Freedom Daily Archive

Boosting American Standing on the World Stage

by Laurence M. Vance January 1, 2022

What do a member of the left-leaning New York Times editorial board and a senior fellow at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute (AEI) have in common? Usually, not very much. But when it comes to how America can boost its standing on the world stage, they are in perfect agreement: The United States should give away more COVID-19 vaccines ...

Government Planning Brings neither Freedom, Prosperity, nor Equality

by Richard M. Ebeling January 1, 2022

America is in the grip of a serious counterrevolution against the ideas and ideals upon which the country was founded. Whether it concerns fears about the physical environment or frustrations with the domestic economy or charges of society-wide “systemic racism,” the presumption is that the problem stems from people having too much freedom or the wrong types of freedom. The ...

The Fabric of Civilization

by Neera K. Badhwar January 1, 2022

The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World  by Virginia Postrel, Basic Books, 2021, 320 pages. Virginia Postrel’s Fabric of Civilization is a fascinating, deeply researched tale of the development of fabric. Starting with fiber to make string, it takes us through the development of thread, to natural fabric, and finally to synthetics. It tells of ...

A Great Opportunity to Restore the Republic

by Jacob G. Hornberger December 1, 2021

With the debacle in Afghanistan, the American people have been presented with one of the greatest opportunities in our lifetime — an opportunity to dismantle the national-security establishment and restore our founding system of a limited-government republic. Opportunities like this do not often present themselves. Now is time to seize the day, before the national-security establishment is able to ...

My Two-Bit Political Awakening

by James Bovard December 1, 2021

Samuel Johnson may have been wrong when he declared, “There are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money.” But for young kids, collecting coins is a less pernicious pastime than becoming a pyromaniac or Tik-Tok star. My own experience collecting, buying, and selling coins vaccinated me against trusting politicians long before ...

Equality and Fairness for All but Property Owners

by Laurence M. Vance December 1, 2021

The grossly misnamed Equality Act is a government attack on the rights of private property, freedom of assembly, freedom of association, free enterprise, and freedom of contract. According to the official summary of bill (H.R.5): This bill prohibits discrimination based on sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity in areas including public accommodations and facilities, education, federal funding, employment, housing, credit, ...

Civil Liberties, Economic Freedom, and Property Rights

by Richard M. Ebeling December 1, 2021

We are living at a time when civil liberties are severely under attack from a number of directions. Two of the most obvious ones at the moment are the response by many governments to the coronavirus crisis and the rise of “critical race theory,” with its accompanying “cancel culture.” We are seeing imposed or threatened suppression of freedom of speech, ...

Freedom Is Not Free

by Leonard Read December 1, 2021

Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves. —Abraham Lincoln Only a few — the pure, the apt and the true — never deny freedom to anyone. All others, while they may hope for freedom for themselves, deny this blessing to others in countless ways, sometimes knowingly but often in ignorance. Whoever diminishes your freedom deserves it not ...

The Real Lessons of the Afghanistan Disaster

by Jacob G. Hornberger November 1, 2021

I will never forget a formal dinner I attended shortly after the 9/11 attacks. It was sponsored by a conservative-oriented libertarian foundation. There were hundreds of people in attendance, mostly conservatives and conservative-oriented libertarians. There was no doubt about where most everyone at that dinner stood: They were fully in support of President Bush’s plan to launch the “global ...

Bitter Belated Afghan Vindication

by James Bovard November 1, 2021

The 20-year U.S. war in Afghanistan ended with a bang in August as a terrorist attack killed a dozen Marines at the Kabul airport. For almost 20 years, The Future of Freedom Foundation has been one of the few organizations that stalwartly criticized the Afghanistan war. FFF President Jacob Hornberger helped set the gold standard for uncompromising honesty about ...

Contactless Government

by Laurence M. Vance November 1, 2021

It seems that at almost every business website you go to, you will see a link to information on that business’s response to the coronavirus, the pandemic, or COVID-19. One of the original responses of businesses to the COVID-19 “pandemic” that is not only still with us, but apparently here to stay, is contactless service. Although this initially appealed ...

Resisting the Market Process Undermines Freedom and Prosperity

by Richard M. Ebeling November 1, 2021

The free market often seems a hard sell. The resistance and opposition to its seemingly straightforward case emerges and persists, over and over again. It is all very strange, since, after all, how many people do not want the personal liberty to make their own choices about what to buy, where to live, and the amount they are willing ...