{"id":30578,"date":"2026-03-13T09:55:23","date_gmt":"2026-03-13T13:55:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/freethepeople.org\/?p=30578"},"modified":"2026-03-20T11:53:23","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T15:53:23","slug":"war-is-the-health-of-the-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/freethepeople.org\/war-is-the-health-of-the-state\/","title":{"rendered":"War Is the Health of the State"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was having dinner the other night with a friend, talking about the Trump Administration\u2019s worrisome about-face on the wisdom of regime change wars. “I\u2019ve noticed you are talking a lot more about foreign policy these days,” she said, complimenting a recent Kibbe on Liberty<\/a> episode with Cato\u2019s Jon Hoffman. “Yes,” I responded. Because I have concluded that it is impossible to achieve the core policy goals I have pursued throughout my entire career\u2014human liberty based on mutual respect, fiscal responsibility and a balanced budget, constitutionally limited government, and non-negotiable civil liberties like free speech\u2014without a return to a more restrained foreign policy. America has often thrived under a more realistic, non-interventionist approach to our relations with other nations, as advocated by the likes of George Washington and John Quincy Adams; even Dwight Eisenhower, who warned Americans against an encroaching military industrial complex and a centralized scientific elite, a bureaucratic blob that could destroy us from within.<\/p>\n

Well, Ike was right.<\/p>\n

I learned the hard way that endless military interventionism was the Achilles\u2019 heel of the fight for a freer society at the height of the Tea Party. That\u2019s when our hard-won limits on spending (both domestic and defense) were unilaterally abandoned by the Republican majority, including by many self-proclaimed tea partiers, in deference to “fully funding” the War on Terror, more military spending, and an all-powerful surveillance state.<\/p>\n

Of course, the military industrial complex is a financial black hole that can never be filled. It drives our unsustainable spending binge, destructive monetary policy that degrades the dollar, and a trampling of civil liberties here at home. Remember that the financing of the research that created a lab-manipulated virus and a global pandemic in 2020, and even the government response and subsequent coverup<\/a>, was a military intelligence operation. The War on Covid, like all the other wars, ran roughshod right over our core civil and economic liberties.<\/p>\n

“War is the health of the state,” wrote Randolph Bourne during the height of World War I. He argued that war necessarily expands government power with public appeals to patriotism, rallying the faithful around centralized authority and public conformity, always suppressing dissent.<\/p>\n

Which brings us to the latest war. Yes, it\u2019s a war, one that should have been authorized by Congress. But most Republicans, including avowed “constitutionalists,” refused to take the responsibility of their pledged oath of office.<\/p>\n

I hope President Trump finds an offramp soon. I don\u2019t know that he will, and he seems to be taking as gospel the foreign policy advice of the worst warmongers in the GOP. The President seems particularly enthralled with Lindsey Graham, whose enthusiasm for dropping bombs\u2014innocents caught in the crossfire be damned\u2014seems downright pathological.<\/p>\n

Speaking of unreasonable, President Trump spent yesterday in Kentucky going after consistent war critic<\/a> Thomas Massie. With his war in Iran going into week two, with seven American soldiers and 165 innocent schoolgirls dead, the Strait of Hormuz blocked and gas prices up 20 percent, and Republicans facing a midterm clobbering, it seems especially irrational and petty for Trump to spend so much personal time and millions of dollars (money that could be used to help fellow Republicans in battleground House districts) on his vendetta against Congressman Massie. Talk about squandering political capital. This quixotic campaign against one of the few voices of dissent against endless wars in Washington will likely fail. (The betting markets actually boosted Massie\u2019s reelection chances *after* Trump\u2019s appearance, with an increase of 16 points, to 68 percent on Kalshi and similar gains on Polymarket!) But at least his favored campaign consultants will still bank their exorbitant fees.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re interested in doing a deeper dive into the complexities and traps that potentially lie ahead in Iran, I recommend two recent shows I did on the subject, with two thinkers who know a lot more than I do. The first was days before the bombing of Iran, with Jon Hoffman<\/a> of the Cato Institute. The second, with Kelley Vlahos<\/a> of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, is from just a few days ago, one week into Operation Epic Fury.<\/p>\n

Having debated the wisdom of American military interventions going all the way back to the Gulf War, I understand how controversial non-interventionist arguments can be in the heat of the moment. I would love to hear from you and get any feedback or thoughts spurred after listening to these conversations.<\/p>\n

As with the government\u2019s authoritarian response to Covid, this current battle is one that all of us at Free the People feel compelled to engage with. It\u2019s that important, and we will continue to speak truth to power with urgency, openness, and humility.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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MSNBC\u2019s Keith Olbermann called Kibbe \u201cThe second worst person in the world.\u201d \u00a0 Dubbed \u201cthe scribe\u201d by the New York Daily News, Kibbe is the author of the #2 New York Times bestseller Don\u2019t Hurt People and Don\u2019t Take Their Stuff: A Libertarian Manifesto (HarperCollins 2014), and Hostile Takeover: Resisting Centralized Government's Stranglehold on America (HarperCollins 2012). He coauthored Give Us Liberty: A Tea Party Manifesto (HarperCollins 2010). Kibbe has appeared frequently on national television, including FOX News, HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher, CNN, MSNBC, and PBS. Before launching FreedomWorks, Kibbe served as a congressional Chief of Staff and House Budget Committee Associate. He was also Budget Director for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and Senior Economist for the RNC under Lee Atwater. Kibbe did graduate work in economics at George Mason University and received his B.A. in economics from Grove City College. He lives in Washington, DC with his awesome wife Terry, and their objectivist cats, Ragnar and Rearden. Kibbe is also a fanatical DeadHead, drinker of craft beer and whisky, and collector of obscure books on Austrian economics.","sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/mattkibbe","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/mattkibbe","https:\/\/x.com\/https:\/\/x.com\/mattkibbe","https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/kibbeonliberty"],"url":"https:\/\/freethepeople.org\/author\/mkibbe\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/freethepeople.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/freethepeople.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/freethepeople.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freethepeople.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freethepeople.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30578"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/freethepeople.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30578\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freethepeople.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/freethepeople.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freethepeople.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freethepeople.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30578"},{"taxonomy":"content-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freethepeople.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/content-type?post=30578"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freethepeople.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=30578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}