Freedom Daily Archive

The Boast in the Machine

by Joseph R. Stromberg June 1, 2014

Average Is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation by Tyler Cowen (Dutton 2013), 304 pages. In Average Is Over, George Mason University economist Tyler Cowen delivers good news and bad news with nearly equal enthusiasm. Basically, artificial “intelligence” (AI) is aggregating the “knowledge of the entire world” and intruding everywhere, ready to overturn our lives, ...

The U.S. Embrace of Monetary Tyranny, Part 1

by Jacob G. Hornberger May 1, 2014

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 The rise of Bitcoin as an alternative currency raises some important questions about America’s monetary system. Why does the United States have a fiat-money system — that is, a system of irredeemable paper currency? Why aren’t Americans free to use any money they want? What is the role ...

Libertarianism: The Moral and the Practical

by Sheldon Richman May 1, 2014

If I say that a government activity — “public” schooling, perhaps, or the war on selected drug merchants and users — helps turn the inner cities into hellholes and otherwise makes people’s lives miserable, is that a moral objection or a practical (utilitarian or generally consequentialist) objection? Some libertarians are inclined to say it’s a utilitarian objection, but I’ve long ...

FDR Farm-Folly Lessons for Obamacare

by James Bovard May 1, 2014

As the Obama administration wreaks further havoc on health care, many people expect the politicians to recognize their follies and relent. However, history indicates that rulers will continue seizing new power regardless of how much wreckage results. The farm policy of Franklin Roosevelt exemplifies how politicians “double down” on their most brazen follies. Roosevelt’s Brain Trust agricultural planners had unlimited ...

Class Theory, Part 1: Modern Conservative Class Analysis

by Anthony Gregory May 1, 2014

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 Since the 2008 financial collapse, class rhetoric has arisen on both prevalent sides of the U.S. political spectrum. The grassroots “base” in both the Republican and Democratic party has become animated by a new or invigorated perception of class struggle. The politicians in each party have echoed these ...

A Treacherous Undertow

by David S. D'Amato May 1, 2014

American Coup: How a Terrified Government Is Destroying the Constitution by William M. Arkin (Little, Brown and Company 2013), 368 pages. Among the philosophy of liberty’s core ideas is the well-known precept that a free society must be one of laws and not of men, that the rule of law should stand above the arbitrary caprice of some empowered ...

Broken

by Matthew Harwood May 1, 2014

They Were Soldiers: How the Wounded Return from America's Wars — The Untold Story by Ann Jones. (Haymarket Books/Dispatch Books 2013), 191 pages. Members of the American armed forces are props. They wave from convertibles as Independence Day parades make their way down Main Street U.S.A. They are trotted out at football games to bless the proceedings as some ...

Let’s Raise Our Vision

by Jacob G. Hornberger April 1, 2014

There was once a time when religious liberty had never before been considered. Throughout history, people lived under political systems in which government and religion were combined. Since it was the system under which they had been born and raised and which existed all over the world, people just didn’t give any thought to an alternative. Then one day, ...

Crime and Punishment in a Free Society

by Sheldon Richman April 1, 2014

Would a free society be a crime-free society? We have good reason to anticipate it. Don’t accuse me of utopianism. I don’t foresee a future of new human beings who consistently respect the rights of others. Alas, there will always be those who would invade the boundaries of their fellow human beings. Rather, I want to draw attention to the ...

Foreign Aid Clobbers the Third World

by James Bovard April 1, 2014

The U.S. government loves to preen about its generosity to the world’s downtrodden. However, a long series of presidents and their tools have scorned the evidence that their aid programs perennially clobber recipients. Nowhere is this clearer than in the sordid history of U.S. food aid. Food for Peace was devised in 1954 to help dump abroad embarrassingly huge crop ...

Tolerance: Joining the Best of Conservatism and Progressivism

by Alexander William Salter April 1, 2014

Many liberals (in the classical sense) are so reluctant to concede an inch to conservatism and progressivism that they insist the latter two political philosophies, and the worldviews that frequently accompany them, have no redeeming features. This is a mistake. There are elements of conservatism worth conserving, and elements of progressivism worth progressing towards. Furthermore, tolerance, the premier social ...

“Racist” Zip Codes

by Wendy McElroy April 1, 2014

A new type of social engineering is poised to descend on American communities: diversity mapping and the rectification of any racial inequities the mapping reveals. The campaign is meant to stamp out “geospatial discrimination.” The term refers to the fact that affluent neighborhoods tend to be dominated by whites and Asians. What government calls “protected minorities,” especially blacks, are relatively ...