“When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.” ― Frédéric Bastiat, French economist If there is an absolute maxim by which the American government seems to operate, it is that the taxpayer always gets ripped off. Not only are Americans forced to “spend more on state, municipal, and federal taxes than the annual financial burdens of food, clothing, and housing combined,” but we’re also being played as easy marks by hustlers…

Henry Kissinger, President Richard Nixon’s National Security Adviser and Secretary of State, has spent most of his life collecting honors. He carried home the Nobel Peace Prize, Presidential Medal of Freedom, Honorary Knight Commander of the Most Distinguished Order of St. Michael and St. George, and many other prizes, awards, and medals. He has been honored for two things: establishing relations with the People’s Republic of China and negotiating peace in Vietnam. Next month is the fiftieth anniversary of the former, so it is a good time to take a cold look at both these events. The opening to China…

Last week the Biden administration released a National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism, the first such U.S. document on that specific subject.  Like most “strategy” documents on other topics that any administration releases, it is less a true strategy that shapes operational decisions inside the government than it is a public statement of objectives and principles.  It nonetheless is a welcome official confirmation of the reality of where most terrorist threats against the United States come from today.  That reality differs from the common perception, which has prevailed in the two decades since the 9/11 attacks, that counterterrorism is mainly a…

Say what you like about the Peronist government’s foreign policy, but it would be hard to deny that it is idealistic. The people behind it are far less interested in securing material advantages for Argentina than in scoring points in what for them is an overwhelmingly important debate. In their world, abstractions count for far more than the bread-and-butter issues lesser beings go on about in the naïve belief that people will take them more seriously than promises to replace the existing universe with something radically different. What they most want is to win an argument which began many years…

When President Joe Biden meets Russian President Vladimir Putin on June 16, their most hotly contested issue may be Ukraine. Will the United States and its NATO allies decide to defend the country of 41 million from further Russian encroachments by making it the 31st member of NATO? For Mr. Putin, such action would cross a “red line.” Moscow took the Crimean Peninsula in 2014, and its military supports rebels fighting in Ukraine’s eastern region. It wants to keep Ukraine in its geopolitical orbit. While the Biden administration says the U.S. backs “the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine,” it’s…