Explore Freedom

Compromise and Concealment-The Road to Defeat, Part 2

by Jacob G. Hornberger October 1, 1997

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 The libertarian philosophy holds that people should be free to do whatever they want, so long as their conduct is peaceful. Therefore, government's role in life should be limited to: (1) punishing people who initiate force against others ... [click for more]

Compromise and Concealment-The Road to Defeat, Part 1

by Jacob G. Hornberger September 1, 1997

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 Twenty years ago, I was rummaging through the public library in my hometown of Laredo, Texas, and I came across four books entitled Essays on Liberty that had been published many years before by The Foundation for Economic ... [click for more]

Sovietizing American Virtue

by James Bovard September 1, 1997

"The higher interest involved in the life of the whole must set the limits and lay down the duties of the individual," according to Adolf Hitler. Hitler's views are generally unpopular in the United States. However, some of his moral dogmas may be staging a comeback. At the Volunteer Summit in ... [click for more]

Power Corrupts

by Ben Moreel August 1, 1997

When a person gains power over other persons the political power to force other persons to do his bidding when they do not believe it right to do so it seems inevitable that a moral weakness develops in the person who exercises that power. It may take time ... [click for more]

A Vision of a Free Society, Part 5

by Jacob G. Hornberger June 1, 1997

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 Libertarians, unlike conservatives and leftists, believe that people should be free to live their lives any way they wish, as long as their conduct remains peaceful. That is, as long as people do not murder, rape, steal, loot, plunder, defraud, and so ... [click for more]

A Vision of a Free Society, Part 4

by Jacob G. Hornberger May 1, 1997

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 In a primitive, economically poor society, a person has to do a lot of basic jobs just to survive. He has to be a master of many trades. But as a society becomes wealthier and more complex, people begin to specialize at ... [click for more]

The Penalty of Surrender: Part II

by Leonard Read May 1, 1997

Part 1 | Part 2 To me, "Thou shalt not steal" is a principle not because some sage of antiquity said so but because, in my own experience, it has been revealed as a principle which must be adhered to if we are not to perish from the face of the earth. To the ones who have not been graced ... [click for more]

A Vision of a Free Society, Part 3

by Jacob G. Hornberger April 1, 1997

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 Karl Marx wrote that the value of an item is determined by how much labor goes into producing it. A diamond is valuable because of all the work that goes into mining it. Therefore, Marx argued, since value is created by the ... [click for more]

The Penalty of Surrender, Part 1

by Leonard Read April 1, 1997

Part 1 | Part 2 These remarks, hardly more than a personal confession of faith, have their origin in an attitude or behavior commonly referred to as "compromising." The compromising attitude is exalted by many and deplored by only a few. As an example of the way this attitude is exalted, a certain business leader, perhaps the most publicized one in ... [click for more]

A Vision of a Free Society, Part 2

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 1, 1997

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 What would a free society look like? That is, what if everyone were free to live his life the way he wanted, so long as his conduct was peaceful, and free to enter into any mutually beneficial exchanges with anyone in the ... [click for more]

A Vision of a Free Society, Part 1

by Jacob G. Hornberger February 1, 1997

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 If we abolish public schooling, then how will the poor be educated? If drug laws are repealed, won't everyone go on drugs? If Social Security is abolished, won't old people starve to death? If we don't have Medicare and Medicaid, how would ... [click for more]

Censorship in Cyberspace

by Sheldon Richman March 1, 1996

Unless some unforeseen attack of good sense has struck Washington, the U.S. Congress by now has criminalized the placement of so-called indecent material on the booming worldwide computer marketplace known as the Internet. That provision, which is part of the mammoth, dubious telecommunications reform bill, could stifle the exciting electronic age by introducing the heavy hand of the government ... [click for more]