Freedom Daily Archive

Now That Inflation Is Back, Here’s the Book to Read

by George Leef August 1, 2022

Inflation: What It Is, Why It’s Bad, and How to Fix It by Steve Forbes, Nathan Lewis, and Elizabeth Ames (Encounter Books, 2022). We have been through this many times before — prices start to increase at an accelerating pace and consumers grumble about inflation, while politicians try to pin the blame for it on parties other than ...

Immigration Socialism, the Drug War, and a Police State

by Jacob G. Hornberger July 1, 2022

I grew up on a farm a few miles outside Laredo, Texas, which is located on the U.S.-Mexico border. Our farm was situated on the Rio Grande, so we irrigated our fields from water taken from the river. When we would drive down to the river to fix our irrigation pump, we could see Mexico and would oftentimes wave ...

Did the FBI Swing the 2020 Election?

by James Bovard July 1, 2022

Joe Biden won the 2020 election as a result of 43,000 votes in three states. The election was far closer than the media has usually admitted. There were plenty of dubious factors that could have tipped the scales for a Biden victory, including machinations by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The long history of FBI abuse Though the media usually portray ...

Libertarian Litmus Tests

by Laurence M. Vance July 1, 2022

It was hundreds of years ago that scientists discovered that litmus, a water-soluble coloring matter obtained from lichens, turns red in acid solutions and blue in alkaline solutions, thus functioning as a litmus test to indicate the relative pH of a substance. On a scale of 0 to 14, a neutral solution (water) has a pH of 7.0, while ...

Would You Abdicate If You Could Be the Dictator?

by Richard M. Ebeling July 1, 2022

Leonard E. Read, the founding and long-serving first president of the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), once told a story about when he first met the famous Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises. It was in 1940, shortly after Mises had arrived in the United States from war-torn Europe. Read had invited Mises to Los Angeles to deliver a talk ...

Leave Me Alone and I’ll Make You Rich, Part 2

by George Leef July 1, 2022

Part 1 | Part 2 Leave Me Alone and I’ll Make You Rich — How the Bourgeois Deal Enriched the World by Deirdre Nansen McCloskey and Art Carden (University of Chicago Press, 2020). McCloskey and Carden also devote many chapters to refuting mistaken ideas about the reasons for the Great Enrichment. Many economists have explained it as a ...

The Stultification of American Conscience

by Jacob G. Hornberger June 1, 2022

One of the fascinating consequences of public (i.e., government) schooling is that it molds the minds of children in such a way that by the time they become adults, their minds inevitably mirror whatever narrative the authorities happen to be advancing at any particular time. In fact, the indoctrination is oftentimes so effective that most of them have no ...

Supreme Court Tortures the Constitution Again

by James Bovard June 1, 2022

The Supreme Court ruled in March that Americans have no right to learn the grisly details of CIA torture because the CIA has never formally confessed its crimes. The case symbolizes how the rule of law has become little more than legal mumbo-jumbo to shroud official crimes. And it is another grim reminder that Americans cannot rely on politically ...

Libertarian Lessons from the Super Bowl

by Laurence M. Vance June 1, 2022

Even most non-sports fans like me know that the Super Bowl is the annual championship game of the National Football League (NFL). It is one of the world’s most watched sporting events, and it has the most expensive commercials (lately $7 million for 30 seconds). Some people watch the game just to see the commercials and the halftime show. ...

The Centenary of Ludwig von Mises’s Critique of Socialism

by Richard M. Ebeling June 1, 2022

At a banquet dinner held in New York City on March 7, 1956, honoring the famous Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises, another equally renowned member of the Austrian school of economics, Friedrich A. Hayek, delivered a talk highlighting the important contributions of his long-time mentor and close friend, going back to when they first met in the Vienna of ...

Leave Me Alone and I’ll Make You Rich, Part 1

by George Leef June 1, 2022

Part 1 | Part 2 Leave Me Alone and I’ll Make You Rich — How the Bourgeois Deal Enriched the World by Deirdre Nansen McCloskey and Art Carden (University of Chicago Press, 2020). Throughout almost all of human history, people lived miserably — far worse than even Thomas Hobbes famously said. Improvements? There weren’t any. Happiness? That ...

Restore Our Republic

by Jacob G. Hornberger May 1, 2022

As predictable as thunder following lightning, former CIA director Robert Gates recently declared that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s increasing assertiveness demonstrate the need for the U.S. government to remain an ever-growing, more powerful national-security state. Gates’s declaration appeared in an op-ed in the March 3, 2022, issue of the Washington Post. He also pointed to Iran and ...