“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
War is a vehicle for federal power. Wars and threats of war create opportunities for the federal government to centralize military, economic, and political authority. This is clearly laid out in Walter Karp’s absorbing book The Politics of War: The Story of Two Wars...
In the wee hours of the morning on Nov 9, 2016, as the returns from Wisconsin and Pennsylvania indicated a Trump victory, a wave of shock crashed over American politics. Then there was a second wave of astonishment in the wake that election night victory: the...
When politicians pass laws reducing our right to keep and bear arms they do so citing safety, crime, or the disutility of the arms themselves. Yet, the United States government has no problem selling large numbers of heavy weapons to foreign countries, terrorists, and...
Who was the last American Presidential candidate to campaign on a pro-war platform? No major party candidate, in my lifetime, explicitly campaigned to lead the military into an offensive war. Interventionists from the left and right always argue that the wars of the...
On a superficial level, it would seem America’s wars only affect people and places outside the country’s borders – in the land where the war is waged. However, this is a misguided understanding ignoring the downstream effects of war. In truth, the warfare state and...