The Drug War’s Assault on Liberty by Jacob G. Hornberger March 1, 2001 ROBERT DOWNEY JR. is a perfect example of the war on drug’s tremendous assault on liberty. Downey is the famous Hollywood actor who has a drug problem. To punish him for being a drug addict, the state has arrested him, prosecuted him, incarcerated him, released him, and arrested him anew. The state won’t leave ...
The Disunited States of Europe: The Politics of Power and Privilege, Part 1 by Richard M. Ebeling March 1, 2001 Part 1 | Part 2 The corrosive effects that may occur from a spirit of political and economic nationalism were understood long before the disastrous consequences experienced as a result of them in the 20th century. In 1759, in his first book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith warned against the danger residing within any strongly held nationalist ...
The Chavez Tragedy by Sheldon Richman March 1, 2001 PRESIDENT BUSH’S first choice for secretary of labor, Linda Chavez, was forced to withdraw when it was learned that 10 years earlier a Guatemalan woman who was then in the United States illegally lived in her home. Chavez caused herself trouble by saying she did not know until later that the woman was an “illegal alien.” Then she conceded ...
The Brookings Loony List by James Bovard March 1, 2001 FANS OF LEVIATHAN received a gift a few days before last Christmas from the Brookings Institution, Washington’s most respected liberal think tank. Brookings’s Paul Light polled 450 political scientists and historians to come up with a list of “Government’s Greatest Achievements of the Past Half Century.” Light has done some excellent work in the past but succumbed to his enthusiasm ...
The Return to a Global Economy by Ian Vasquez March 1, 2001 AFTER TWO WORLD WARS, the Great Depression, and experiments with socialism interrupted the liberal economic order that began in the 19th century, the world economy has now returned to the level of globalization that it previously enjoyed. By the 1970s, trade as a share of world economic output had already reached its pre–World War I height. During the past ...
Book Review: Global Fortune by Richard M. Ebeling March 1, 2001 Global Fortune: The Stumble and Rise of World Capitalism edited by Ian Vasquez (Washington, D. C.: Cato Institute, 2000); 295 pages; $18.95 cloth; $9.95 paperback. IN SEPTEMBER 2000, David Henderson, a prominent free-market economist in Great Britain, delivered the annual Wincott Lecture at the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) in London. His theme was “Anti-Liberalism 2000.” Henderson detailed the wide and ...
Abolish the Nonessentials by Jacob G. Hornberger February 1, 2001 THE POMP AND ceremony surrounding George W. Bush’s nomination of new department heads is now complete. The discussion and debate now center on the qualifications of each of the new nominees. But who is asking the crucial question: Rather than appointing the best-qualified people to run the various departments, why not simply abolish the departments themselves? After all, wasn’t this ...
The Fundamental Rights of the European Union: Individual Rights or Welfare-State Privileges? Part 2 by Richard M. Ebeling February 1, 2001 Part 1 | Part 2 IN NOVEMBER 1934, during the dark years of growing tyranny throughout Europe, British historian Ramsey Muir penned a short article that appeared in the pages of the journal The Nineteenth Century and After. His theme was “civilization and liberty.” He asked how it was that of all the civilizations around the world, only the ...
Election Nonsense by Sheldon Richman February 1, 2001 NO ONE WHO SPENT HOURS watching the coverage of the presidential election could have failed to notice the constant, almost desperate, invocation of two ideas: “Every vote counts” and “The will of the people must be respected.” It was almost as if the speakers were trying to convince themselves. I followed the presidential election ...
The IRS: Still a Grave Threat to Freedom by James Bovard February 1, 2001 THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION just succeeded in brow-beating Congress into giving the Internal Revenue Service one of the largest budget increases in the agency’s history. Clintonites had warned that, without a windfall for the revenuers, America was at grave risk of insufficient tax audits. Clinton persuaded much of the media ...
FDR — The Man, the Leader, the Legacy, Part 11 by Ralph Raico February 1, 2001 Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Table of Contents It would be a mistake to think that the ...
Book Review: The Mystery of Capital by Richard M. Ebeling February 1, 2001 The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else by Hernando de Soto (New York: Random House, 2000); 243 pages; $24.95. CONSIDER THE TERM “the Third World.” Most people probably would conjure up in their minds the image of tens of millions of poverty-stricken people living in Asia, Africa, and South America possessing no means for ...