Freedom Daily Archive

Reflections on Liberty at Christmastime

by Jacob G. Hornberger December 1, 2000

ONE OF THE biggest differences between Christian statists and Christian libertarians concerns the role of the state in matters pertaining to morality. Christian statists believe that the state should be God’s partner who ensures, through fines and imprisonment, that people follow the correct moral path. Christian libertarians, on ...

Market Liberalism, International Order, and World Peace, Part 2

by Richard M. Ebeling December 1, 2000

Part 1 | Part 2 In 1952 ,free-market economist Michael A. Heilperin delivered a lecture entitled “An Economist’s Views on International Organization.” He told his audience, It is an elementary, but often forgotten, knowledge that policies of national governments have always been the principle obstacle to economic relations between people living in various countries, and that whenever these relations ...

No One Is Qualified

by Sheldon Richman December 1, 2000

WHEN YOU CLEAR away all of the obfuscation from presidential campaigns, the entire process comes down to each candidates accusing the others of not being qualified for the office. This was certainly true in the 2000 presidential campaign. And every candidate who said or implied that about his opponents was absolutely right. No one is qualified to be president. No ...

Laptops to the Rescue

by James Bovard December 1, 2000

ONE OF of President Clintons favorite boasts is that he put 100,000 new cops on the streets. He claimed in 1994 that putting the new cops on the street would make Americans freer from fear and that there is simply no better crime-fighting tool to be found than multiplying the number of government employees packing heat. Vice President Al ...

Wishing You a Free and Merry Christmas

by Doug Bandow December 1, 2000

CHRISTMAS IS THE TIME of goodwill, when everyone thinks of giving. And giving their own money, not other people’s money. Even in Washington, D.C. But in Washington, at least, Christmas is probably the only time of the year when anyone thinks about spending his own money.

Morals and the Welfare State, Part 3

by F.A. Harper December 1, 2000

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 ANOTHER POINT of possible confusion has to do with coveting the private property of another. There is nothing morally wrong in the admiration of something that is the property of another. Such admiration may be a stimulus to ...

Not Yours to Give

by David Crockett December 1, 2000

MR. SPEAKER — I have as much respect for the memory of the deceased, and as much sympathy for the suffering of the living, if suffering there be, as any man in this House, but we must not permit our respect for the dead or our sympathy for a part of ...

Book Review: The Faces of Janus

by Richard M. Ebeling December 1, 2000

The Faces of Janus: Marxism and Fascism in the Twentieth Century by A. James Gregor (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2000); 240 pages; $30. IN 1947, Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises published a short book entitled Planned Chaos. He analyzed and put into perspective the intellectual and ideological forces that had been at work in the Western world since the ...

Legal Tender and the Civil War

by Jacob G. Hornberger November 1, 2000

FACED WITH A LACK of Northern enthusiasm for his war against the South, President Lincoln resorted to drastic means to finance his war effort. If Lincoln had resorted to a traditional method of government finance — taxation — he knew that he might be faced with tax riots among the people of the North. And he knew that if ...

Market Liberalism, International Order, and World Peace, Part 1

by Richard M. Ebeling November 1, 2000

Part 1 | Part 2 In this Post–Cold War epoch the world is desperately searching for international order, global peace, and general economic prosperity. The great debate going on around the world is whether these desired goals can be attained through the existing system of national sovereignty or whether they require the establishment of international political organizations with the ...

The Civil War and the American Mind

by Sheldon Richman November 1, 2000

THE CIVIL WAR and its militaristic effect on American society had important consequences for the nationalist collectivization of America that occurred in the following decades. It encouraged collectivist intellectuals to vigorously promote their reform visions and it won thinkers to the collectivist cause. It even convinced ...

AmeriCorps: Salvation through Handholding

by James Bovard November 1, 2000

PRESIDENT CLINTON, in an August 9, 1999, speech to AmeriCorps members, declared, “AmeriCorps is living, daily, practical, flesh-and-blood proof that there’s a better way to live ... that if we ... hold hands and believe we’re going into the future together, we can change anything we want to change. You are the modern manifestation of the dream of America’s ...