“War,” Randolph Bourne wrote, is “the health of the state.” But war is also, it has recently and quietly become clear, the cheapest and quickest antidote when the state gets sick. This antidote, in fact, represents the most significant part of President Donald Trump’s...
Politics
TGIF: Liberty Requires Nationwide Injunctions
by Sheldon Richman | Jul 4, 2025 | Featured Articles, Justice, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
The government is always a threat. This we must never forget. In that light, I want to examine the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Trump v. CASA, the 6-3 decision that sided with the Trump administration's position that a federal district court exceeded its...
On Applying Rothbardian Populism
by Oscar Grau | Jul 2, 2025 | Featured Articles, Libertarianism, Politics
Just as state action is a zero-sum game, so is politics: some win and others lose. But if the term “populism” is supposed to be meaningful, populism must have some distinctive elements for it not to be confused with mere democracy. Although politics occur in different...
Democracy Cannot Lead to Self-Governance
by Jeb Smith | Jun 30, 2025 | Featured Articles, Libertarianism, Politics
Democracies end up anti-democratic because only a tiny minority of radicals (politicians, interest groups, major corporations, etc.) achieve power centralized in the capital. They work the levers of government, place their servants in power, and advertise via...
TGIF: The US Empire’s 72-Year War on Iran
by Sheldon Richman | Jun 27, 2025 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy, History, Justice, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
The likely temporary Israel-Iran ceasefire notwithstanding, if you need proof of how despicable Donald Trump is, consider this: When asked last week if he would ask Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to stop bombing Iran, which had already said it would stop retaliating...
Trump Was Never a Sincere Advocate of Realism and Restraint
by Ted Galen Carpenter | Jun 23, 2025 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy, Politics
Expectations for a restrained foreign policy by a new Trump administration were naïve. We now have strong evidence. Even before President Donald Trump ordered B-2 bombers to attack Iran’s nuclear sites and plunge the United States into another Middle East war, it...
TGIF: This Is America First
by Sheldon Richman | Jun 20, 2025 | Foreign Policy, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
The Trump battle cry is America First. Revealingly, it is not Americans First. The former signifies, implicitly if not explicitly, national collectivism; the latter, individualism. To the extent Trump has a political worldview, it is not individualist. We cannot doubt...
Centralize Power to Decentralize It? The DOGE Conundrum
by Tyler Turman | Jun 19, 2025 | Featured Articles, Politics
Government waste is a problem, but, unfortunately, DOGE is not man’s best friend in this case. Six months after its dramatic rollout, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) lost its most famous face. Elon Musk, the billionaire tech mogul once touted as the...