Jeffrey Cavanaugh

Jeffrey Cavanaugh is a Mint Press political analyst and columnist specializing in international relations and US policy. He holds a Ph.D. in International Relations, specializing in International Security and Conflict. He has worked as a political science and public administration lecturer at Mississippi State University. Cavanaugh also writes about farm politics and policy, where his work has appeared in agriculture news publications in Illinois.

Do More Guns Really Mean More Safety? Ask Australia

Australia’s experience with guns proves that America’s problems with guns are not natural, nor are these problems simply the price we must pay for freedom. Australia is no less free a place for banning guns and is quite a bit safer because of it.

Jeffrey Cavanaugh
By Jeffrey Cavanaugh

Another month, another set of American gun massacres. This time it was the killing of three people at a movie theater in Lafayette, Louisiana, where a right-wing gunman took it upon himself to open fire on theatergoers watching an Amy Schumer movie on July 23. Just a few days prior, a troubled young Muslim man opened fire on a military recruiting

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June Wasn’t All Wins For Left-Wing Culture Warriors

Why has the left been so successful on the cultural front of late, but seemingly unable to stop the juggernaut of global capitalism in any meaningful way? Follow the money, or at least, the divisions in the sources of that money.

Jeffrey Cavanaugh
By Jeffrey Cavanaugh

June was a big month for America’s left-wing culture warriors. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision that same-sex marriage was the law of the land. A few days prior, a gun-wielding white supremacist carried out a massacre at the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, renewing debate about

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Rhetorical Gymnastics: When Cops And White Racists Get Away With Terrorism

A white terrorist who guns down black people at a church is “mentally ill,” white cops who choke a man to death for selling cigarettes act in “self-defense,” and three dead young Muslims shot by an Islam-hating white guy are the victims of a “parking dispute.”

Jeffrey Cavanaugh
By Jeffrey Cavanaugh

Another in a long line of American tragedies played itself this week out at one of America’s most historic black churches. A 21-year-old white man with a handgun walked into the Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, and shot and killed nine African-Americans, including the pastor -- all of whom were attending a Wednesday night

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Wanton Violence Marks Decline Of Israeli, Palestinian Hopes For Peace

As Israelis and Palestinians increasingly move to kill, or at least gravely injure, one another with their motor vehicles, it’s clear that those traveling the highways of hopelessness have hate in the passenger seat.

Jeffrey Cavanaugh
By Jeffrey Cavanaugh

An Israeli Jewish settler shoots in the air as Palestinians protest against the Prawer Plan to resettle Israel’s Palestinian Bedouin minority from their villages in the Negev Desert, near the Israeli settlement of Bet El, north of the West Bank city of Ramallah. The Middle East is not a land from which good news comes very often. War,

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100th Anniversary Of Armenian Genocide Reflects A Politically Inconvenient Reality

A massacre can be termed genocide in one country, an atrocity in another, or something barely worth mentioning in a third. But at what point can we all agree to use the “G”-word? The answer to that question is largely a political matter.

Jeffrey Cavanaugh
By Jeffrey Cavanaugh
An Armenian woman kneeling beside a dead child in field "within sight of help and safety at Aleppo", an Ottoman city.

An Armenian woman kneeling beside a dead child in field "within sight of help and safety at Aleppo", an Ottoman city. The recent passing of the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide is a reminder that not all tragedies are counted the same, and that politics, both at home and abroad, can color our interpretation of history. In modern

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Ferguson And Now Baltimore Prove There’s No Free Lunch

We pay, one way or the other, for the way our country leaves the poor out on a limb and far from a leafy gated community.

Jeffrey Cavanaugh
By Jeffrey Cavanaugh
A police officer throws an object at protestors, Monday, April 27, 2015, following the funeral of Freddie Gray in Baltimore. Gray died from spinal injuries about a week after he was arrested and transported in a Baltimore Police Department van.

A police officer throws an object at protestors, Monday, April 27, 2015, following the funeral of Freddie Gray in Baltimore. Gray died from spinal injuries about a week after he was arrested and transported in a Baltimore Police Department van. When one looks upon the recent bout of unrest in Baltimore, and, prior to that, in Ferguson,

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Prohibition Madness Finally Being Seen As Madness

The insanity of marijuana prohibition is beginning to be seen as exactly that, and a California voter initiative next year represents potentially the greatest challenge to prohibition yet.

Jeffrey Cavanaugh
By Jeffrey Cavanaugh

It’s such a commonplace occurrence that it has almost lost its ability to shock: A random encounter in a U.S. metropolitan area leads to an armed confrontation with the police that ends with a young black man dead. Is the above referring to Michael Brown and his run-in with the cops in Ferguson, Missouri? No. Eric Garner’s encounter with Staten

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