Freedom Daily Archive

Lessons in Living from Great-Grandma Ladd

by Ridgway K. Foley Jr. May 1, 2006

From the first glance, she evoked the quiet self-reliance and rectitude that imbued the spirit of the American pioneer. She favored long homemade dresses of faded, flowered print. Tall for her generation, and thin and angular to the point of gauntness, she often looked sober but not severe, although at times a slight smile creased her face. She outlived ...

The American Heritage of “Isolationism”

by Gregory Bresiger May 1, 2006

You’re against the war in Iraq. In fact, you’re skeptical about the concept of nation-building and wonder about all of the U.S. interventions in history, from Haiti to the Philippines, the latter resulting in a bitter insurgency at the beginning of the 20th century in which U.S. ...

Death and Taxes

by Gary D. Barnett May 1, 2006

A friend of mine recently passed away at his home. This, in and of itself, is not surprising, as he was 80 years old and had cancer, but this story is about what happened before and up until his death. My friend worked very hard for many years, had a successful career, and then retired. ...

For and Against Libertarianism: A Debate, Part 1

by George Leef May 1, 2006

Part 1 | Part 2 Libertarianism: For and Against by Craig Duncan and Tibor Machan (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005); 167 pages. What is a debate? Most of the “debate” that contemporary Americans see consists of the pathetic events featuring political candidates on the same stage, frantically trading sound bites calculated to ...

The Trouble with Liberals

by Jacob G. Hornberger April 1, 2006

The trouble with liberals is twofold: They have a horrible blind spot with respect to moral principles and they have an abysmal understanding of economic principles. Of course, I’m referring to “liberals” in the corrupted “big-government” sense of the term rather than in the classical libertarian meaning of the ...

What Is the Enemy?

by Sheldon Richman April 1, 2006

As libertarians, what should we view as the great institutional threat to liberty? The most common answer is socialism. But that is far too general to be helpful because it leaves unspecified what kind of socialism and in the service of whose interests. In one sense the answers to those questions are unimportant: any (state) socialism threatens freedom. (Socialism ...

The Fraudulent Meaning of Elections

by James Bovard April 1, 2006

Politicians strive to make Americans view elections as sacrosanct. Challenges to election results are portrayed as heresies that threaten to destroy the entire republic. After the 2004 presidential election, many Democrats went on the warpath over alleged voter fraud and manipulation in Ohio and elsewhere. The Constitution requires Congress to certify the Electoral College voters for each state before ...

Oil Profits and the “Gassy” Political Classes

by William L. Anderson April 1, 2006

In the wake of the twin behemoths, Katrina and Rita, gasoline prices went past $3 a gallon for the first time in U.S. history. Even accounting for inflation, the nation saw its highest prices ever at the pump. It was a made-to-order moment for the political classes in this country, and they did not disappoint, putting on a combination ...

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 ...