Free Society

The Right to Bodily Integrity

by John W. Whitehead August 18, 2021

We’ve reached the point where state actors can penetrate rectums and vaginas, where judges can order forced catheterizations, and where police and medical personnel can perform scans, enemas and colonoscopies without the suspect’s consent. And these procedures aren’t to nab kingpins or cartels, but people who at worst are hiding an amount of drugs that can fit into a ...

A Deficit of Clear Thinking About Loss of Freedom

by Richard M. Ebeling August 11, 2021

Rightly, much is being made about the size of federal government spending and the annual budget deficits, along with the projected resulting growth in the national debt over the next ten years. But a real and more serious deficit is to be found in the lack of sound and serious thinking and debate about the growing size and scope ...

A New State of Segregation

by John W. Whitehead August 3, 2021

The things we were worried would happen are happening. — Angus Johnston, professor at the City University of New York Imagine it: a national classification system that not only categorizes you according to your health status but also allows the government to sort you in a hundred other ways: by gender, orientation, wealth, medical condition, religious beliefs, ...

Identity Politics and Systemic Racism Theory as the New Marxo-Nazism

by Richard M. Ebeling August 1, 2021

It is very easy to say that we have been and are living in unprecedented times in 2020 and 2021. We have experienced a global pandemic, with government-imposed and mandated lockdowns and shutdowns of much of America’s and the world’s economic activities and social interactions, as well as with governmental debts that cumulatively are almost equal to the global ...

Authoritarians Drunk on Power

by John W. Whitehead July 28, 2021

The executive power in our government is not the only, perhaps not even the principal, object of my solicitude. The tyranny of the legislature is really the danger most to be feared, and will continue to be so for many years to come. The tyranny of the executive power will come in its turn, but at a more distant ...

Still Divided, Enslaved & Locked Down

by John W. Whitehead July 22, 2021

A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved—I do not expect the house to fall—but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. — Abraham ...

Under Biden Free Enterprise Means Government Control

by Richard M. Ebeling July 21, 2021

George Orwell famously coined the term “newspeak” in his 1949 anti-utopian futuristic novel, 1984, in which commonsense words were reversed in their meaning. Thus, “peace” meant “war,” and “love” meant “hate.” In our current world of political correctness, “equal rights” means “privilege,” and “freedom” means “oppression.” Now, with President Biden’s recent executive order on “active” enforcement of antitrust laws, ...

“Race Manners” Reinforce a Harmful Race Conscious

by Richard M. Ebeling July 7, 2021

Which one of us does not want to be treated with respect and dignity, rather than rudeness and disregard? Which one of us does not hope for empathy and support from those who know us when misfortune or tragedy befalls our lives, rather than indifference or callousness? We all do. It’s normal, it’s human. But what happens if this ...

Private Charity, Personal Choice

by Laurence M. Vance July 2, 2021

Although Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.)—the son of former House member and Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul—would identify more as a conservative and a constitutionalist than a libertarian, he is certainly the most libertarian member of the U.S. Senate. Sen. Paul is usually the top scorer on The Freedom Index: A Congressional Scorecard Based on the U.S. Constitution, ...

Ambrose Bierce’s Pro-Freedom Cynicism

by James Bovard July 1, 2021

The friends of freedom must recognize the verbal charades that sway people to surrender their rights and liberties. The political establishment and its media allies are continually abusing the English language to lull people into submission. From pupils being required to recite the Pledge of Allegiance at the start of each school day to adults being endlessly hectored to vote, ...

Frank Chodorov’s Peaceful, Persistent Revolution, Part 2

by Wendy McElroy July 1, 2021

Part 1 | Part 2 Chodorov’s rejection of war was motivated largely by the growth of the state that accompanied it and that savaged individual freedom. Chapter 11 of his autobiography, entitled “Isolationism,” summarized his position: When the enemy is at the city gates, or the illusion that he is coming... the tendency is to turn over to the captain ...

“Progressives” Blame F. A. Hayek for Everything They Dislike

by Richard M. Ebeling June 30, 2021

There is the ideologically captured mind that squeezes all the complexities, diversities, uncertainties, and serendipities of life into one limited dimension of cause and explanation. One such mind is that of Wellesley College historian, Quinn Slobodian, who sees everywhere the manipulating agents of a nefarious “capitalism.” Even what seems as differing or even opposing ideas are placed through an analytical ...