by Jacob G. Hornberger

April 10, 2026

Just look at how the United States has jumped from the Cold War to Iraq War I, to the “war on terrorism,” to Iraq War II, to the 20-year war on Afghanistan, to the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, to the war on Venezuela, to international drug-war murders, and to the war on Iran. In the midst of all this have been the sanctions, embargoes, state-sponsored assassinations, torture, indefinite detention, foreign aid, alliances with brutal regimes, coups, and much more.

Out of one crisis and into another. It never stops. It’s a never-ending cycle of chaos, death, and destruction. Moreover, this paradigm of interventionism necessarily involves an ever-increasing loss of liberty for the American people as well as the destruction of their economic well-being, especially with the out-of-control spending and debt that comes with this system.

It’s a certainty that after Iran, there will be another crisis, followed by another one, followed by another one. That’s the way the paradigms of empire, intervention, and a national-security state operate. Each time, there will be debates, arguments, and handwringing. It never stops. Why, notice that Americans didn’t even have time to digest and reflect upon the U.S. defeat in Afghanistan after 20 years of warfare before they were plunged into the Ukraine-Russia proxy war by Pentagon-driven NATO expansion toward Russia.

Is this any way to live? Is this what America should be all about? Is this what Americans want for the rest of their lives and for the lives of their children and grandchildren? Is it really necessary? Is it beneficial to anyone other than the “defense” industry?

Americans can continue these evil, immoral, and destructive paradigms. Or they can bring them to a permanent halt with paradigm shifts, which would involve three things: (1) the dismantling of the national-security state and the restoration of a limited-government republic; (2) the dismantling of America’s foreign and domestic empire of military bases; and (3) the restoration of America’s founding foreign policy of non-interventionism.

By shifting paradigms, the racket of continuous crisis, chaos, conflict, war, and intervention comes to a screeching halt. Life regains a sense of normalcy.

Consider another example — healthcare. Throughout the Covid crisis, there were libertarians exclaiming against the mandates and the lockdowns, and rightly so. Interestingly, some years after the end of the last Covid mandate and lockdown, there are still some libertarians exclaiming against the mandates and the lockdowns. They have seemly devoted the rest of their lives to ending the mandates and lockdowns, even though the mandates and the lockdowns ceased to exist years ago.

But notice something important: Many of these libertarians want to keep the federal government in charge of healthcare. They just want their healthcare experts to be in charge. Why is that important? Because once government is vested with the power to control healthcare, it is a virtual certainty that the next time there is a healthcare crisis, there will be more destruction of liberty, such as with new mandates and lockdowns, especially if the “wrong” people are wielding the healthcare powers. Those libertarians who have devoted the rest of their lives to opposing mandates and lockdowns will be off to the races again, exclaiming fiercely against the federal government’s new mandates and lockdowns.

There is another way, a better way: Shift paradigms. Instead of hewing to a paradigm in which government controls healthcare, separate healthcare entirely from the state. In other words, prohibit government, both at the federal and state level, from having anything to do with healthcare.

What’s the benefit of such a paradigm shift? No longer would people have to concern themselves with the possibility that there will be healthcare mandates and lockdowns in the future. That’s because government would simply lack the power to enact them.

For example, consider the following constitutional amendment, modeled after the First Amendment’s separation of church and state and the Fourteenth Amendment’s implicit application of the First Amendment to the states: “No law shall be enacted at either the federal or state level regarding the provision, control, or regulation of healthcare or abridging the free exercise thereof.”

In one fell swoop, the American people would gain a sense of normality when it comes to healthcare. No longer would they have to deal with the chaos and crisis that comes with a socialist healthcare system (e.g., Medicare and Medicaid) or a fascist healthcare system (e.g., mandates and lockdowns).

The massive death and destruction of the U.S. government’s latest intervention in Iran should give the American people pause and cause them to do some serious soul-searching in which they reflect on where we are as a nation, how we got to this point, and what we need to do to get our nation back on the right track — toward liberty, peace, prosperity, and harmony. That soul-searching would hopefully lead not toward ways to reform, improve, or fix the welfare-warfare state paradigm under which we live but rather toward a entire paradigm shift that involves the dismantling of the statist systems that have attached themselves to our governmental structures and a replacement of such systems with ones based on free markets and a limited-government republic.