals intelligence, or drone video footage and cellphone data), that a person in a land far away poses a threat to U.S. interests. It matters not that there are no soldiers on the ground for him to kill, nor that he is unarmed, nor that he is surrounded by obviously innocent family...

Lethality First, Humanity Last

by Laurie Calhoun | Feb 6, 2025 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

Pentagon personnel have been aiming to increase the lethality of troops for decades now, under the assumption that this will naturally result in military victory. The latest public figure to promote lethality is President Donald Trump’s recently confirmed secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth. The basic idea underlying Lethality First is that “the good guys” need to kill “the bad guys,” and the sooner and more efficiently this is done, the better. Lethality, it is believed, must be maximized in order to save the lives of allied soldiers and civilians. Commitment to this creed was not diminished...

Drones Run Amok

by Laurie Calhoun | Dec 30, 2024 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

Drones, drones, everywhere drones. For a few weeks, clusters of drones of unknown provenance were recently seen flying in the skies above New Jersey. Local, state, and federal authorities claimed that they did not know whose drones they were. The expression “baseless conspiracy theory” saw an uptick in usage once again as some in the media scoffed at the proliferating hypotheses about what was going on. Incoming U.S. president Donald Trump opined that the machines should be shot down, but the Joe Biden administration did not agree, lending significant support to the simplest hypothesis of...

Free Speech: The Sine Qua Non of Democracy

by Laurie Calhoun | Nov 18, 2024 | Featured Articles, Politics

One of the strangest developments in the recent history of Western democratic states has been the heartfelt call by duly elected officials for government censorship of citizens’ speech. This trend has emerged simultaneously across various nations, including the United Kingdom, Australia, and, oddly enough, the United States of America. No one is surprised that tyrants throughout history, who seize power by force, have retained their positions primarily through silencing dissenters and political opponents. The very foundation of democratic states, however, is what the nineteenth-century...