Free Society

Leviathan Logic versus Individual Liberty

by James Bovard March 24, 2025

The failure to think clearly about government is one of the greatest sources of tyranny. The history of liberties lost is the history of patterns of abuses ignored and inductions not made. People talk about the importance of ideas in politics. Often, it is merely the impact of a pretense of ideas. In Washington, fashionable ideas are the intellectual equivalent ...

The DOGE Wars versus a Real Campaign for Liberty

by Richard M. Ebeling March 14, 2025

Washington, D.C., and the nation as a whole are in the midst of a combative chaos. On the one side is President Donald Trump and Elon Musk. On the other side is a large array of politicians, bureaucrats and special-interest groups opposing them. With the establishment of DOGE (the Department of Government Efficiency) and Trump’s appointment of Musk as ...

Minimum-Wage Laws Cost Jobs and Threaten Liberty

by Richard M. Ebeling March 12, 2025

One of the great persistent political myths is the illusion that governments have it in their power to manipulate and control the marketplace. One particularly common myth is the widely held belief that government legislation can make things and people worth whatever value those in political authority think they should be worth. The minimum wage is one perverse example of ...

Sleepwalking into Tyranny

by John W. Whitehead February 14, 2025

“This is what militaries do during coups: you capture the major targets, with government buildings high on the list, and you take over communications and other systems.”—Ruth Ben-Ghiat, historian on fascism and authoritarian leaders How something is done is just as important as why something is done. To suggest that the ends justify the means is to launch ...

Animal Farm Politics: The Deep State Wins Again

by John W. Whitehead January 24, 2025

“No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”—George Orwell, Animal Farm It cost the American taxpayer $24 million to find out what we knew ...

Classical Liberalism versus Modern Unlimited Democracy

by Richard M. Ebeling October 1, 2024

Election years have the tendency to bring out the worst in political rhetoric. Both major political parties color their opponents as dangers to the foundations of American democracy and even the world in general. I remember seeing on television in 1964 the famous “Daisy” political ad with a small girl holding a flower being vaporized in a huge nuclear ...

The Political Matrix Sustains the Illusion of Freedom

by John W. Whitehead August 21, 2024

“When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience, and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility.” — Neil Postman What you smell ...

The Right to Not Be Lied To: Making the Case for Truth in Politics

by John W. Whitehead July 31, 2024

Q: “How can you tell if a politician is lying?” A: “When his lips are moving.” “In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true… The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological ...

Project Total Control: Everything Is a Weapon When Totalitarianism Is Normalized

by John W. Whitehead July 15, 2024

“The biggest mistake I see is people waiting for A Big Sign that’ll tell them that things have gone too far. One Big Thing that police or lawmakers or the president/leaders will do that will cross the line. It’ll never come because they won’t cross it. They’ll move the line. That line you think you stand behind is shifting ...

The Unjust Conviction of an Innocent Man: The Ian Freeman Case, Part 3

by Jacob G. Hornberger July 3, 2024

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 As I pointed out in parts 1 and 2 of this article, the main thrust of the U.S. government’s case against Ian Freeman involved money-laundering and conspiracy to launder money. The money-laundering charge came after the undercover IRS agent Pavel Prilotsky posed as a drug dealer in an attempt ...

The Unjust Conviction of an Innocent Man: The Ian Freeman Case, Part 2

by Jacob G. Hornberger July 2, 2024

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 In 2008, a person by the name of Satoshi Nakamoto revolutionized the monetary world with the invention of bitcoin, the world’s first decentralized cryptocurrency. Concerned about the omnipotent control over money that governments all over the world wielded and the massive violations of financial privacy that came with such control, ...

Tyranny and the Homelessness Problem

by Jacob G. Hornberger July 1, 2024

I grew up in Laredo, Texas, which was the poorest city in the United States based on per capita income. The poverty in Laredo was so extensive that people in some parts of town actually lived in shacks. Yet, there was never a homelessness problem in Laredo. Yes, people lived in dilapidated housing, but at least they had a ...