Freedom Daily Archive

The IRA and Defensive Violence

by Scott McPherson October 1, 2018

Lo, we shall rise up. And then we’ll make the bugger’s eyes water. — Pink Floyd, “Sheep” In the 1960s, inspired in part by the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, Catholics in Northern Ireland began agitating for radical changes to a system they believed had been oppressing them for nearly half a century. Six counties in Ulster, in the ...

Civil Asset Forfeiture Suffers a Crushing Defeat

by George Leef October 1, 2018

There are a few issues where Americans on both sides of our political divide are in agreement and one of them is the wrongfulness of civil asset-forfeiture laws. Under those laws (which exist at federal, state, and local levels), a person can be deprived of his property merely because a law-enforcement official suspects that it might have somehow been ...

U.S. Policy toward Cuba Attacked America’s Freedom and Values

by Jacob G. Hornberger September 1, 2018

The decades-long U.S. interventionist policy against Cuba failed to achieve its goal of removing Fidel Castro from power and replacing him with a pro-U.S. regime, similar to the pro-U.S. Batista regime that the Cuban revolution ousted from power in 1959. More important, interventionism against Cuba ended up attacking the freedom and values of the American people. During the Cold War, ...

The Latest Debacle Proves the Need for a Sweeping FBI Investigation

by James Bovard September 1, 2018

The reputation of the Federal Bureau of Investigation took another pummeling in June, when the Department of Justice Inspector General released a damning report on the FBI’s investigation of Hillary Clinton’s squirrely email server. Americans learned that the FBI had done backflips to exonerate Clinton and that a top FBI official had openly promised to “stop” Donald Trump from ...

Efficiency Experts for the Welfare State

by Laurence M. Vance September 1, 2018

Bordered by two oceans, encompassing 3.8 million square miles, and populated by more than 325 million people, the United States is a vast country. But although the United States is not yet a cradle-to-grave welfare state like many European countries, it is also a vast welfare state. There are in the United States about 80 means-tested welfare programs. These are ...

The Sanctifying of Plunder

by Leonard Read September 1, 2018

The law ...  has converted plunder into a right, in order to protect plunder. — Frédéric Bastiat The commandment “Thou shalt not steal” would be far better kept today had not theft assumed various disguises under which its practice has been generally sanctified. The gilding of an evil gives it a virtuous face — a Mr. Hyde’s ugliness covered by ...

Socialists Masquerading as Liberals

by James Cook September 1, 2018

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune (a left-wing newspaper) featured a quotation on the Sunday editorial page that claims that without intensive regulation “capitalism is a menace to society.” From the end of the Civil War in the United States to World War I federal government regulations barely existed. This laissez-faire capitalism catapulted living standards upward and generated a host of new ...

The Boomerang Effect

by Matthew Harwood September 1, 2018

Tyranny Comes Home: The Domestic Fate of U.S. Militarism by Christopher J. Coyne and Abigail R. Hall (Stanford University Press, 2018); 264 pages. On the evening of July 7, 2016, Micah Xavier Johnson turned a protest against police brutality into a bloodbath. Angry at police killings of black men nationwide, the Army reservist and Afghan war ...

U.S. Anti-Communist Propaganda at SiriusXM

by Jacob G. Hornberger August 1, 2018

If you want to get a taste of what life was like in Cold War America, buy a subscription to SiriusXM, the privately owned satellite radio broadcasting service. Then tune in to Channel 153. You will think that you have entered into a Cold War time warp. That’s because SiriusXM Channel 153 serves as an anti-communist propaganda channel for ...

Beltway Baloney on “Speaking Truth to Power”

by James Bovard August 1, 2018

Lying and piety go together in Washington like ham and eggs. After 9/11, a profusion of government falsehoods on Iraq and other topics ravaged official credibility. The political class responded with an endless profusion of promises to “speak truth to power.” Unfortunately, there are far more Washingtonians praising honesty than there are honest politicians. According to Wikipedia, “Speaking truth to ...

Balanced-Budget Baloney

by Laurence M. Vance August 1, 2018

It wasn’t that long ago (1987) that the entire budget of the federal government was “only” a trillion dollars. It reached the $2 trillion mark in 2002, and didn’t exceed $3 trillion until 2009. Even after a long series of budget deficits, the national debt didn’t exceed $1 trillion dollars until 1982 and $5 trillion until 1996. The first budget ...

Private Government in Genoa

by Lawrence M. Ludlow August 1, 2018

Genoa’s Freedom: Entrepreneurship, Republicanism, and the Spanish Atlantic by Matteo Salonia (Lexington Books, 2017); 214 pages. If the city of Genoa had advertised for security services in the 15th century, the job description might have looked like this: Security-Services Wanted Entrepreneurs in the city of Genoa recently fired the king of France and seek a replacement to provide ...