The Liberty Lamp: Libertarian News & Editorials

Libertarians, as many know, are generally against war, especially foreign wars that are not the result of a real and direct attack on the United States proper. We tend to live by the adage that "if goods don't cross borders, armies will". As a case-in-point, check out this essay by Murray Rothbard, entitled "The War System and Its Intellectual Myths". It was written during the Cold War, but is applicable to the "War on Terror" today. Here's an excerpt:

"In the war mythology, the Enemy is never hesitant, never confused, never human, never fearful of us attacking him or of precipitating destructive war, and above all never ready to negotiate honestly to try to lessen tensions or to work out mutually satisfactory means of living in peace. The Enemy is always Luciferian, preternaturally cunning and evil, driven only and always by his predetermined goal to “conquer the world” at all costs, never honestly willing to make mutually satisfactory agreements. And yet this same superhuman Enemy, according to the myth, can be stopped from his ever-fermenting aggression in one and only one way: by force majeure, by the “hardest” of hard lines, by ever sterner ultimata delivered by the divinely appointed champion of the “democracies” or the “free world,” the good old U.S.A. And if, by some chance, the Enemy should then not really turn out to be a craven coward, and total war should break out, why then this only proves that war is the only answer and came none too soon. The lesson is then drawn that only extermination and unconditional surrender can suffice in dealing with the Enemy."

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