Free Society

Fear of the Walking Dead: The American Police State Takes Aim

by John W. Whitehead October 29, 2015

“Fear is a primitive impulse, brainless as hunger, and because the aim of horror fiction is the production of the deepest kinds of fears, the genre tends to reinforce some remarkably uncivilized ideas about self-protection. In the current crop of zombie stories, the prevailing value for the beleaguered survivors is a sort of siege mentality, a vigilance so ...

Individualism vs. Sacrificial Collectivism

by Richard M. Ebeling October 19, 2015

Free, competitive markets have been the engine for both freedom and prosperity. In addition, free market capitalism is morally based on the principle of individual rights to life, liberty and honestly acquired property, in which all social relationships require the voluntary and mutual consent of the participants.  Private property rights are central to the free society. The most ...

How Do You Prepare a Child for Life in the American Police State?

by John W. Whitehead October 13, 2015

“Fear isn’t so difficult to understand. After all, weren’t we all frightened as children? Nothing has changed since Little Red Riding Hood faced the big bad wolf. What frightens us today is exactly the same sort of thing that frightened us yesterday. It’s just a different wolf.” ― Alfred Hitchcock In an age dominated with news of school shootings, school ...

Two Police State’s War on America

by David S. D'Amato October 1, 2015

Battlefield America: The War on the American People by John W. Whitehead (SelectBooks, 2015), 352 pages. John W. Whitehead is among the most dedicated and articulate civil libertarians of his generation. His latest book, Battlefield America: The War on the American People, is a cogent argument that today the clear and present danger to Americans and their freedom ...

‘Minority Report’ Is 40 Years Ahead of Schedule: The Fictional World Has Become Reality

by John W. Whitehead September 30, 2015

“The Internet is watching us now. If they want to. They can see what sites you visit. In the future, television will be watching us, and customizing itself to what it knows about us. The thrilling thing is, that will make us feel we’re part of the medium. The scary thing is, we’ll lose our right to privacy. An ...

The Crisis of the Now: Distracted and Diverted from the Ever-Encroaching Police State

by John W. Whitehead September 25, 2015

“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.”—Author Neil Postman Caught ...

Gambling with Federalism

by Laurence M. Vance September 21, 2015

The relation between the fifty states and the national government under the U.S. Constitution is a federal one in which power is divided and shared between the states and the national government. Or at least it is supposed to be a federal relationship. James Madison succinctly explained this simple federal system of government in Federalist No. 45: The powers delegated by the ...

“Great National Purposes” Mean Less Freedom

by Richard M. Ebeling August 31, 2015

With the seventieth anniversary this year of the end of the Second World War, a number of commentators have focused on the presumed “unity” of America seven decades ago to “win the war” against global tyranny and international aggression by Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. Individuals put aside their individual personal and petty interests to support and fight for ...

The Raping of America: Mile Markers on the Road to Fascism

by John W. Whitehead August 28, 2015

“Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”—Martin Luther King Jr. There’s an ill will blowing across the country. The economy is tanking. The people are directionless, and politics provides no answer. And like former regimes, the militarized police have stepped up to provide a façade of ...

We Are the Government: Tactics for Taking Down the Police State

by John W. Whitehead August 21, 2015

“The people have the power, all we have to do is awaken that power in the people. The people are unaware. They’re not educated to realize that they have power. The system is so geared that everyone believes the government will fix everything. We are the government.”—John Lennon Saddled with a corporate media that marches in lockstep ...

Agenda for a Freer and More Prosperous America

by Richard M. Ebeling August 17, 2015

There is little that happens in society in general and the market economy in particular that most on the political “left” do not think needs more government intervention, regulation, and redistribution to make “better.” One recent example of this is a lengthy “report” primarily prepared by Nobel Prize-winning economist, Joseph E. Stiglitz, for the Roosevelt Institute. Released in June 2015, ...

Don’t Be Fooled by the Political Game: The Illusion of Freedom in America

by John W. Whitehead August 13, 2015

The shaping of the will of Congress and the choosing of the American president has become a privilege reserved to the country’s equestrian classes, a.k.a. the 20% of the population that holds 93% of the wealth, the happy few who run the corporations and the banks, own and operate the news and entertainment media, compose the ...