Collectivism Breeds Indifference to the Loss of Liberty by Richard M. Ebeling December 1, 2020 Who does not want to make the world a better place? With so much sorrow and suffering, poverty and plunder, cynicism and corruption in far too many places, nearly everyone, if asked, will usually say that if he could he would try to make this shared planet of ours a safer, prettier, more prosperous, and less unjust shared domicile ...
The Gold Clause: A Free-Market Gold Standard by Wendy McElroy December 1, 2020 President Franklin Roosevelt destroyed one of the most valuable uses of gold when he nationalized ownership of the metal in 1933: the gold clause. This value did not return when private ownership of gold was legalized once more in 1974, partly because its use is still discouraged by anti-usury laws. The impact of its sudden absence was dramatized by a ...
Religious Discrimination and Foster Care by Laurence M. Vance November 30, 2020 The new Supreme Court justice, Amy Coney Barrett, who became the 103rd associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court only on October 27, has gotten right to work. On November 4, she sat with the other justices to hear oral arguments in the case of Fulton v. City of Philadelphia. At issue ...
The Legacy of Thanksgiving Is Free Enterprise by Richard M. Ebeling November 25, 2020 Thanksgiving is normally a time of family festivities, when relatives and good friends come together for a fine meal, catching up with what has been happening in everyone’s life, and a general good cheer. A month later Christmas and New Year’s brings an end to the old year and the start of another. But things are very different this ...
Diplomatic Impunity by Michael Tennant November 18, 2020 “An ambassador is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country,” English diplomat Sir Henry Wotton was quoted as saying in a 1611 book by Caspar Schoppe. Four hundred nine years later, in a Defense One article by Katie Bo Williams, retiring U.S. diplomat Jim Jeffrey turned Wotton’s epigram on its ...
Do Not Trust Governments with the Control of Money by Richard M. Ebeling November 17, 2020 If there is one thing that is fairly certain in this life – besides the seeming inescapability of death and taxes – is that once someone is appointed to almost any position in the political and bureaucratic structures of a government they soon discover how important and essential is the organization of which they are a part for the ...
End the Government’s War on America’s Military Veterans by John W. Whitehead November 12, 2020 “For soldiers … coming home is more lethal than being in combat.” ― Brené Brown, research professor at the University of Houston The 2020 presidential election may be over, but nothing has really changed. The U.S. government still poses the greatest threat to our freedoms. More than terrorism, more than domestic extremism, more than gun violence and organized crime, even ...
Why Politics Breeds Divisive Fears and Angers by Richard M. Ebeling November 11, 2020 The recent presidential election confirms and reinforces what many political observers and common citizens have increasingly known and noted: Americans are seriously divided over the problems they see facing society, and the means and methods to solve or reduce their impact on all of us. This division of views is, of course, partly shown in the number of votes cast ...
Gridlock Is Good—Except In The Jaws Of Massive Public Debts by David Stockman November 9, 2020 James Madison is surely smiling from his grave. Pursuant to his constitutional design, last night a badly divided electorate got an utterly gridlocked government—with the Supreme Court and Senate in the hands of one party and the House of Representatives and White House marginally in the hands of the other. That’s as good an RX against tyranny as it gets. Vlad ...
Of Course They Are Unconstitutional by Laurence M. Vance November 6, 2020 Amy Coney Barrett, a circuit judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago, became the 103rd associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court on October 27, 2020, after she was administered the oath of office by Justice Clarence Thomas and the judicial oath by Chief Justice John Roberts. After the death ...
Lockdowns as a Political Tragedy of the Commons by Richard M. Ebeling November 4, 2020 Several of the leading European countries are now in the process of implementing a second wave of social and economic lockdowns in the face of new and a rising number of cases of the coronavirus. After bringing their societies to near total halts in the spring of 2020 with lockdowns and shutdowns in the name of “flattening the curve” ...
Libertarianism and Boycotts by Wendy McElroy November 3, 2020 “There oughta be a law” has become the default position for those seeking social change, and mainstream libertarianism is beginning to forget effective non-legal, non-violent strategies from the past. A powerful one is the boycott. The term “boycott” was coined in 1880 by the Irish Home Rule leader Charles Stewart Parnell to describe a campaign of social and economic ostracism ...