Put aside all other issues for a moment, and ignore the trivialities that dominate the airwaves and what passes for national debate in this country. The Senate this week ratified a defense authorization bill containing an amendment cosponsored by Democratic Sen. Carl Levin and Republican Sen. John McCain that would empower the military to...
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In a recent podcast interview (please see below) of the economist Clifford F. Thies at Econ Journal Watch (EJW), he discusses the ideas and impact of Richard T. Ely (1854–1943), the highly influential “Progressive.” Ely was co-founder, first Secretary, and subsequent President of the American Economic Association (AEA), that continues to take great pride...
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Ivan Eland‘s new book, No War for Oil: U.S. Dependency and the Middle East, challenges a long-standing pillar of U.S. foreign policy—the belief that U.S. national and economic security require that American taxpayers fund the military protection of oil-rich foreign lands, especially in the Persian Gulf. According to Eland, senior fellow at the Independent...
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Updated*. On November 11, 1918, the world finally had enough of the irrational killing spree known as World War I. Fifteen million individual human beings had perished in what was the largest military conflict the world had yet seen. Armistice Day, marking the end of the war, was declared a holiday by the Allied...
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It is fortuitous that the 10th anniversary of 9/11 has fallen on a Sunday, and I hope pulpits everywhere resonated with Jesus’s message in the Sermon on the Mount: Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. Earlier this summer, we spent an unforgettable 10 days participating in the C.S....
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My country, ’tis of thee, Sweet land of liberty, Of thee I sing; Land where my fathers died, Land of the pilgrims’ pride, From ev’ry mountainside Let freedom ring!               My native country, thee, Land of the noble free Thy name I love; I love thy rocks and...
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After the Japanese government surrendered to the Americans and their allies in 1945, the U.S. military occupied the Japanese home islands and ruled the nation for several years. In due course, however, Japan’s situation was normalized, and, moreover, in 1946 the Japanese adopted a new constitution that renounced war as an instrument of national policy: CHAPTER...
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In a recently released report, the Commission on Wartime Contracting concludes that waste and fraud have consumed at least $31 billion and perhaps as much as $60 billion of the $190 billion or so that the U.S. government has expended in grants and contracts with private individuals and companies for work in Iraq and Afghanistan since fiscal 2002. According to...
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In the standard U.S. history course in high schools and universities, students are usually taught that until the Spanish-American War, the United States had followed for the most part the advice of Washington and Jefferson to steer clear of foreign entanglements. Americans had devoted themselves overwhelmingly to building their civilization here at home, whereas...
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That is the estimated number of kids who have been killed by US drones in Pakistan, during a war whose purpose no one can clearly explain, much less justify. The Bush-Obama war on terrorism has been raging for nearly ten years now, and virtually none of it has anything to do with keeping Americans...
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