Daily Articles

The Libertarian Angle: Memorial Day

by Future of Freedom Foundation June 1, 2017

FFF president Jacob Hornberger and Richard Ebeling talk about the the public displays associated with Memorial Day. Go to the podcast.

Revisiting Postwar Japan

by Peter Van Buren June 1, 2017

For military historians, walking a battlefield is a special experience. That's where things previously locked away in books happened, the hill that blocked an advance, the river that defended an important city and altered the course of human history. Historians visit Waterloo, Gettysburg, and Normandy all the time. Things work differently for those interested in the final days of World ...

The Worst Mistake in U.S. History

by Jacob G. Hornberger June 1, 2017

The worst mistake in U.S. history was the conversion after World War II of the U.S. government from a constitutional, limited-government republic to a national-security state. Nothing has done more to warp and distort the conscience, principles, and values of the American people, including those who serve in the U.S. military. A good example of how the national-security state has ...

Janet Reno: Saint or Tyrant?

by James Bovard June 1, 2017

When former Attorney General Janet Reno died last November, the media heaped praise on her as if she had been justice incarnate. Reno had long enjoyed sainthood inside the Beltway; the Women’s Bar Association of the District of Columbia even created a Janet Reno Torchbearer Award. But Reno’s record of deceit, brutality, and power grabs should not be forgotten ...

An America First Foreign Policy

by Laurence M. Vance June 1, 2017

In his inaugural address, Donald Trump stated, “From this day forward, a new vision will govern our land. From this day forward, it’s going to be only America first, America first.” Trump apparently first used his catchphrase in a March 2016 interview with the New York Times in the context of foreign policy. The interviewer suggested that Trump was ...

Smears and Hyperbole: Neo-McCarthyism Run Amok on Russia Policy

by Ted Galen Carpenter June 1, 2017

Donald Trump’s comments during the 2016 presidential campaign that he wanted the United States to have more-cooperative relations with Vladimir Putin’s Russia have triggered a mixture of hysteria and viciousness among his political adversaries. Hawks conduct a concerted campaign to demonize Russia and portray it as a dire threat not only to the security of the West, but as ...

Misguided Attacks on the Rich

by George Leef June 1, 2017

Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy by Robert H. Frank (Princeton University Press, 2016; 208 pages) In 2002, I reviewed an atrocious book for this publication — The Myth of Ownership, by Liam Murphy and Thomas Nagel. It argued that we don’t really deserve to own anything because society makes everything possible. Therefore, ...

Stop Fighting One Another and Focus on the Real Enemy

by John W. Whitehead May 31, 2017

“Count me out if it’s for violence. Don’t expect me at barricades unless it is with flowers.... What’s the point of bombing Wall Street? If you want to change the system, it’s no good shooting people.”—John Lennon The more things change, the more they stay the same. America is still wrestling with many of the same problems today—endless wars, civil unrest, ...

Economic Ideas: Frédéric Bastiat on the Law of Liberty and Free Markets

by Richard M. Ebeling May 30, 2017

The defense of economic liberty has never been an easy task. Adam Smith expressed his own despair at this problem in The Wealth of Nations. After presenting his powerful criticisms of mercantilism—the eighteenth-century system of government regulation and planning—he despondently suggested that free trade in Great Britain was as unlikely as the establishment of a utopia. He said that ...

The Republic Has Fallen

by John W. Whitehead May 25, 2017

“You have such a fervent, passionate, evangelical faith in this country…why in the name of God don’t you have any faith in the system of government you’re so hell-bent to protect? You want to defend the United States of America, then defend it with the tools it supplies you with—its Constitution. You ask for a mandate, General, from a ...

The Libertarian Angle: Libertarian Giants – Bastiat and Hazlitt

by Future of Freedom Foundation May 24, 2017

FFF president Jacob Hornberger and Richard Ebeling talk about the great economists and libertarians Frederic Bastiat and Henry Hazlitt. Go to the podcast.

Politicians are in “Crisis,” Not the Ordinary American

by Richard M. Ebeling May 23, 2017

Reading or listening to the mass media, it would be easy to assume that America is gripped in a major national crisis due to the words and deeds of Donald Trump in the White House. Democrats stonewall Congressional legislation and dream of impeaching Trump out of the presidency. The Republicans are in panic mode that they will lose their ...