[This was published in the Sacramento Bee, April 23, 1999] For the first time in American history, the government is ordering the destruction of a dam—for environmental reasons. This July, Edwards Dam, a small hydroelectric facility on the Kennebec River in Augusta, Maine, will be torn down by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Its crime? It is blocking the path of fish that swim upstream to spawn. As recounted in
Forget about the intricate details of our nuclear agreement with Iran–the number of centrifuges permitted, the degree of uranium enrichment allowed, the amount of advance notification required before inspectors can visit a nuclear facility. There is really only one question that matters: If Iran poses a physical threat to America—if we have reason to fear that its weapons will be used aggressively against us—why are we relying for our safety
Environmentalists are typically viewed as seeking to protect human life from such health hazards as dirty air and polluted water. But that’s a superficial assessment. The essence of environmentalism is the belief that nature must be protected, not for man, but from man. One of the more recent illustrations of this philosophy is provided by the current drought in California, where the government has imposed severe water-rationing measures. Not only have environmentalists
Environmentalists succeed largely because they are able to pretend that their goal is to protect nature for man, while the truth is that they want to protect nature from man. They regularly oppose projects that demonstrably benefit human beings, on the grounds that nature—fish, turtles, owls, trees, wetlands—will be damaged. While at first environmentalists made some nominal claims about how people would ultimately be harmed, such claims have now become largely
I’ve long argued that the modern libertarian movement was born out of a visceral hostility to the state rather than an intellectual opposition to statism. Over the years, part of that movement has “mellowed,” so that its anarchist leanings are no longer openly manifested. . . .
I’ve written on the libertarians’ use of “non-interventionism” as a deceptive term to disguise their tacit kinship with anarchists. An article last month by a senior fellow at the Cato Institute provides a good illustration. In “Will America Ever Learn From Its Middle East Mistakes,” Ted Galen Carpenter argues against taking any military action against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). He writes: “The principal reason to avoid
The Tyranny of Need is an expanded version of the original edition, In Defense of Selfishness. It includes two entirely new chapters, on the meaning of self-interest as applied to a nation’s foreign policy, along with a revised Introduction. Buy at Amazon.com BOOK SUMMARY What if the central idea we’re all taught about morality is wrong? Virtually everyone regards self-sacrifice as a moral virtue. From childhood on, we are told that