Free Society

Black Lives Matter, But Not to Everyone, Part 2

by Jacob G. Hornberger December 1, 2020

Part 1 | Part 2 Some people argue that the solution to the problem of police abuse of blacks is to defund or dismantle the police. But that is no solution at all. That only opens the door to those who violate the rights of others through the commission of violent crimes. As we have seen in Portland and ...

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” ...

Black Lives Matter, But Not to Everyone, Part 1

by Jacob G. Hornberger November 1, 2020

Part 1 | Part 2 I recently watched the Netflix series Seberg, which profiles the Hollywood actress Jean Seberg and the U.S. government’s intentional and secret destruction of her. Why did the federal government, specifically the federal government’s national police force, the FBI, decide to destroy Seberg? Among other reasons, it was because back in the late 1960s and 1970s ...

Francis Lieber’s America and the Politics of Today

by Richard M. Ebeling November 1, 2020

Presidential election years always seem to mark dramatic and historically important milestones. The political parties nominate their candidates for the highest governmental office in the land. Party platforms are written and offered to the voting public with great fanfare about how, if their candidates to the White House and the Congress are elected, a new dawn will spread over ...

COVID-19 and Liberty

by Christine Smith October 30, 2020

If there's one thing we've learned about the public's understanding and practice of liberty from the pandemic, it's that some when pushed to the brink will rebel. Sometimes, for humans to learn, takes a loss of liberty to awaken them. Currently, millions want their states to "open up" while local governments say "no." People lost much during this pandemic: livelihoods, freedom ...

Something Wicked This Way Comes

by John W. Whitehead October 27, 2020

Every day I ask myself the same question: How can this be happening in America? How can people like these be in charge of our country? If I didn’t see it with my own eyes, I’d think I was having a hallucination. — Philip Roth, novelist Things are falling apart. How much longer we can sustain the ...

We Are All Victims of the Deep State’s Con Game

by John W. Whitehead October 20, 2020

We’re run by the Pentagon, we’re run by Madison Avenue, we’re run by television, and as long as we accept those things and don’t revolt we’ll have to go along with the stream to the eventual avalanche.... As long as we go out and buy stuff, we’re at their mercy… We all live in a ...

One Man Against the Deep State ‘Monster’

by John W. Whitehead October 13, 2020

You gotta remember, establishment, it’s just a name for evil. The monster doesn’t care whether it kills all the students or whether there’s a revolution. It’s not thinking logically, it’s out of control. — John Lennon (1969) John Lennon, born 80 years ago on October 9, 1940, was a musical genius and pop cultural icon. He was ...

‘We the People’ Lose

by John W. Whitehead October 2, 2020

“Free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves.” ― Herbert Marcuse Republicans and Democrats alike fear that the other party will attempt to hijack this election. President Trump is convinced that mail-in ballots are a scam except in Florida, where it’s safe to vote by mail because of its ...

Stakeholder Fascism Means More Loss of Liberty

by Richard M. Ebeling September 29, 2020

A strong wave of anti-free market thinking and policy proposals are currently dominating the debates over the role of government in society. From calls for greater emphasis on income equality, to “saving” the planet from global warming, and on to demands for increased attention to claimed gender and racial “social injustice” inside and outside the marketplace, the presumptions are ...

Mile Markers of Tyranny: Losing Our Freedoms on the Road from 9/11 to COVID-19

by John W. Whitehead September 9, 2020

“No one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end.”—George Orwell You can map the nearly 20-year journey from the 9/11 attacks to the COVID-19 pandemic by the freedoms we’ve lost along the way. The road we have been traveling has been littered with the wreckage of our once-vaunted liberties, especially ...

Trump’s “American Greatness” Also Political Paternalism

by Richard M. Ebeling September 1, 2020

Mind your own business. Every one of us has thought or said words to this effect when others have told us how to live our lives. Who our friends should be, what career we should pursue, where we should live, the person we should marry, how we should spend our money, or even what clothes we should wear or ...