Free Society

America’s Comeback

by Laurence M. Vance April 1, 2023

When most Americans hear the word comeback, they immediately think of sports. Whether it is football, basketball, golf, baseball, boxing, or hockey — Americans love a comeback. Like in 2019, when Tiger Woods won the Masters — his first Majors win in 11 years. Like in 2016, when the Chicago Cubs finished the ...

Circus Politics Are Intended to Distract Us. Don’t Be Distracted

by John W. Whitehead March 30, 2023

“There is nothing more dangerous than a government of the many controlled by the few.” — Lawrence Lessig, Harvard law professor It is easy to be distracted right now by the bread and circus politics that have dominated the news headlines lately, but don’t be distracted. Don’t be fooled, not even a little. We’re being subjected to the oldest con game in ...

When the Government Thinks It Knows Best

by John W. Whitehead March 1, 2023

“Whether the mask is labeled fascism, democracy, or dictatorship of the proletariat, our great adversary remains the apparatus—the bureaucracy, the police, the military.”—Simone Weil, French philosopher It’s hard to say whether we’re dealing with a kleptocracy (a government ruled by thieves), a kakistocracy (a government run by unprincipled career politicians, corporations and thieves that ...

Don’t Bow Down to a Dictatorial Government

by John W. Whitehead February 17, 2023

“If all that Americans want is security, they can go to prison. They'll have enough to eat, a bed and a roof over their heads. But if an American wants to preserve his dignity and his equality as a human being, he must not bow his neck to any dictatorial government.”— President Dwight D. Eisenhower The government ...

The War on Consumption

by Laurence M. Vance February 1, 2023

Although Americans believe that they live in a free country — some would even say the freest country on earth — that freedom is limited and relative. The Cato Institute’s Human Freedom Index “presents the state of human freedom in the world based on a broad measure that encompasses personal, civil, and economic freedom.” The United States ...

Freedom of Conscience

by Laurence M. Vance January 1, 2023

Libertarian philosopher and historian George H. Smith (1949–2022), in his collection of essays titled Freethought and Freedom, incisively remarked that “without freedom of conscience no other freedoms are possible.” It is my contention that freedom of conscience is under attack right now — in the third decade of the twenty-first century — more so than at any other time ...

Cancel Culture’s War on History, Heritage and the Freedom to Think for Yourself

by John W. Whitehead November 23, 2022

“All the time—such is the tragi-comedy of our situation—we continue to clamour for those very qualities we are rendering impossible… In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors ...

We’re Being Gunned Down Like Dogs in the Street

by John W. Whitehead November 4, 2022

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned. —William Butler Yeats, “The Second Coming” Things are falling apart. How much longer we can sustain the fiction that we live in a constitutional republic, I cannot say, but anarchy is ...

A Swiss Oasis of Liberal Sanity in a Totalitarian Europe

by Richard M. Ebeling November 1, 2022

On September 16, 1939, barely more than two weeks after the beginning of the Second World War in Europe with the German invasion of Poland on September 1, the “Austrian”-oriented British economist Lionel Robbins finished the preface to his short book, The Economic Causes of War. The five chapters making up the 125-page volume had originally been delivered as ...

Authoritarian Monsters Wreak Havoc on Our Freedoms

by John W. Whitehead October 28, 2022

“You see them on the street. You watch them on TV. You might even vote for one this fall. You think they’re people just like you. You’re wrong. Dead wrong.” — They Live We’re living in two worlds. There’s the world we see (or are made to see) and then there’s the one we sense (and occasionally catch a ...

Think Twice Before Calling the Cops: The Deadly Cost of Police Welfare Checks

by John W. Whitehead October 21, 2022

“This should have never happened. We shouldn’t be living in a society where you call for help and be killed.”— Mother of Damian Daniels, who was shot by police during a wellness check Think twice before you call the cops to carry out a welfare check on a loved one. Especially if you value that person’s life. Particularly if that person ...

Liberalism, True and False

by Richard M. Ebeling October 1, 2022

The death of liberalism has been hailed or feared for well over a century now. In the United States, the tribal collectivists of identity politics and critical race theory insist that America has never been about freedom. It has always been a racist society born with the institution of slavery. The idea of liberal individualism is a ruse to ...