War and Foreign Policy

Scott Horton speaks at the 2019 Ron Paul Symposium in Lake Jackson, Texas.

It is no coincidence that the century of total war coincided with the century of central banking.

The shift toward empire has brought about the destruction of American liberty and privacy here at home. That’s what the surveillance, torture, and indefinite detentions of American citizens are all about — to supposedly protect us from the dangers produced by U.S. intervention abroad.

For the Pentagon, happy days are here again. With a budget of more than $1.4 trillion for the next two years, the department is riding high as it attempts to set the stage for yet more spending increases in the years to come.

Lindsey O’Rourke has written a devastating indictment of the foreign policy of the United States during the Cold War and after.

Conservatism, Malice famously remarks, is progressivism driving the speed limit. Malice’s latest book, aptly titled The New Right: A Journey to the Fringe of American Politics, documents a movement of sorts to change this. 

While searching through my apartment after a tragic fire, under soot and ash, I found these “lost” Rothbard lectures, recorded at NYU in 1979 and 1980.

Presented at "Libertython" at New York University on September 20, 1980, sponsored by the NYU chapter of Students for a Libertarian Society. For Rothbard, there was nothing more important than the issue of war and peace.

Bob Murphy uses examples from Dan Carlin’s amazing podcast, Hardcore History, to illustrate the flaws with state-provided military services.

While it’s easy to see how much we’re spending over there, it’s harder to see what we could be doing with all of those resources if we weren’t creating more problems abroad. We need to transform the way we think about our foreign policy and take Bastiat’s cue to try to “see the unseen.”