Freedom’s Frauds by George Leef August 1, 2018 Freedom Frauds: Hard Lessons in American Liberty by James Bovard (Future of Freedom, 2017), 184 pages. James Bovard has been a thorn in the side of the statists for decades. His books and columns have exposed the incompetence, hypocrisy, arrogance, and sheer venality of the American political class much as H.L. Mencken did in the early part ...
Nonintervention: America’s Founding Foreign Policy by Jacob G. Hornberger July 1, 2018 On the Fourth of July, 1821, John Quincy Adams delivered one of the most remarkable speeches in U.S. history. Having gone down in history with the title “In Search of Monsters of Destroy,” Adams’s speech summarized the founding foreign policy of the United States. Adams pointed out that there are lots of bad things that happen around the world. Brutal ...
James Comey and the Unending Bush Torture Scandal by James Bovard July 1, 2018 The vast regime of torture created by the Bush administration after the 9/11 attacks continues to haunt America. The political class and most of the media have never dealt honestly with the profound constitutional corruption that such practices inflicted. Instead, torture enablers are permitted to pirouette as heroic figures on the flimsiest evidence. Former FBI chief James Comey is the ...
Seven Implications of Protectionism by Laurence M. Vance July 1, 2018 In a speech on the campaign trail in 2016, then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said about Hillary Clinton and trade, Hillary Clinton unleashed a trade war against the American worker when she supported one terrible deal after another, from NAFTA, to China to South Korea. It doesn’t matter. No matter where she went, the American worker was hurt and you’ll ...
The Deep Hurt by Stephen Kinzer July 1, 2018 More than a century has passed since American hearts were first seized by the grand debate about overseas expansion. During that period, much of what anti-imperialists predicted has come to pass. The United States has become an actively interventionist power. It has projected military or covert power into dozens of countries on every continent except Antarctica. In many places, ...
How to Drain the Swamp: End the Failed War on Drugs, Part 2 by David Stockman July 1, 2018 Part 1 | Part 2 According to the most comprehensive investigations, the United States spends nearly $50 billion per year on the war on drugs — including about $34 billion annually at the state and local level for police, courts, and incarceration. By contrast, it is estimated that were drugs to be legalized and taxed at the ...
Legalize Drugs — All Drugs by Jacob G. Hornberger June 1, 2018 In 1972, Newsweek published what must have been considered by many readers to be a shocking commentary on the drug war by libertarian Nobel Prize–winning economist Milton Friedman. Entitled “Prohibition and Drugs,” Friedman’s article called for the legalization of drugs — all drugs. Friedman made two primary libertarian arguments in favor of drug legalization: freedom and practicality. He wrote, On ethical ...
The Pro-War Media Deserve Criticism, Not Sainthood by James Bovard June 1, 2018 The media nowadays are busy congratulating themselves for their vigorous criticism of Donald Trump. To exploit that surge of sanctimony, Hollywood producer Steven Spielberg rushed out The Post, a movie depicting an epic press battle with the Nixon administration. Critics raved over the film, which the New York Post enthusiastically labeled “journalism porn of the highest order.” Boston Public ...
Leave Social Security out of It by Laurence M. Vance June 1, 2018 It was twenty-five years ago that the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) was passed by a Democrat-controlled Congress under Bill Clinton. Although it had minimal Republican support, current efforts to expand the FMLA’s provisions are being spearheaded by Republicans. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the FMLA “entitles eligible employees of covered employers to take unpaid, job-protected leave ...
Are Europeans Re-Thinking Gun Control? by Scott McPherson June 1, 2018 The civil unrest of the 1960s threatened many Americans, particularly those living in major cities, and the urban population was exploding. Rising crime and particularly armed violent crime shocked and scared voters, and for more than two decades the Second Amendment was the scapegoat — an anachronism, “misinterpreted” by “gun nuts,” deserving of repeal. Draconian gun laws, including gun ...
How to Drain the Swamp: End the Failed War on Drugs, Part 1 by David Stockman June 1, 2018 Part 1 | Part 2 There are few more wasteful and inappropriate federal activities than the seizing and destroying of indoor and outdoor cannabis plants. At the peak of Washington’s pointless war on drugs in 2010 the DEA funded the eradication of 11 million marijuana plants, and has caused 125 million of such “weeds” to be pulled ...
Why Kennedy Had to Be Removed by Jacob G. Hornberger May 1, 2018 The current, ongoing brouhaha over Russia helps to show explain why the U.S. national-security establishment removed President John F. Kennedy from office in the regime-change operation that took place on November 22, 1963. Yes, I know the official version that we are all expected to adhere to: that it is just inconceivable that the U.S. national-security establishment would initiate one ...