William J. Watkins Jr.

National Emergencies Act: Flawed from the Beginning

by William J. Watkins Jr. | Mar 21, 2019 | Featured Articles, Justice

There has been much debate about President Trump’s declaration of a national emergency on our southern border. Critics complain either that no real emergency exists and/or that Trump’s actions are unconstitutional. Too often, how one feels about the issue of immigration shades one’s view of the declaration. Open borders advocates detest it and condemn the declaration, but those in favor of less immigration generally like it. No matter where one comes down on this immigration issue, anyone holding any loyalty to our written Constitution should decry the National Emergencies Act itself. In...

Could the Civil War Have Been Avoided?

by William J. Watkins Jr. | May 2, 2017 | Featured Articles, Politics

Trump is taking heat from the media on his ramblings about whether a leader such as Andrew Jackson could have crafted a compromise to avoid the 620,000 deaths in the Civil War. The general view seems to be that Trump is crazy for questioning the inevitability and justness of the slaughter. Of course, everyone knows that had Lincoln not attacked the South, slavery would exist today, right? Not exactly. As I pointed out in my book Reclaiming the American Revolution, at the time of the war there was a long history of peaceful abolition occurring around the globe. From 1813 to 1854, peaceful...

Is America Too Big to Be Free?

by William J. Watkins Jr. | Nov 4, 2016 | Featured Articles, Libertarianism

Americans consider themselves to inhabit, in the words of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” the land of the free. However, the latest report from the Human Freedom Index ranks the United States the 20th freest out of 152 jurisdictions. The study examines personal and economic freedom as they relate to such matters as the rule of law, the size of government and associational rights. The top 10 freest are Hong Kong, Switzerland, Finland, Denmark, New Zealand, Canada, Australia, Ireland, the United Kingdom and Sweden. One cannot help but look at the 10 freest and notice a commonality: size. Most of...

William J. Watkins, Jr. is a Research Fellow at The Independent Institute and author of the Independent books, Crossroads for Liberty: Recovering the Anti-Federalist Values of America’s First Constitution, Reclaiming the American Revolution: The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions and Their Legacy, and Patent Trolls: Predatory Litigation and the Smothering of Innovation.

Podcasts

Shop Our Books

Israel Winner of the 2003 Iraq Oil War

by Gary Vogler

From the Foreword by Lawrence B. Wilkerson: “[T]he debate over whether oil was a principal reason for the 2003 invasion has waxed and waned, with one camp arguing that it absolutely was, while the other argues the precise opposite.” “Mr. Vogler, himself a former...

Domestic Imperialism: Nine Reasons I Left Progressivism

by Keith Knight

Imagine the Catholic Church (or any person or group of people) doing what the government does every day: Everyone who doesn’t give the Catholic Church 25% of his annual income every year will be put in jail. If he resists the Jesuit officer, the officer has the right...

Diary of a Psychosis: How Public Health Disgraced Itself During COVID Mania

by Thomas E. Woods, Jr.

FOREWORD BY JAY BHATTACHARYA, MD, PHD Diary of a Psychosis is different from all other books on Covid: it traces the development of the government response as it happened, bit by bit, and subjects it to relentless scrutiny: did any of it do any good? It thereby...

« Older Entries