Category Archives: Political Commentary

Declaring War On ISIS

Thoughts on presidential powers from Richard Epstein.

I’ve been thinking about a long post on whether or not we’ve entered a post-Westphalia era. A lot of the confusion we’ve had over the past thirteen years has arisen from the fact that we’ve never had a formal declaration of war. If ISIS is a state (in the Westphalian sense), it is one that has certainly declared war on us, and a great deal of clarity would form if we were to reciprocate. It would end all this nonsense of treating Islamic terrorism as a criminal matter. They are no different from the Nazis, and their goals are in fact more vile and ambitious. As Netenyahu said yesterday, the Nazis believed in a master race, and they believe in a master religion.