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Sheldon Richman Articles

TGIF: The Iraq War after 15 Years

by Sheldon Richman | Mar 23, 2018

On the 10th anniversary of the U.S. government's criminal, catastrophic, and still-to-this-day consequential war against Iraq in March 2003, I wrote: It is no exaggeration to say that most news operations were little more than extensions of the White House Office of...

TGIF: Economic Nationalism: Elitism in Populist Clothing

by Sheldon Richman | Mar 16, 2018

My old friend and former American Conservative editor Dan McCarthy gets it all wrong about Donald Trump's "national security" tariffs on aluminum and steel. I won't discuss Dan's strictly economic case for the tariffs -- I've already discussed this -- but I want to...

TGIF: Trading Places

by Sheldon Richman | Mar 9, 2018

"What protection teaches us, is to do to ourselves in time of peace what enemies seek to do to us in time of war." --Henry George When Donald Trump can propose tariffs on imported steel, aluminum, washing machines, and solar-panels without being roundly booed off the...

TGIF: The Grammar of Russiagate

by Sheldon Richman | Mar 2, 2018

Grammar, usually taken to consist of the rules of correct syntactic and semantic usage, becomes, in [philosopher Ludwig] Wittgenstein’s hands, the wider—and more elusive—network of rules which determine what linguistic move is allowed as making sense, and what isn’t....

TGIF: The Tragicomedy of Russiagate

by Sheldon Richman | Feb 23, 2018

The whole election-meddling distraction is remarkable in both comic and tragic ways. The tragedy can be summed up in three words: New Cold War. At a time when the U.S. and Russian governments ought to be working toward nuclear disarmament, relations are deteriorating...

TGIF: ‘Peace Through Strength’ Is a Racket

by Sheldon Richman | Feb 16, 2018

Donald Trump has embraced the popular "peace through strength" doctrine (PTSD) with his characteristic panache: "I’m going to make our military so big, so powerful, so strong, that nobody — absolutely nobody — is gonna to mess with us," Trump says. On other occasions...

TGIF: Raining on the Parade

by Sheldon Richman | Feb 9, 2018

Of course Donald Trump wants a military parade. I'd be surprised if he didn't. It's just what an insecure narcissist would want. A parade would be the national equivalent of his strutting around like a peacock, dying to turn heads. Even a politician can see that: "I...

TGIF: The Church of America

by Sheldon Richman | Feb 2, 2018

One myth that Americans live by is the separation of church and state. Some like the idea; others hate it; but the irony is that church and state were not separated at the founding of the United States and are not separate now. In fact, they were united in the sense...

TGIF: The Voice of American Workers Is a Charlatan

by Sheldon Richman | Jan 25, 2018

Donald Trump, the self-proclaimed voice of American working people, has decreed that the prices of washing machines and solar panels shall rise. So it is written. So it is done. Trump's decree, placing tariffs (taxes) on imported versions of those goods, will impose...

TGIF: Trump versus the World

by Sheldon Richman | Jan 19, 2018

According to the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, somewhere President Donald Trump, instead of saying, "Why do we want all these people from Africa here? They’re shithole countries.... We should have more people from Norway.," said, "Why don't we allow...

TGIF: Trump and No Silver Lining

by Sheldon Richman | Jan 12, 2018

I confess I was indulging in wishful thinking when I thought I detected a silver lining to Donald Trump's election as president. That's what comes of being an optimist and a libertarian romantic. Beware apparent silver linings; they may be fool's gold instead. The...

TGIF: Anatomy of a Tax Cut

by Sheldon Richman | Dec 22, 2017

Taxation is theft, I know, but the repeal of taxation, which would mean the repeal of the state, is not on the menu today. Sorry about that. So for now we must talk about the best available option. That's life. You must begin any journey exactly where you are. I've...

TGIF: Trump & Co.’s Vile Anti-Immigrationism

by Sheldon Richman | Dec 15, 2017

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director L. Francis Cissna displayed an odious hostility to liberty at a press briefing this week when he tried to associate immigration with terrorism. "If you have immigrant visa programs where the eligibility criteria are...

TGIF: The FBI Is Not Your Friend

by Sheldon Richman | Dec 8, 2017

One of the unfortunate ironies of the manufactured "Russiagate" controversy is the perception of the FBI as a friend of liberty and justice. But the FBI has never been a friend of liberty and justice. Rather, as James Bovard writes, it "has a long record of both...

TGIF: Liberty, Democracy, and the Right

by Sheldon Richman | Nov 30, 2017

I am mystified by the claim that the long-standing libertarian critique of democracy furnishes aid and comfort to conservatives who display a taste for populist authoritarianism. Let me say at the outset that the libertarian critique has nothing to offer those who...

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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