Government-Made Crises by Jacob G. Hornberger March 17, 2008 A fascinating aspect of government intervention is how it induces people (1) to get embroiled in the crisis environment that the intervention produces, and (2) to feel a vested interest in coming up with a solution to the crisis. Consider price controls, an intervention that governments traditionally turn to in response to their own debasement of the currency. As prices ...
The Government’s Chickens Are Back by Sheldon Richman March 14, 2008 When a private company screws up, there is no shortage of people demanding more government intrusion in the marketplace. But when the government screws up, they don’t call for less government. They call for more. The economy is slowing down, and the government is at fault. But, if anything, the policymakers ...
Speaker Spotlight: Glenn Greenwald by Jacob G. Hornberger March 14, 2008 Glenn Greenwald, who is speaking at our upcoming June 6-8 conference Restoring the Republic 2008: Foreign Policy and Civil Liberties, writes one of the finest political blogs on the Internet. Every day, with sharpness and clarity he brings peoples attention to the politics and consequences of the federal governments attacks on civil liberties. He spares no one, either Democrat ...
I’ll Think of Something! by Tibor R. Machan March 10, 2008 Often when some unexpected challenge faces a person, someone asks, “What are you going to do about this?” The answer, frequently delivered with casual confidence, tends to be: “I’ll think of something.” No answer and attitude better characterizes how to think about problem solving in a free society. ...
Speaker Spotlight: Bruce Fein by Jacob G. Hornberger March 7, 2008 While I have never personally met Bruce Fein, he is an attorney who has become one of my modern-day heroes. In the post-9/11 environment in which so many lawyers have rolled over and succumbed to the Bush administrations war on terrorism, Fein has been at the forefront of the battle to defend the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the ...
The Demise of Conscience, Part 1 by Jacob G. Hornberger March 1, 2008 Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 As libertarians have long pointed out, both the welfare state and the warfare state have brought immeasurable damage to our country. With its various programs of confiscatory taxation of income and capital to accomplish its coercive redistribution of wealth, the welfare state has brought standards of living lower than otherwise would ...
Independent Migrants, Welfare, and the Law by Sheldon Richman March 1, 2008 It’s a sad sign of the times that political candidates — even those who profess to be proponents of limited government — feel they have to one-up their rivals in showing how hard they would crack down on people who have the gall to come to the United States without the government’s permission. “Border security” is the odious buzzword ...
The Democratic-Peace Fraud by James Bovard March 1, 2008 The doctrine of “democratic peace” now provides vital camouflage for the American war machine. Michael Novak, a theologian with the pro-war American Enterprise Institute, observed, “Democracy is the new name for peace.” The idea that democracies never fight wars against each other has become axiomatic for many scholars. Prof. Jack Levy commented in 1989 that the democratic-peace doctrine is ...
Open Borders Work, Part 1 by Philippe LeGrain March 1, 2008 Part 1 | Part 2 Imagine you were born in a part of the country where farming was no longer productive, or in a rust-belt town where the local factories had closed. You hear of good jobs in California and Colorado, so you decide to move. How would you feel if, when you arrived at the state ...
I Suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Part 6 by James Glaser March 1, 2008 Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 Now we come to the very reason that veterans get PTSD. More than likely, there was a traumatic experience or experiences that, you might say, overwhelmed them. Now that I have been through it, I believe that the whole ...
The Legacy of Milton Friedman, Part 1 by Doug Bandow March 1, 2008 Part 1 | Part 2 It has been more than a year since Milton Friedman passed from our lives. What a world he departed. The desire for liberty burns ever brightly. The forces of statism resist ever strongly. How we miss his presence. Although he has left us, his ideas live ...
The Media Versus the State by Wendy McElroy March 1, 2008 Good Night, and Good Luck was the television sign-off of Edward R. Murrow (19081965) the journalistic pioneer often considered to be the finest broadcast news commentator produced by America. Good Night, and Good Luck (2005) is also an Oscar-nominated docudrama that explores the conflict between Murrow (played by David Strathairn) and U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy over the anti-Communist crusade he ...