Freedom Daily Archive

Book Review: War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning

by Richard M. Ebeling March 1, 2003

War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges (New York: Public Affairs, 2002); 211 pages; $23. During the Second World War, my mother worked for the Department of the Navy in Washington, D.C. When I was growing up, she would sometimes look back at those war years with a great degree of nostalgia. She would say that in ...

Economic Liberty and the Constitution, Part 9

by Jacob G. Hornberger February 1, 2003

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 |  Table of Contents The ancient Chinese symbol for “crisis” is made up ...

The Hubris of the Central Banker and the Ghosts of Deflation Past, Part 1

by Richard M. Ebeling February 1, 2003

Part 1 | Part 2 Nearly 75 years after the great stock-market crash of 1929, monetary policy is still haunted by the ghost of the Great Depression. The severity of the American stock-market decline during the last three years has again awakened fears among some policymakers that the economic downturn might bring about a deflationary period of collapsing output ...

More Like Them Than We Care to Admit

by Sheldon Richman February 1, 2003

President Bush last fall dismissed the Iraqi parliament’s deliberation on and rejection of the UN arms-inspections resolution as “political theater.” As he put it, the parliament is “nothing but a rubber stamp for Saddam Hussein.” That’s funny, coming from a man who has declared he has the power to launch an unprovoked war against Iraq whether the U.S. Congress approves ...

Rule of Law versus Unlimited Rule

by James Bovard February 1, 2003

President Bush is fond of reminding Americans of his devotion to the rule of law. On May 3, 2002, he told an audience that he “always” lectures foreign leaders “about the need for there to be rule of law ... and our country is a shining example of that.” Unfortunately, the current U.S. “rule ...

Ending the Anachronistic Korean Commitment, Part 1

by Doug Bandow February 1, 2003

Part 1 | Part 2 The United States has defended South Korea (the Republic of Korea, or ROK) for 50 years. But newly elected ROK President Roh Moo-hyun suggests that his nation might “mediate” in any war between America and North Korea (the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or DPRK). Talk about one-way alliances! The presence of 37,000 troops in ...

Book Review: Creative Destruction

by Richard M. Ebeling February 1, 2003

Creative Destruction: How Globalization Is Changing the World’s Culture by Tyler Cowen (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002); 179 pages; $24.95. Most people can understand the common-sense logic and benefits from division of labor and international trade. After all, most people understand that there are some things that they are not able to provide for themselves, so they either buy them ...

Economic Liberty and the Constitution, Part 8

by Jacob G. Hornberger January 1, 2003

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 |  Table of Contents The tremendous legal battle between the advocates of economic ...

In Pursuit of Sustainable Development: Political Planning versus the Free Market

by Richard M. Ebeling January 1, 2003

From August 26 to September 4, 2002, the United Nations sponsored a World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa. More than 100 heads of state and 60,000 delegates worked on an agenda for improving the health and well-being of tens of millions of people living in poverty around the ...

Arrogance Is Humility

by Sheldon Richman January 1, 2003

Taking a step back from all the particulars, the real lesson of September 11 is that for more than 50 years, the U.S. government has put the American people in harm’s way by its heavy-handed intervention in the bitter disputes throughout the Middle East. Then, despite the hundreds of billions of dollars spent each year on “national security” and ...

Foreign Dissent on Bush’s Imperial Ambitions

by James Bovard January 1, 2003

The Bush administration was outraged this past summer when German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder starkly declared that he would not support Bush’s war with Iraq. The resulting transatlantic brouhaha provides insights into political developments and delusions in both the United States and Germany. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld huffed that the German campaign had been “unhelpful” ...

Hawks and the Free Market

by Bart Frazier January 1, 2003

Rosalie Barrow Edge should be considered a hero to libertarians and conservationists alike. In 1933, she founded Hawk Mountain Sanctuary in Kempton, Pennsylvania. At a time in our country's history when the economy was a shambles and socialism was hip, Edge managed to establish the first refuge for hawks in the world without the aid of government. In the 1920s ...