Laurie Calhoun | The Libertarian Institute

Implausible Deniability: The US Government Approach to Ukraine

by Laurie Calhoun | Aug 1, 2023 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

“For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” said U.S. president Joe Biden of Russian President Vladimir Putin on March 26, 2022, during a speech in Warsaw, Poland. On December 5, 2022, multiple unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs, or lethal drones) were used in Russian airspace to attack military installations near Kursk. This incursion on Russia’s territory, which reportedly killed three people, was alarming in that it represented an escalation in the conflict over eastern Ukraine which could easily spin out of control, at least judging by the annals of history. If the war raging...

Lethal Drones at the U.S.-Mexico Border?

by Laurie Calhoun | Jun 27, 2023 | Featured Articles

Fentanyl has caused many overdose deaths in recent years, and much of it has entered the United States through Mexico. A number of politicians have thrown their support behind a proposal to officially label narcotics traffickers based in Mexico as “terrorists." Not all of the Republican lawmakers who support this idea have openly embraced the use of lethal drones to eliminate such persons, but that would be the inevitable policy implication of such labeling, given the wording of anti-terrorist legislation. At least one presidential candidate, Vivek Ramaswamy, has said the quiet part out...

Turn Off, Don’t Automate, the Killing Machine

by Laurie Calhoun | May 30, 2023 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

The quest to develop and refine technologically advanced means to commit mass homicide continues on, with Pentagon tacticians ever eager to make the military leaner and more lethal. Drone swarms already exist, and as insect-facsimile drones are marketed and produced, we can expect bug drone swarms to appear soon in the skies above places where suspected “bad guys” are said to reside—along with their families and neighbors. Following the usual trajectory, it is only a matter of time before surveillance bug drones are “upgraded” for combat, making it easier than ever to kill human beings by...

The Crony Capitalist Origins of Our Oligarchy

by Laurie Calhoun | Mar 28, 2023 | Featured Articles

Republicans have of late been setting the stage for war with China, which would seem to explain the sudden interest—after years of apathy on the part of nearly everyone but Senator Rand Paul—in determining the origins of the COVID-19 virus. Was or was not the deadly bug which upended the entire world released from the Wuhan Institute of Virology? Was or was not the creation of SARS-CoV-2 funded by the U.S. government, and made possible by gain-of-function research advocate Dr. Anthony Fauci, the very person appointed to lead the country’s pandemic response? Or perhaps the origin of the virus...

Launched on a Wing and a Prayer (For Billions of Dollars)

by Laurie Calhoun | Mar 14, 2023 | Featured Articles

Way back in the spring of 2020, the provocative title of an article caught my eye. Upon reading it, I learned that researchers were rushing to create a vaccine before the COVID-19 virus mutated, which would render the vaccine nugatory and destroy all hopes of creating a blockbuster panacea. Curious at the time, such a warning can be viewed today as having been prophetic. (Note: That article, which offered a business slant on the historic vaccine competition, is no longer available through Google—“some results have been removed,” and are seemingly irretrievable—but here’s one with a similar...

War and Delusion: A Critical Examination

by Laurie Calhoun | Mar 7, 2023 | Blog, Foreign Policy

In this episode of the Protestant Libertarian Podcast, Alex Bernardo sits down once again with Laurie Calhoun. Laurie is a philosopher, a cultural critic and an author. She is a senior fellow at the Libertarian Institute, where she regularly writes articles analyzing war and the military industrial complex. We discuss her 2013 book War and Delusion, a devastating philosophical and empirical critique of the ‘just war’ theory, which posits that there are conditions under which a war can be justly waged. We explore the inconsistencies of the just war theory, the medieval Christian assumptions...

This Was a Test of the Emergency Use Authorization System

by Laurie Calhoun | Feb 27, 2023 | Featured Articles

Data continues to emerge according to which not only were the mRNA shots ineffective at preventing infection and transmission of COVID-19, but they may have caused widespread harm to persons cajoled or coerced into undergoing vaccination, despite their own relative invulnerability to the worst effects of the virus. Anecdotal cases abound, but diehard regime narrative devotees continue to dismiss such “incidents”—thousands of which are recorded in the government’s own VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Effects Reporting System) database—as purely coincidental. It is more difficult to downplay reports...

I Support HB0220: the Maryland Defend the Guard Act

by Laurie Calhoun | Feb 13, 2023 | Blog, Foreign Policy

Here's my letter in support of HB0220: the Maryland Defend the Guard Act (I'll also be testifying at the hearing on February 15, 2023): HB0220 Favorable Dear House Health and Government Operations Committee: I write in support of House Bill 220, the Maryland Defend the Guard Act. In September 2001, the Bush administration was preparing a “Global War on Terrorism” in response to the attacks of September 11th. The White House expressed the desire to be granted the latitude to control the warmaking capacity of the government, which according to the U.S. Constitution is to be checked by the...