Free Society

Book Review: Slightly Limited Government’s Nearly Last Hurrah

by Joseph R. Stromberg July 1, 2013

Coolidge by Amity Shlaes (New York: Harper, 2013), 456 pages. I am for economy. After that, I am for more economy. — Calvin Coolidge (1920) Amity Shlaes’s Coolidge is a compelling biography of John Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933), 30th president of the United States. It is a well-paced narrative with elements of novelistic plotting and repeated themes both great and small. Indeed, ...

Why Is the Drinking Age 21?

by Laurence M. Vance June 25, 2013

Last month, the parliament in Turkey passed legislation ostensibly designed to curb alcohol consumption among Turkish youth. Retailers may not sell alcohol between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. No alcohol may be sold within 100 meters of educational or religious centers. Educational and health institutions, sports clubs, and gas stations will be banned from selling alcohol. Although the advertising of ...

The Libertarian Angle: National Service

by Future of Freedom Foundation June 24, 2013

Jacob Hornberger and Sheldon Richman discuss recent talk about instituting a national service program. The Libertarian Angle airs weekly.

TGIF: National Servitude

by Sheldon Richman June 21, 2013

To make citizens, we must facilitate the shared experiences that cultivate civic pride and responsibility. This should mean a period of full-time national service as a rite of passage for every young American, ages 18 to 28. Such service could be military or civilian. Young adults could choose the Army or Peace Corps, Marine Corps or AmeriCorps, the Navy or ...

Destroying Freedom in the Name of Equal Opportunity

by James Bovard June 1, 2013

The Obama administration is finding new ways to use civil-rights laws to attack freedom and common sense. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) last year issued a byzantine “enforcement guidance” to browbeat businesses into ceasing to conduct criminal-background checks on job applicants. The agency’s edict will chill hiring and spur a backlash across the nation. The 1964 Civil Rights Act ...

The Worst Protection

by Isaac Morehouse June 1, 2013

You feel safe in your neighborhood, but worry about the small chance of a break-in or act of vandalism. To protect yourself from those risks, you pay a security company to look after your house. It costs a little more than you’d like, but you determine it’s worth it. They put an unarmed guard in front of your house at ...

TGIF: Government Is the Problem

by Sheldon Richman May 17, 2013

Barack Obama recently told the graduating class of the Ohio State University, Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems.… They’ll warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices. Because what they suggest is that ...

Gay Sex, Raw Milk, and a Free Society

by Laurence M. Vance May 7, 2013

Although gay sex and raw milk have nothing to do with each other, they have everything to do with individual liberty, private property, and a free society. The governor or Montana recently signed into law a bill to strike unconstitutional language from a law on the books that criminalized sexual acts between two people of the same sex. However, he ...

Dress Codes and a Free Society

by Laurence M. Vance May 1, 2013

At first glance, the idea of dress codes seems foreign to a free society. Actually, however, the case is just the opposite. That truth was manifest most recently at, of all places, a press conference held at the Capitol Hill Club in Washington, D.C., to announce the inauguration of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity. As recounted ...

TGIF: Liberty, Security, and Terrorism

by Sheldon Richman April 26, 2013

“Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” It would be nice if Benjamin Franklin’s famous aphorism were as widely believed as it is quoted. I doubt that Sen. Lindsey Graham and his ilk would express disagreement, but one cannot really embrace Franklin’s wisdom while also claiming that ...

Ten Reasons the U.S. Is No Longer the Land of the Free

by Jonathan Turley April 1, 2013

While each new national-security power Washington has embraced was controversial when enacted, they are often discussed in isolation. But they don’t operate in isolation. They form a mosaic of powers under which our country could be considered, at least in part, authoritarian. Americans often proclaim our nation as a symbol of freedom to the world while dismissing nations such ...

Book Review: All in the Family: America’s Big Brother

by Matthew Harwood April 1, 2013

Enemies: A History of the FBI by Tim Weiner (New York: Random House, 2012), 560 pages. Since its humble beginnings in 1908 with a pint-sized force of 34 special agents, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has always been the pillow over the face of the First Amendment. From its inception, the FBI was first and foremost an intelligence agency ...