Laurie Calhoun | The Libertarian Institute

‘Might Makes Right’ Declares Trump White House

by Laurie Calhoun | Mar 16, 2026 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

As outrageous as the comportment of the current U.S. president may be to many people throughout the world, there is a silver lining to Donald Trump’s endless series of threats, whether overt or implied, against the citizens of Canada, Venezuela, Greenland, Iran, Colombia, Cuba, and beyond. In a matter of months, Trump has succeeded in revealing what many antiwar critics have been pointing out for years. The fact that plausible moral pretexts for military intervention can be devised and disseminated through the use of persuasive rhetoric—state-promulgated propaganda—in no way demonstrates...

Alex Karp, Charlatan

by Laurie Calhoun | Jan 12, 2026 | Featured Articles

In 2025, Palantir CEO Alex Karp released his first book, The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West. The work was co-authored by fellow Palantirian (as they fondly refer to themselves) Nicholas W. Zamiska, who serves as the firm’s head of corporate affairs and legal counsel. Part Pentagon funding proposal, part reassurance to current shareholders and plea to new investors, part undergraduate general humanities course term paper, The Technological Republic advances as its primary thesis that Silicon Valley executives were mistaken not to seize the...

The Madness of King Donald’s Drug Policy

by Laurie Calhoun | Dec 10, 2025 | Criminal Justice, Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

If you attempt to smuggle heroin into Indonesia, where I happen to be writing this sentence, and you are caught and convicted of doing so, then you will be subject to the death penalty. There are other places in the world as well where smuggling drugs is, by law, a capital offense. The United States of America is not one of them. In no state where drug dealers or mules would need to set foot in order to sell their wares to Americans is drug trafficking a capital offense. It is theoretically possible that smuggling drugs into a U.S. territory could be transformed by legislators into a capital...

On the ‘Legitimate Authority to Kill’

by Laurie Calhoun | Nov 18, 2025 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

“I don’t think we’re gonna necessarily ask for a declaration of war. I think we’re just gonna kill people that are bringing drugs into our country. Okay? We’re gonna kill them. You know? They’re gonna be like dead. Okay.”- President Donald Trump, October 23, 2025 As of today, the Trump administration has launched missile strikes on at least nineteen boats in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean, terminating the lives of more than seventy unnamed persons identified at the time of their deaths only as "narcoterrorists." The administration has claimed that the homicides are legal because...

The Strange Case of Summary Execution of Eleven Suspects in Caribbean Waters

by Laurie Calhoun | Sep 17, 2025 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

The U.S. government has been executing suspected terrorists without indictment, much less trial, since the dawning of the Drone Age, on November 3, 2002. On that day, the George W. Bush administration used a Predator drone to dispatch six alleged terrorist suspects in a car driving down a road in Yemen, far from any battlefield. This unprecedented act of extrajudicial execution was precipitated by the attacks on U.S. soil of September 11, 2001, which set the stage for a new, sanguinary, period of military history. Officials such as John Brennan, Barack Obama’s CIA director, and former CEO...

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...