Were These American Wars Worth It?

Federalist Radio Hour

Radio America

News Commentary, News, Politics

4.5 • 3.2K Ratings

🗓️ 2 September 2025

⏱️ 53 minutes

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Summary

On this episode of The Federalist Radio Hour, Ivan Eland, a senior fellow at the Independent Institute and director of the Independent Institute's Center on Peace & Liberty, joins Federalist Senior Elections Correspondent Matt Kittle to discuss how domestic factors affect U.S. involvement in conflicts at home and abroad and probe whether certain wars were worth the cost they had on Americans' constitutional rights.

You can find Eland's book Domestic Causes of American Wars: Economic & Political Triggers here.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	And we are back with another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour.
0:21.2	I'm Matt Kittle's senior elections correspondent at The Federalist and your experience
0:26.2	Sherpa on today's quest for knowledge.
0:29.4	As always, you can email the show at Radio at the Federalist.com.
0:34.2	Follow us on X at FBRLST.
0:37.1	Make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcast and, of course,
0:40.9	to the premium version of our website as well. Our guest today is Ivan Eland, historian and
0:47.8	author of several books, including his latest domestic causes of American wars, economic and political triggers, given what is
0:57.3	taking place in the world today and what has taken place for a very long time in the world.
1:02.9	It's a good time to have this conversation. Ivan, thank you so much for joining us on the
1:08.1	Federalist Radio Hour. Thanks for having me on, Matt.
1:12.1	You bet. Well, let's look at the underlying theme of your book, and I think this is a critical
1:16.4	conversation to have as we try to remain out of the major conflicts around the world.
1:25.1	President Donald Trump has done his level best to do that so far in his second
1:30.5	term, as he did in his first term, but there are a lot of voices out there. You contend that many
1:36.6	U.S. wars over our 250-year history were unnecessary for national security, nor were they as heroic in upholding
1:49.1	American values as commonly concluded.
1:52.1	And in a lot of this, a lot of motivating factors, of course, and you really stress in
1:58.1	your book, the domestic and political factors involved, if you would, take us through all of that.
2:05.0	Right.
2:05.6	Well, we don't think of this.
2:07.9	We don't think of domestic factors or domestic effects as being that important.
	...

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