Freedom Daily Archive

The Disastrous World of the New York Subway, Part 3

by Gregory Bresiger April 1, 2006

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 Government enterprise validates a kind of cult of failure, a cult that has stood human nature on its head and made incompetence a god. It is human nature to want to do well in anything, no less in business. Most owners risk much of their life’s savings to ...

American Democracy Indicted

by Anthony Gregory April 1, 2006

Attention Deficit Democracy by James Bovard (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 291 pages. “If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.” So says a popular bumper sticker. Indeed, those of us who have been paying attention to the political scene for ...

The Trouble with Conservatives

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 1, 2006

The trouble with conservatives is that they fail to live the principles of freedom that they expound. The problem, however, is not simply that conservatives set high standards and then fail to meet them after striving to do so. The problem is that conservatives expound standards that they knowingly and deliberately violate. Consider, for example, the mission statement of the ...

Revisiting a Libertarian Classic: Nock’s Our Enemy, the State

by Sheldon Richman March 1, 2006

Were spied on by the federal government, often without even a warrant from the submissive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The government has gathered information on anti-war groups and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. The president is angry that ordinary people have found out about this. He is planning not to stop these obnoxious activities, but rather to ...

Bush’s Wiretap Crimes and the FISA Farce

by James Bovard March 1, 2006

President Bush proudly announced last December that he is violating federal law. He declared that in 2002 he had ordered the National Security Agency to begin conducting warrantless wiretaps and email intercepts on Americans. He asserted that the wiretaps would continue, regardless of the law. Bush claims that he must ignore ...

The Progressive Era, Part 2: Progressives and the Economy

by William L. Anderson March 1, 2006

Part 1 | Part 2 The last quarter of the 19th century and the first decade or so of the 20th century saw the rise of the large corporation in the United States. Those of us who are used to mega-multi-national firms cannot appreciate the sea change that occurred in the United States, as business enterprises, from ...

The Disastrous World of the New York Subway, Part 2

by Gregory Bresiger March 1, 2006

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 Here is one thing government enterprise has undeniably delivered: There are no more serious debates about greed. How can there be greed when government enterprises such as the subways and Amtrak almost always lose boatloads of money? For example, in a recent Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) annual report, the ...

Misguided Democracy

by George Leef March 1, 2006

Attention Deficit Democracy by James Bovard (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006); 288 pages; $26.95. One of Winston Churchill’s most famous quips is that democracy is the worst form of government — except for all the others. The supposition behind the “except” clause is that ...

The Separation of Economy and State

by Jacob G. Hornberger February 1, 2006

Hardly a week goes by without some free-market think tank or foundation’s publishing an analysis of some government program, pointing out its inevitable “waste, fraud, and abuse” and then issuing what has become a standard bromide: “The system needs reform.” This game is, of course, endless because all government ...

Is “the Environment” a Collectivist Idea?

by Sheldon Richman February 1, 2006

No issue has been more prominent the last several decades than “the environment.” Almost every day a new environmental “threat” arises, spelling the end of life as we know it, if not literally. We are being poisoned by polluted water and air; man-made carcinogens hide in our food; our ozone protection from the sun is eroding. And then there’s ...

The Most Absurdities per Kilo

by James Bovard February 1, 2006

The war on drugs has produced more absurdities per kilo than any other federal policy. Drug warriors have had high-profile belly flop after belly flop. Yet most of the media and the vast majority of American politicians continue to treat this war with deference, if not reverence. One of the biggest farces of the George W. Bush-era war on drugs ...

The Progressive Era, Part 1: The Myth and the Reality

by William L. Anderson February 1, 2006

Part 1 | Part 2 One of the most enduring set of myths from U.S. history comes from the political and social developments in what is called the “Progressive Era,” a period lasting from the late 1800s to the end of World War I. (Of course, one could argue, convincingly, that the Progressive Era never has ended.) ...