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Sheldon Richman Articles

Fascism

by Sheldon Richman | Apr 3, 2017

As an economic system, fascism is socialism with a capitalist veneer. The word derives from fasces, the Roman symbol of collectivism and power: a tied bundle of rods with a protruding ax. In its day (the 1920s and 1930s), fascism was seen as the happy medium between...

TGIF: Trump Never Was a Noninterventionist

by Sheldon Richman | Mar 31, 2017

Can Donald Trump’s foreign policy “doctrine” and presidential actions accurately be described as noninterventionist? Strangely, Glenn Greenwald thinks so. In “Trump’s War on Terror Has Quickly Become as Barbaric and Savage as He Promised,” Greenwald writes, “Trump...

TGIF: Trump’s Military Budget Is Not NATO’s Fault

by Sheldon Richman | Mar 24, 2017

President Trump's budget proposal would increase military spending $54 billion, not quite a 10 percent increase over the current level. According to Quartz, the increase alone is more than all but two countries -- China and Saudi Arabia -- spend on their militaries....

TGIF: Things to Keep in Mind During the Health Care Debate

by Sheldon Richman | Mar 17, 2017

As the debate proceeds over what should succeed the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), here are a few basic ideas to keep in mind. We live in a world of scarcity, which is to say that at any moment our ends surpass the available means to achieve them. We can't have...

TGIF: The Religion of the State

by Sheldon Richman | Mar 10, 2017

In 1912 the pioneering French sociologist Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) published The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, which presented his findings (not without controversy) on primitive clan-based religious culture. Durkheim sought to identify the nature of religion...

TGIF: Trump Assumes Command of the American Church

by Sheldon Richman | Mar 3, 2017

As Donald Trump demonstrated in his first address to Congress, no matter how loathsome a ruler may be, he can bring an assembly of politicians to its feet and disarm some critics simply by invoking the quasi-secular faith -- Americanism -- and eulogizing the latest...

TGIF: In Defense of Extreme Cosmopolitanism

by Sheldon Richman | Feb 24, 2017

Cosmopolitanism is under assault from across the political spectrum, both in the United States and abroad. Just yesterday President Donald Trump's chief strategist, alt-right leader and self-described economic nationalist Steve Bannon, told the Conservative Political...

TGIF: ‘Isolationist’ Trump Rattles His Saber

by Sheldon Richman | Feb 10, 2017

A few libertarians and other principled opponents of the warfare state assured us we likely would sleep easier with Donald Trump, rather than any neoconservative or humanitarian interventionist, in the White House. How's that working out? Not so well. I'm hoarding...

Where Have You Gone, Mario Savio?

by Sheldon Richman | Feb 3, 2017

No true anti-fascist interferes with free speech or threatens to burn books. I condemn the perpetrators of violence at Berkeley, first, for perpetrating violence and, second, for bringing attention to Milo Yiannopoulos.

TGIF: Trump’s Blueprint for More Government

by Sheldon Richman | Feb 3, 2017

Donald Trump remains blinded -- willfully or not I cannot say -- by his absurd narrative of America as an aggrieved nation. It's a narrative that will stimulate the growth, rather than the diminution, of government power. As he told this week's national prayer...

TGIF: Trump Nation

by Sheldon Richman | Jan 27, 2017

Did Donald Trump on Inauguration Day intend to remind us of the European despotisms of the last century? Who could miss signs? They adorned the speech from brim to dottle with its invocations of solidarity, unity of purpose, devotion, patriotism, "loyalty to our...

TGIF: A Principle for All Seasons

by Sheldon Richman | Jan 19, 2017

Despite my utter disdain for Donald Trump, I am uneasy about many who oppose him. My specific concern is that they apparently believe that, because of the kind of person Trump is, they may dispense with all constraint when fighting him. Thus the common-sense rules of...

Thank You, Mr. President

by Sheldon Richman | Jan 16, 2017

"With only days until Donald Trump takes office, the Obama administration on Thursday [January 12] announced new rules that will let the NSA share vast amounts of private data gathered without warrant, court orders or congressional authorization with 16 other...

Not Much of a President

by Sheldon Richman | Jan 16, 2017

Jeffrey St. Clair of CounterPunch on Barack Obama's failed presidency: "Obama is a master of gesture politics, but he tends to flinch in nearly every pitched battle, even when the odds and the public are behind him. His political instincts drive him to seek cover in...

Do We Need a Superstate?

by Sheldon Richman | Jan 15, 2017

If the state is required to overcome the free-rider problem, what's required to overcome the free-rider problem inherent in the state?

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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