Freedom Daily Archive

Imagining Freedom for the 21st Century: A Presidential Candidate’s Press Conference, Part 5

by Richard M. Ebeling October 1, 2000

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 Insight Magazine: During the last eight years, the American people have witnessed some of the worst political scandals and episodes of presidential misconduct and immorality in our nation’s history. What will be the moral character and tone of your administration, if you ...

War, Peace, and Bill Clinton

by Sheldon Richman October 1, 2000

SURVEYING THE HISTORY of England in The Rights of Man, Thomas Paine noted that “a bystander, not blinded by prejudice nor warped by interest, would declare that taxes were not raised to carry on wars, but that wars were raised to carry on taxes.” The United States government ...

How the State Became Immaculate, Part 3

by James Bovard October 1, 2000

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 During the 1920sand early 1930s, the U.S. government provided huge loans to foreign nations whose exports were subsequently blocked by high U.S. tariffs, artificially held down interest rates and flooded the nation with cheap credit, and championed cartel operations by private businesses. Economic historian Robert Skidelsky recently attributed the start of ...

Strategies from the Past: Boycott, Part 2

by Wendy McElroy October 1, 2000

Part 1 | Part 2 Why, then, does boycott in the form of strikes and blacklists elicit such public condemnation? The 19th-century libertarian Steven Byington offered an explanation: The State is afraid of it. The boycott offers a means for making another do as you wish without calling in the States aid. Byington believed that the state recognized the ...

Morals and the Welfare State, Part 2

by F.A. Harper October 1, 2000

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 THE DECALOGUE serves as a guide to moral conduct which, if violated, brings upon the violator a commensurate penalty. There may be other guides to moral conduct which one might wish to add to the Golden Rule and ...

Book Review: The Tyranny of Good Intentions

by Richard M. Ebeling October 1, 2000

The Tyranny of Good Intentions: How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice by Paul Craig Roberts and Lawrence M. Stratton (Roseville, Calif.: Prima Publishing, 2000); 240 pages; $24.95. IT OFTEN SEEMS that liberty is only really appreciated when it is either directly threatened or has been lost. In the 1930s, when liberty was challenged by ...

The Constitution: Liberties of the People and Powers of Government, Part 2

by Jacob G. Hornberger September 1, 2000

Part 1 | Part 2 In 1787, the Constitution of the United States called into existence the federal government. What was significant, however, was that it was a government whose powers were expressly limited by the people. Throughout history, government officials had exercised omnipotent power over their citizenry. Of course, there had been some exceptions, such as Magna Carta in ...

Imagining Freedom for the 21st Century: A Presidential Candidate’s Press Conference, Part 4

by Richard M. Ebeling September 1, 2000

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 The Washington Times: In your 10-point vision for America (See “Imagining Freedom for the 21st Century, Part 2,” Freedom Daily, July 2000), you called for ending all political, military, and economic intervention by the U.S. government around the world. Even in ...

Bright Days Ahead for the Second Amendment?

by Sheldon Richman September 1, 2000

THE SICKENING spectacle of hoodlum gangs molesting women in New York City’s Central Park in broad daylight while the police stood by has elicited volumes of criticism. But two key facts have been left out of the commentary: First, the police have no legal duty to come to any particular person’s ...

How the State Became Immaculate, Part 2

by James Bovard September 1, 2000

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 Hegel's deified state doctrine found vigorous proponents in Britain. According to Oxford professor T.H. Green, It is not supreme coercive power, simply as such, but supreme coercive power exercised in a certain way and for certain ends, that makes a State, viz., exercised according to law, written or customary, and ...

Rooting Out the Trade in Human Misery

by Andy Falkof September 1, 2000

WHEN DEATH is the result of smuggling immigrants across borders, is the root of the problem the smugglers or the laws that make immigration and human transport crimes? British customs officers recently stumbled upon a poorly ventilated Dutch truck containing the bodies of 58 suffocated Chinese immigrants who had tried to enter England illegally. People all over the world condemned ...

Strategies from the Past: Boycott, Part 1

by Wendy McElroy September 1, 2000

Part 1 | Part 2 The current disillusionment with politicians — which may be Clinton’s true legacy — will be positive only if it becomes disillusionment with the political means itself. Otherwise, people will continue to look primarily to the “state” for solutions instead of to “society.” State vs. society The German sociologist Franz Oppenheimer explained the difference between these two ...