Freedom Daily Archive

The Colombia Quagmire, Part 2

by Doug Bandow August 1, 2001

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 AMERICAN-TRAINED SOLDIERS often serve with and even become paramilitaries. In one celebrated case, heavily decorated Lt. Carlos Acosta joined the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia and executed government investigators. Reported his brother, “He used to say that a soldier in Colombia has to fight not only the guerrillas but also ...

Patrick Henry’s Choice

by Ben Moreel August 1, 2001

IN 1775, an American patriot stood before his neighbors in a small church in Virginia and challenged the tyranny of government — his own government — in a ringing statement on liberty and death. While I subscribe wholeheartedly to ...

Book Review: The New Dealers’ War

by Richard M. Ebeling August 1, 2001

The New Dealers’ War: F.D.R. and the War within World War II by Thomas Fleming (New York: Basic Books, 2001); 628 pages; $35. THE SECOND WORLD WAR is considered America’s “good war” of the 20th century. The First World War is considered the tragic war, which need not have occurred, which could have been ended much earlier than the four years over ...

Morality, the Welfare State, and Freedom

by Jacob G. Hornberger July 1, 2001

THE WELFARE STATE and the regulated society are based on a twofold notion about morality: first, that this type of society reflects that people are moral, caring, compassionate, and responsible and, second, that this type of society makes people moral, caring, compassionate, and responsible. Consider, for example, President Bush’s plan to deliver government funding to faith-based organizations. His belief is ...

A Regulated-Economy Agreement for the Americas

by Richard M. Ebeling July 1, 2001

DURING THE WEEKEND of April 20–22, 2001, the leaders of countries in North, Central, and South America met in Quebec, Canada, to approve an agenda for establishing free trade throughout the western hemisphere by 2005. The news media gave a great deal of attention to the thousands of demonstrators who clashed with the police. Representing a wide variety of diverse ...

The Myth of Self-Government

by Sheldon Richman July 1, 2001

AMERICANS PRIDE THEMSELVES on what we may call the Great American Myth of Self-Government. But in a very real sense we are governed not by ourselves but by a collection of men and women quite separate from ourselves. That, of course, is contrary to everything we learn in school. Then, again, most of those schools belong to some government. Think back ...

The Latest Waco Fireball

by James Bovard July 1, 2001

APRIL 19th was the eighth anniversary of the final FBI assault on the Branch Davidians at Waco, Texas. For almost a decade, politicians and bureaucrats have sweated to withhold key information about that day’s events from the American public. But the ghost of Waco may be rising from the grave once more to place its ice-cold hand on the ...

The Colombia Quagmire, Part 1

by Doug Bandow July 1, 2001

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 “THIS IS NOT VIETNAM,” declared Vietnam-era draft evader Bill Clinton on his arrival in Colombia last year. Alas, while the continents may be different, the conflicts offer eerily similar potential as quagmires for the United States. “This is always how it starts,” warns writer Patrick Symmes. But there’s still time ...

Book Review: The Making of Modern Economics

by Richard M. Ebeling July 1, 2001

The Making of Modern Economics: The Lives and Ideas of the Great Thinkers by Mark Skousen (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 2001); 485 pages; $25. IN THE EARLY DECADES OF THE 19TH CENTURY, Thomas Carlyle was the first one to call economics “the dismal science.” He considered the study of the market economy “dismal” because it emphasized individualism and freedom of association ...

Drug-War Killings in Peru

by Jacob G. Hornberger June 1, 2001

IN APRIL, two more innocent people were killed in the U.S government’s 30-year war on drugs. This time, the victims were a 35-year-old missionary named Veronica Bowers and her 7-month-old baby, Charity, who were flying in a small Cessna from Brazil to Peru with Bowers’s husband, another of their children, and the pilot. After a CIA plane issued an alert ...

John Stuart Mill and the Three Dangers to Liberty

by Richard M. Ebeling June 1, 2001

JOHN STUART MILL’S 1859 ESSAY “On Liberty” is one of the most enduring and powerful defenses of individual freedom ever penned. Both advocates and enemies of personal freedom have challenged either the premises or the logic in Mill’s argument. They have pointed out inconsistencies or incompleteness in his reasoning. But the ...

Free Markets Aren’t Conservative

by Sheldon Richman June 1, 2001

One of the great myths of the Industrial Age is that businessmen generally like free markets. That myth has deep implications and consequences. For example, someone who buys into it will tend to believe that proposals to deregulate markets are simply favors for special interests and inimical to the interests ...