Free Society

Government Shutdown or Not, the Police State Will Continue to Flourish

by John W. Whitehead January 2, 2019

“There is no more dangerous menace to civilization than a government of incompetent, corrupt, or vile men.”—Ludwig von Mises The government has shut down again. At least, parts of the government have temporarily shut down over President Trump’s demand for a $5 billion border wall. Yet while these political games dominate news headlines, send the stock ...

Liberal Internationalism: True and False, Part 2

by Richard M. Ebeling January 1, 2019

Part 1 | Part 2 The classical liberal international order of the nineteenth century was not planned or designed by anyone. It was, for the most part, the natural outgrowth of the expanding influence of a new political philosophy of freedom, free markets, and free trade. It began to emerge in the wake of the twenty-five years of war ...

The Little House on the Prairie of Laura Ingalls Wilder

by Wendy McElroy January 1, 2019

Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser (Metropolitan Books, 2017); 625 pages. Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder, by Caroline Fraser, is one of the finest biographies I have read, and a fully deserving winner of the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Biography. Prairie Fires is the definitive depiction ...

Freedom Frauds: Peace on Earth from a One-Season Santa

by James Bovard December 19, 2018

Happy Festivus from Jim Bovard! Jim celebrates with a cheap cigar and a beer. But what beer should he drink? Go to the audio podcast.

The Blind Leading the Blind

by Laurence M. Vance December 7, 2018

First it was the deaf; now it is the blind. Back in 2010, Netflix was sued by the National Association of the Deaf (NAD) for “discriminating against deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers because not all their streaming video had closed captions.” The NAD, with the support of the U.S. Justice Department, maintained that Netflix was a “place of ...

Preserved Primitivism Versus Freedom and Prosperity

by Richard M. Ebeling December 6, 2018

Recently the news media reported the death of a young Christian evangelical who was killed with bows and arrows by members of a primitive and isolated tribe that lives on an island in the Andaman chain in the eastern Indian Ocean. Many in the media expressed sadness for the young man’s demise but considered that compared to interfering in ...

Liberal Internationalism: True and False, Part 1

by Richard M. Ebeling December 1, 2018

Part 1 | Part 2 For more than the seventy years of the post–World War II era, the prevailing global order in the West was and has been called “liberal internationalism.” It has had two components, a political one and an economic one: “democracy” and “capitalism.” Both are being challenged at the present time in various parts of the world, ...

Freedom Frauds: The ‘Truth Will Out’ Fairy Tale

by James Bovard November 27, 2018

Truth will out? Really? Truth will out is the biggest fairy tale in Washington. From the Warren Commission, to the Gulf of Tonkin, to WMD in Iraq, the truth has not accomplished much. Go to the audio podcast. View other episodes of Freedom Frauds.

Ludwig von Mises on Liberalism, Nationalism, and Self-Determination

by Richard M. Ebeling November 26, 2018

Ludwig von Mises was one of the most important Austrian economists of the 20th century, having left his mark on economic theory and policy by demonstrating that socialist central planning was inherently unworkable because of the abolition of a market-based pricing system for purposes of economic calculation, and by developing a theory of the business cycle that argued that ...

Freedom Frauds: My Biggest East Bloc Bust

by James Bovard November 21, 2018

Here’s the story of how Jim blundered into an East German Interrogation Comedy Show while traveling illegally behind the Iron Curtain. Go to the audio podcast. View other episodes of Freedom Frauds.

Freedom Frauds: How Government Ruined My Work Ethic

by James Bovard October 31, 2018

Jim Bovard explains how one summer on the government payroll destroyed his work ethic for life. Go to the audio podcast. View other episodes of Freedom Frauds.

America Is on the Brink of a Nervous Breakdown

by John W. Whitehead October 31, 2018

“As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air – however slight – lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.” ― Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas Yet ...