Freedom Daily Archive

Bush’s Contempt for Trial by Jury

by Jacob G. Hornberger April 1, 2002

BOWING TO PUBLIC PRESSURE, the Bush administration has modified its rules for the trials of suspected terrorists captured abroad. Included among the new rules are: (1) the accused will be presumed innocent rather than guilty; (2) the government will be required to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt; (3) the defendant will have the right to have an attorney ...

Civil Liberty and the State: The Writ of Habeas Corpus

by Richard M. Ebeling April 1, 2002

LIMITING THE POWERS OF GOVERNMENT has been one of the leading struggles in the history of mankind. Through most of man’s time on earth, governments have presumed to rule, command, order, and threaten multitudes of human beings — to make the mass of humanity bend to the will of their political masters. The political rulers have often considered themselves to ...

War and the State: The Legacy of Randolph Bourne

by Sheldon Richman April 1, 2002

AS I POINTED OUT in last month’s Freedom Daily (“War Is the Health of the State,” March 2002), Randolph Bourne was an American intellectual during the Progressive era who found himself isolated as President Woodrow Wilson conspired to take the United States into World War I. He understood war to be illiberal by ...

Bush’s Opium Boom

by James Bovard April 1, 2002

Last year saw what is probably the single biggest one-year increase in opium production in world history. Since the Bush administration toppled the Taliban regime, opium production in Afghanistan has increased from 185 tons in 2001 to 3,700 tons in 2002 — an increase of twentyfold. Afghanistan has historically produced more than two-thirds of the world opium supply and ...

Anthrax Antics from Uncle Sam

by James Bovard April 1, 2002

SINCE THE TERRORIST ATTACKS last September 11, public opinion polls show a sharp decrease in cynicism about government and politicians. Yet, if one has been paying attention since then, it is difficult not to conclude that there is still, occasionally at least, a sliver of evidence that could foment cynical tendencies. In his state of the Union address on January ...

World War I and the Suppression of Dissent, Part 1

by Wendy McElroy April 1, 2002

Part 1 | Part 2 THE YEARS SURROUNDING Americas involvement in World War I were a watershed for how the United States treated foreigners within its borders during wartime. Immigrants had flooded the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. When the United States declared war on Germany on April 6, 1917, almost a third of ...

Book Review: Against the Dead Hand

by Richard M. Ebeling April 1, 2002

Against the Dead Hand: The Uncertain Struggle for Global Capitalism by Brink Lindsey (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2002); 336 pages; $29.95. THE WORLD IS BECOMING increasingly smaller. Commodities, capital, and people move around the world with far greater ease than at any time since before the First World War. Market-oriented reforms have been the watchword for economic policy for ...

Did the Framers Forget the Bill of Rights?

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 1, 2002

AFTER THE CONSTITUTION WAS RATIFIED in 1788, the states adopted the first 10 amendments, which became known as the Bill of Rights. Given the importance of the provisions in those amendments, an obvious question arises: Why didn’t the Framers of the Constitution include those provisions in the original Constitution, thereby obviating the need to amend the document so soon ...

Classical Liberalism in the 21st Century: Freedom of Trade, Part 1

by Richard M. Ebeling March 1, 2002

Part 1 | Part 2 BEFORE THE 19TH CENTURY, governments in the major European countries and their colonial empires around the world took it for granted that they had both the right and responsibility to control and direct the economic activities of their subjects. Indeed, the lands and peoples in these countries were considered to be the property of ...

War Is the Health of the State

by Sheldon Richman March 1, 2002

SOME CONSERVATIVES are surprised to find people on the left supporting the war in Afghanistan. It’s not surprising at all. War collectivizes society (the euphemism is “unites”) and increases the government’s domestic power. There is no mystery here. In war there seems to be one overriding goal for the entire society: defeat the enemy. Everything else ...

State Terrorism and Bush’s War

by James Bovard March 1, 2002

ON OCTOBER 18, President George W. Bush declared, “So long as anybody’s terrorizing established governments, there needs to be a war.” Bush thereby signaled his acceptance of the legitimacy of almost every government in the world. Bush’s war on terrorism is a moral crusade. This is clear from his constant references to “the evil ones” and ...

The New England Labor Reform League

by Wendy McElroy March 1, 2002

IN GRAPPLING with the same strategic questions that confront modern libertarianism, the 19th-century movement evolved a remarkable organization that engaged in both education and grassroots activism. The New England Labor Reform League (NELRL) sprang from an 1869 gathering of labor radicals in Boston. The leading force in its founding was ...