Freedom Daily Archive

Lincoln Crossing the Rubicon

by Charles Adams November 1, 2000

WHEN THE CIVIL WAR started in the Roman Republic, Julius Caesar defied the civil authority and crossed the River Rubicon in 49 B.C. This was a violation of the Roman constitution, for no army was to cross the Rubicon and enter Rome under arms. Within a few months Caesar was the ...

Why the South Was Right, the North Wrong

by Doug Bandow November 1, 2000

THE VICTORS WRITE history books, and the dominant accounts of the Civil War reflect the victorious perspective: misguided Southerners sought to destroy democratic governance and preserve slavery. Led by the heroic Abraham Lincoln, Northerners responded by saving the Union and emancipating the slaves. And for leading his moral crusade, Lincoln is America’s greatest president, martyred ...

Book Review: When in the Course of Human Events

by Richard M. Ebeling November 1, 2000

When in the Course of Human Events: Arguing the Case for Southern Secession by Charles Adams (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000); 255 pages; $24.95. IN HER 1924 BOOK Free Trade and Peace in the Nineteenth Century, Helen Bosanquet pointed out, The conflict between Free Trade and Protection was one of the chief causes of the great Civil War.... Interests ...

Do the Rich Help the Poor?

by Jacob G. Hornberger October 1, 2000

PRESIDENT CLINTON justified his veto of Congress’s recent repeal of the estate tax by suggesting that most of the benefits of the repeal would go to the wealthy. “Of the $750 billion the repeal costs , one-half — nearly $400 billion — goes to the top one-tenth of one percent ...

Imagining Freedom for the 21st Century: A Presidential Candidate’s Press Conference, Part 5

by Richard M. Ebeling October 1, 2000

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 Insight Magazine: During the last eight years, the American people have witnessed some of the worst political scandals and episodes of presidential misconduct and immorality in our nation’s history. What will be the moral character and tone of your administration, if you ...

War, Peace, and Bill Clinton

by Sheldon Richman October 1, 2000

SURVEYING THE HISTORY of England in The Rights of Man, Thomas Paine noted that “a bystander, not blinded by prejudice nor warped by interest, would declare that taxes were not raised to carry on wars, but that wars were raised to carry on taxes.” The United States government ...

How the State Became Immaculate, Part 3

by James Bovard October 1, 2000

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 During the 1920sand early 1930s, the U.S. government provided huge loans to foreign nations whose exports were subsequently blocked by high U.S. tariffs, artificially held down interest rates and flooded the nation with cheap credit, and championed cartel operations by private businesses. Economic historian Robert Skidelsky recently attributed the start of ...

Strategies from the Past: Boycott, Part 2

by Wendy McElroy October 1, 2000

Part 1 | Part 2 Why, then, does boycott in the form of strikes and blacklists elicit such public condemnation? The 19th-century libertarian Steven Byington offered an explanation: The State is afraid of it. The boycott offers a means for making another do as you wish without calling in the States aid. Byington believed that the state recognized the ...

Morals and the Welfare State, Part 2

by F.A. Harper October 1, 2000

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 THE DECALOGUE serves as a guide to moral conduct which, if violated, brings upon the violator a commensurate penalty. There may be other guides to moral conduct which one might wish to add to the Golden Rule and ...

Book Review: The Tyranny of Good Intentions

by Richard M. Ebeling October 1, 2000

The Tyranny of Good Intentions: How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice by Paul Craig Roberts and Lawrence M. Stratton (Roseville, Calif.: Prima Publishing, 2000); 240 pages; $24.95. IT OFTEN SEEMS that liberty is only really appreciated when it is either directly threatened or has been lost. In the 1930s, when liberty was challenged by ...

The Constitution: Liberties of the People and Powers of Government, Part 2

by Jacob G. Hornberger September 1, 2000

Part 1 | Part 2 In 1787, the Constitution of the United States called into existence the federal government. What was significant, however, was that it was a government whose powers were expressly limited by the people. Throughout history, government officials had exercised omnipotent power over their citizenry. Of course, there had been some exceptions, such as Magna Carta in ...

Imagining Freedom for the 21st Century: A Presidential Candidate’s Press Conference, Part 4

by Richard M. Ebeling September 1, 2000

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 The Washington Times: In your 10-point vision for America (See “Imagining Freedom for the 21st Century, Part 2,” Freedom Daily, July 2000), you called for ending all political, military, and economic intervention by the U.S. government around the world. Even in ...