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<p>Before the Iraq war I thought of Tony Blair as an English version of Bill Clinton. His strong and courageous stance with President Bush pushed these thoughts to the background of my mind. Now they've returned.</p>

Is Great Britain, our junior partner in "bringing democracy to Iraq," itself a democracy? Apparently not. Prime Minister Tony Blair has decided that he alone is to say whether Great Britain loses its sovereignty and the British people lose their ancient tradition of accountable law. Next month, Blair intends to give his approval to a new European Union constitution, which would create a United States of Europe and turn Parliament into the equivalent of a local council. Trevor Kavanagh, political editor of the Sun, Britain's largest newspaper, says Blair's decision signs away 1,000 years of British sovereignty and hands "control...

<p>"Who are we? What are we?" These were cries of ancient peoples of conquered cities. With the loss of their city, a people would lose their identity and pass out of history.</p> <p>A Similar deracination is occurring today in the U.S. and the U.K. The difference is that Americans and the British are giving away their identity piecemeal. The conquest these countries are undergoing does not produce the trauma and anguish of falling to a conquerer in war. Indeed, many in the U.S. and U.K. see their loss of cultural identity as progress toward a multicultural nirvana.</p>

During the first 27 months of the Bush administration, the U.S. economy has lost 2.6 million private sector jobs. Much of this loss is from the fall in profits and subsequent downsizing after the high-tech bust. Some lost jobs, however, are from a new development: America's export of high-wage jobs to low-wage countries. The collapse of the Soviet Union, China's "capitalist road" and privatizations in formerly socialist economies made it reasonably safe for U.S. firms to locate capital and technology abroad to employ foreign labor to produce for the U.S. market. The main incentive to take production offshore is the...

Now that you have paid your income taxes, calculate how much you own of your own labor. You can do this by dividing the federal, state and local income taxes you paid (including Social Security and Medicare) by your taxable income. Generally speaking, the higher your income, the less you own of yourself. A person with $300,000 in taxable income will discover that government in the year 2002 has a claim to about one-third of his labor -- the maximum tax that could be levied on a medieval serf. If you have a low income or work primarily off...

Despite stiff and unexpected Iraqi resistance, the U.S. invasion of Iraq is likely to succeed in toppling Saddam Hussein -- and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, President Bush, the Republican Party and American neoconservatives. Wars have unintended consequences as well as unexpected developments. The White House, the Pentagon, our troops and the public were surprised that Saddam Hussein did not "collapse after the first whiff of gunpowder," as Richard Perle, the principle architect of the war, had optimistically predicted. The promised "cakewalk" quickly bogged down into a stalemate, and other major setbacks have occurred. The Pentagon has been sobered by...

<p>We must make clear to the Germans that the wrong for which their fallen leaders are on trial is not that they lost the war, but that they started it. And we must not allow ourselves to be drawn into a trial of the causes of the war for our position is that no grievances or policies will justify resort to aggressive war. It is utterly renounced and condemned as an instrument of policy.</p>

Toogood Reports [Weekender, March 16, 2003; 12:01 a.m. EST]URL: http://ToogoodReports.com/ The closer we get to extending the War on Terror to an Iraqi front, the more frequently I have been coming across strong anti-war arguments. Not surprisingly, the arguments have largely been from conservatives of the group referred to in some circles as paleo-conservatives, with some coming from libertarians. (I say, "some circles," because in most circles they are ignored.) The articles that since 911 have essentially said, "Praise the Proposition Nation, and pass the ammunition," have all come from folks who are known as "neo-conservatives." At least since 911,...

I have agreed with Paul Craig Roberts about so many things over the years, it is perplexing to see him increasingly assuming such a confused posture on U.S. trade policy.As a free-market economist and syndicated columnist, Roberts' defense of liberty and individual initiative is almost without par. When high marginal tax rates and reckless monetary policy threatened to choke the U.S. economy in an endless stagflation headlock, Roberts was among the economists who helped chart a way out. Working as a congressional aide to Jack Kemp, he helped devise the Kemp-Roth tax cut proposal that would move the Republican Party...