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Sheldon Richman Articles

TGIF: Trump Turns to Gaza as Middle East Deal of the Century Collapses

by Sheldon Richman | Jul 13, 2018

The Trump administration's "Deal of the Century" for the Palestine-Israel has, predictably, gone over like a lead balloon. So it's shifting gears. The Washington Post reports, "With President Trump’s promised Middle East peace plan stalled, administration officials...

TGIF: The Trump-Kushner Delusion on Palestine

by Sheldon Richman | Jul 6, 2018

Here's a shocker: Donald Trump and his Palestine-Israel fixers think they can buy a peaceful and permanent settlement of the 70-year conflict by getting Arab governments to pressure the Palestinians into forgetting the "politicians' talking points" -- you know,...

TGIF: Why Palestine Matters

by Sheldon Richman | Jun 29, 2018

Why does Palestine matter? It's a question I ask myself nearly every day. Another way to put it is, "Is the devotion of major attention to the plight of the Palestinians an obsession worthy of suspicion or an appropriate response to a grave historic and continuing...

TGIF: What Does Trump Have Against Children?

by Sheldon Richman | Jun 22, 2018

I hate the children being taken away. --Donald Trump Finally, a tweet we can believe. Trump does seem to hate those immigrant children; he must because they're part of the "infestation" he's so alarmed about. But now he's relented. Or has he? A cursory reading of...

TGIF: Trump, North Korea, and Iran

by Sheldon Richman | Jun 15, 2018

As one of the original settlers of the sparsely populated territory situated between the deranged and warring states of Antitrumplandia and Philotrumplandia, I'm breathing easier today. Anyone who longs for peace and an end to the big-power nuclear threat can only...

TGIF: Separation, Not Association, Requires Force

by Sheldon Richman | Jun 8, 2018

Whenever I write about Palestine, Israel, and Zionism -- especially when I point out that American Reform Jews en masse gagged on the thought that America was not their "homeland"; they insisted they were Jewish Americans not American Jews -- I am lectured on Facebook...

TGIF: How an Anti-Semitic American Law Created the State of Israel and a Whole Lot of Trouble

by Sheldon Richman | Jun 1, 2018

Shlomo Sand, a remarkable scholar who studies how "peoples," including the Jewish people, have been invented through myths propagated by court historians and politicians, makes a startling yet obvious connection in his book The Invention of the Land of Israel (2014):...

TGIF: The Abused Jews of Iraq

by Sheldon Richman | May 25, 2018

From April 1950, nearly two years after the Zionists in Palestine unilaterally declared independence for the state of Israel, to March 1951, three bombs exploded among Jews in Baghdad, Iraq: one each outside a cafe on Abu Nawwas Street; at the US Information Centre, a...

TGIF: Shabbos with Zaide

by Sheldon Richman | May 18, 2018

Foreword In March 1989 the estimable magazine The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (WRMEA) published my article "Grandfather Sparks Interest In Debate Over Zionism" in its "Seeing the Light" series. (It was subsequently included in the WRMEA book Seeing the...

TGIF: To UBI or Not to UBI?

by Sheldon Richman | May 11, 2018

My son, Ben, asked for my take on Scott Santens's article "If You Think Basic Income is 'Free Money' or Socialism, Think Again," so here it is. The title previews the two issues Santens plans to take up, though in reverse order. So let's start with socialism....

TGIF: A Public Choice Perspective on Trade

by Sheldon Richman | May 4, 2018

Let's say you could make a strictly economic case for government interference with people's trading activities, that is, with their ability to cooperate freely with others across the world. (I have no idea what "strictly economic case" even means, but stay with me.)...

TGIF: Trump and Syria

by Sheldon Richman | Apr 27, 2018

Let's face it: no one knows what Donald Trumps really wants to do in Syria. On a couple of occasions he's said he intends to withdraw U.S. military forces. Does he mean it? Or does he say such a thing only when he's in the mood to strike a populist pose? Who knows?...

TGIF: The Dangerous Deficit in Trade Understanding

by Sheldon Richman | Apr 13, 2018

I was chatting with my tobacconist the other day -- I have no rabbi, no priest, no minister, no imam, no chiropractor, and no lawyer, but I do have a tobacconist -- when it struck me that my trade deficit with him is astronomical. How could I have let this happen? For...

TGIF: Who’s Afraid of Russian Propaganda?

by Sheldon Richman | Apr 6, 2018

If the reader will indulge me, I want to relate some further thoughts about the concern over Russia and the American political system. For the sake of discussion I will assume that expressions of this concern are sincere, that "Russia" did what it's alleged to have...

TGIF: Cambridge Analytica — Bogey of the Week

by Sheldon Richman | Mar 30, 2018

The panic over Cambridge Analytica looks like an acknowledgment that Russiagate is a losing horse. CA is the latest excuse for Hillary Clinton's ignominious loss to Donald Trump, following "the Russians" and former FBI Director James Comey. Since those others haven't...

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Sheldon Richman

Sheldon Richman is the executive editor of The Libertarian Institute and a contributing editor at Antiwar.com. He is the former senior editor at the Cato Institute and Institute for Humane Studies; former editor of The Freeman, published by the Foundation for Economic Education; and former vice president at the Future of Freedom Foundation. His latest books are Coming to Palestine and What Social Animals Owe to Each Other.

What Social Animal's Owe to Each Other

by Sheldon Richman

These essays, written over the past 20 years, have a single underlying theme: namely, that we human beings, as social animals, need individual freedom to fully flourish.

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Coming to Palestine