The Tom Woods Show, episode 553.

Prepare to set fire to the index card of allowable opinion.

Your daily dose of liberty education starts here, the Tom Woods Show.

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Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the show.

We're talking about war today, but we're talking in particular about the just war tradition,

the various and growing list of criteria by which people in the West have for many centuries tried to evaluate the justice or otherwise of particular wars.

And what we want to look at are some of these principles and whether they really do serve to limit wars after all.

And if I sound skeptical about some of the just war principles here, it's – well, then you've gotten my drift because this is a conclusion that I have reached quite reluctantly over the years, and I've reached it with the help, actually, of our guest, Laurie Calhoun, who returns to the show today to talk about her book, War and Delusion, a Critical Examination.

Lori is a research fellow of the Independent Institute, and you can find out more about her and links to everything she's up to on the show notes page for today, which is tomwoods.com slash 553.

Lori, welcome back to the show.

Hi, Tom. Good morning. Thanks for having you back.

I decided when I, I knew you had a book called War and Delusion, a critical examination. So I thought in the back of my mind that you were a good candidate to be a repeat guest on the show. And then I started reading the book. And that's when I remembered where I first heard of you. And I, I guess I had filed your name away in the back of my mind, and I hadn't made the connection the last time you were on.

You wrote an article for the independent review, which I guess at that time was probably being edited by Bob Higgs, in which you challenged the idea that the just war theory really does anybody any good whatsoever.

To the contrary, just war theory is basically used to justify war.

And I remember at the time, I didn't study the article carefully, but I remember being really upset that anyone would say that because I had made good use of just war theory.

And I couldn't believe that somebody would say something like that.

And yet, the more I think about it, the more I think, oh, doggone it,

Laurie Calhoun is right. So that was you writing that article. That's correct. Well, how about that?

So tell us about the connection between the thesis in that article and your book War and Delusion.

Now, what year did this book come out?

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