On December 11, Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban, as one of the last things he would do at the end of his term as the European Union’s rotating president, said he had proposed a Christmas truce between Ukraine and Russia. "At the end of the Hungarian EU...
Latest Articles
A Plea for Empathy
by Rachael Nelson | Dec 23, 2024 | Featured Articles
It feels like half the world is at war, with the other half deciding which war (and which side) they should join. Billions of people are suffering, and it's becoming easier to look around and have trouble finding anything to be thankful for. We live in an increasingly...
TGIF: The Unfortunately Forgotten Sumner
by Sheldon Richman | Dec 20, 2024 | Economics, Justice, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
Some things haven't changed since 1883. In that year Yale University professor William Graham Sumner, the anti-imperialist laissez-faire liberal and pioneer of American sociology, noticed that "we are told every day that great social problems stand before us and...
How the Captive Media Divides Us
by Thomas Eddlem | Dec 19, 2024 | Featured Articles, Politics
Most political differences in America today aren’t a result of moral differences, or even policy opinions. Rather, they are generated by divergent media consumption. There’s a huge difference between those whose news comes primarily from the corporate Big Five...
Forty Years Sniping at Leviathan
by Jim Bovard | Dec 19, 2024 | Featured Articles
I have spent decades trying to turn political dirt into philosophic gold. I have yet to discover the alchemist’s trick, but I still have fun with the dirt. I was born in Iowa and raised in the mountains of Virginia. Wheeling and dealing with old coins as a teenager...
America’s Origins of Russophobia
by Joseph Solis-Mullen | Dec 18, 2024 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy
For those that grew up in the United States in the 1990s and 2000s, the explosion of Russophobia over the past decade likely came as something of a surprise. A brief survey of the history of Russophobia, however, reveals that the decade and a half after the end of the...
Washington’s Long Flirtation with Syria’s Islamist Extremists
by Ted Galen Carpenter | Dec 18, 2024 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy
The collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian government in late November and early December 2024 occurred with stunning speed. There was little question that Joe Biden’s administration and several U.S. allies, especially Turkey, were pleased with the outcome. Washington...
Syria Proves Tolstoy Right
by Brad Pearce | Dec 17, 2024 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy
The sudden collapse of the Syrian Arab Republic is one of the most inexplicable political events of the modern era. Though the regime was structurally unsound from over a decade of war and severe sanctions, by all accounts Bashar al'Assad's government had more or less...
The Hypocrisy of Bombing Iran
by Ted Snider | Dec 17, 2024 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy
President-elect Donald Trump has reportedly expressed concern that Iran could develop a nuclear bomb on his watch. In considering his options to prevent that, The Wall Street Journal reports that Trump is considering airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. Being...
Exposing Truth Through History and Fiction
by John Weeks | Dec 16, 2024 | Book Reviews, Featured Articles
Since Libertarian Institute Director Scott Horton published Provoked: How Washington Started The New Cold War With Russia And The Catastrophe In Ukraine in November, there has been a renewed intellectual struggle between antiwar Americans and the War Party. Horton has...
The Long Train of Abuses that Culminated in the Ukraine War
by Carus Michaelangelo | Dec 16, 2024 | Book Reviews, Featured Articles, Foreign Policy
“A fox knows many things, but a hedgehog knows one big thing.” Scott Horton is the liberty movement’s foreign policy hedgehog, endeavoring to convince the American public of one essential truth: the folly of war. But within that sphere, Horton is a fox, weaving an...
TGIF: “Corporate” Is Not a Four-Letter Word
by Sheldon Richman | Dec 13, 2024 | Economics, Featured Articles, History, Justice, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
I rise today to protest the widespread and malicious use of the adjective corporate as a synonym for evil, corrupt, exploitative, or any number of other pejoratives. As a descriptor, corporate merely says that an association that makes or sells goods for profit is...
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News
Report: Trump Will Continue Arms Shipments to Ukraine
President-elect Donald Trump is planning to continue military aid to Ukraine after his return to the White House. The transition team has told some members of NATO that the incoming president plans to increase member states’ minimum military spending levels to more...
American Diplomat to Meet with Al-Qaeda Affiliated al-Julani
A top American diplomat in the Middle East is traveling to Damascus to meet with Mohammad Abu al-Julani. The trip is a sign that the US may lift sanctions on the al-Qaeda-affiliated rebel group that deposed former Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad. The Financial Times...
Dems Call for Blinken to Live Up to Admin’s Demands of Israel, Cut Weapon Transfers to Tel Aviv
A group of Democratic lawmakers sent a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken demanding the administration follow through with threats to cut weapons transfers to Israel if Tel Aviv did not allow more aid into the Gaza Strip. Since early October, Northern Gaza...
Al-Qaeda Linked Julani Meets With British Diplomats, Discusses Removal From Terror List
The leader of the al-Qaeda-linked Syria rebel group that removed President Bashar al-Assad from power met with British officials to request the removal of sanctions and the terror designation on his group. Abu Mohammed al-Julani met with Stephen Hickey, director of...
Assad Issues First Statement Since Fleeing Syria Over a Week Ago
Former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad released a statement that detailed his final movement in Syria before fleeing to Russia. Assad and his family left the country after al-Qaeda-affiliated forces overran Damascus. “I remained in Damascus, carrying out my duties...
Israel to Deploy Dozens of Autonomous Weapons Systems in West Bank
The Israeli Defense Forces are preparing to place dozens of weapons systems across the West Bank that can be operated automatically or remotely. According to a report from Israeli Army Radio, the Samson Remote Controlled Weapon Station will be deployed to dozens of...
Blog
Protecting Vested Interests
"There were and there will always be people whose selfish ambitions demand protection for vested interests and who hope to derive advantage from measures restricting competition. Entrepreneurs grown old and tired and the decadent heirs of people who succeeded in the...
From Savagery to Civilization
"The market economy is a man-made mode of acting under the division of labor. But this does not imply that it is something accidental or artificial and could be replaced by another mode. The market economy is the product of a long evolutionary process. It is the...
Peace on Earth
Peace on Earth is the mantra that we hear, especially now but on and off over the coming year. Those who use violence, will smile it out. Those who profit from war may cheer those words from corporate offices. Those who hate will do so for entire collectives of...
Human Rights Watch: Yes, Israel Is Committing Genocide in Gaza
A growing body of legal experts and international humanitarian organizations have concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
What Corporatism Actually Is
"The fundamental idea both of guild socialism and of corporativism is that every branch of business forms a monopolistic body, the guild or corporazione. This entity enjoys full autonomy; it is free to settle all its internal affairs without interference of external...
The Pause That Refreshes
I will be spending the holidays with my children and grandchildren at an undisclosed bunker location in the inland Rocky Mountain west and off the 'net until the new year when I will resume blogging at the Institute... Since I paused Chasing Ghosts and started...