Free Society

The Walter Lippmann Colloquium and the Meaning of Liberalism

by Richard M. Ebeling August 15, 2018

The world has always been an uncertain place, and this is no less true today. After the collapse of communism in the 1990s, there was confidence that democracy had won and the market economy had shown its superiority to government planning. This is no longer the case, with the rise of populism, a rebirth of nationalism, and a reawakened ...

There Is No Right to Read a Newspaper

by Laurence M. Vance August 10, 2018

The newspaper industry has been waning over the past few decades. Dozens of newspapers have folded since the advent of the Internet. According to the Pew Research Center, local newspaper circulation has declined by 27 percent over the last fifteen years and the number of statehouse reporters has fallen by nearly 40 percent. The latest victim is ...

The Dangers of Totalitarian Planning, Past and Present

by Richard M. Ebeling August 2, 2018

Liberty is a delicate idea and institution. While people say they want freedom, fight under the banner of freedom, and even sometimes die for its preservation and advancement, determining what it actually means to be free and to live in a free society seems often elusive and controversial. What it means for a society to be free is, perhaps, easier ...

Beltway Baloney on “Speaking Truth to Power”

by James Bovard August 1, 2018

Lying and piety go together in Washington like ham and eggs. After 9/11, a profusion of government falsehoods on Iraq and other topics ravaged official credibility. The political class responded with an endless profusion of promises to “speak truth to power.” Unfortunately, there are far more Washingtonians praising honesty than there are honest politicians. According to Wikipedia, “Speaking truth to ...

Freedom’s Frauds

by George Leef August 1, 2018

Freedom Frauds: Hard Lessons in American Liberty by James Bovard (Future of Freedom, 2017), 184 pages. James Bovard has been a thorn in the side of the statists for decades. His books and columns have exposed the incompetence, hypocrisy, arrogance, and sheer venality of the American political class much as H.L. Mencken did in the early part ...

A New World Order

by John W. Whitehead July 12, 2018

“There are no nations. There are no peoples ... There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable by-laws of business.”—Network (1976) There are those who will tell you that any mention ...

The Beautiful Philosophy of Liberalism

by Richard M. Ebeling July 10, 2018

There has been a great paradox in the modern world. On the one hand, freedom and prosperity have replaced tyranny and poverty for tens, indeed for hundreds of millions of people around the world over the last two centuries. Yet the political and economic system that historically has made this possible has been criticized and condemned. That political and ...

The Hypocrisy of the Left on Discrimination

by Laurence M. Vance July 6, 2018

The U.S. Supreme Court recently rendered its verdict in the case of Masterpiece Cakeshop Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. The High Court ruled, by a vote of 7-2, in favor of the plaintiff, Jack Phillips, the owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, Colorado, who was charged with violating anti-discrimination laws when he refused to make ...

The Danger Is Real

by John W. Whitehead June 29, 2018

“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the ...

Five Hundred Days of the Welfare/Warfare/Police State

by Laurence M. Vance June 28, 2018

Earlier this month, Donald Trump reached his 500th day in office. A White House “Fact Sheet” touted “Trump’s 500 Days of American Greatness.” Many Republicans and conservatives were jubilant, and sang Trump’s praises. And of course, Trump himself, on his 500th day in office, tweeted that he had “accomplished a lot — many ...

An “Identity Politics” Victory Would Mean the End of Liberty

by Richard M. Ebeling June 18, 2018

America started a “great experiment” in human history, that being the ideas of individual freedom and limited government. All of history before this assumed that the individual was subservient to the tribe, and governments had nearly absolute power over people in the form of ruling kings and princes. Today, again, there are counter-revolutions against this great experiment in human liberty. ...

Libertarian Angle: Enslavement Through Conscription

by Future of Freedom Foundation June 14, 2018

FFF president Jacob G. Hornberger and Richard M. Ebeling discuss the immorality of conscription.