Freedom Daily Archive

Child Labor and the British Industrial Revolution, Part 1

by Lawrence W. Reed September 1, 1999

Part 1 | Part 2 Everyone agrees that in the 100 years between 1750 and 1850 there took place in Great Britain profound economic changes. It was the age of the Industrial Revolution, complete with a cascade of technical innovations, a vast increase in industrial production, a renaissance of world trade, and a rapid growth of urban populations. Where historians ...

The Power of Truth

by Leo N. Tolstoy September 1, 1999

The power of the government is maintained by public opinion, and with this power the government, by means of its organs — its officials, law courts, schools, churches, even the press — can always maintain the public opinion which they need. Public opinion produces the power, and the power produces public opinion. And there appears ...

Book Review: Property and Freedom

by Richard M. Ebeling September 1, 1999

Property and Freedom by Richard Pipes (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999); 328pages; $30. In his 1848 treatise, The Principles of Political Economy, John Stuart Mill stated: "The laws and conditions of the production of wealth partake of the character of physical laws. There is nothing optional or arbitrary in them.... It is not so with the distribution of ...

A Libertarian Visits Cuba, Part 3

by Jacob G. Hornberger August 1, 1999

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 Even though I knew that it is a serious criminal offense to criticize Cuban socialism, I was determined to deliver a presentation of libertarian principles in the middle of Havana. I got my chance when one of the research centers I visited asked me to explain libertarianism to its staff. I ...

Monetary Central Planning and the State, Part 32: Friedrich A. Hayek and the Case for the Denationalization of Money

by Richard M. Ebeling August 1, 1999

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 ...

Seeking Explanations, Not Causes

by Sheldon Richman August 1, 1999

So much has been written about the shootings of students by students at schools that you'd think there would be nothing left to say. But there has been surprisingly little comment about the location of the shootings: government schools. Maybe this shouldn't be surprising. Government schools are nearly sacred to most people. They couldn't possibly be a — or ...

Blockbuster Victory for the Second Amendment

by James Bovard August 1, 1999

Last April, federal judge Sam Cummings issued a decision that chilled the hearts of gun grabbers across the nation. Cummings struck down as unconstitutional a provision in a 1994 law that routinely turned husbands and others targeted by domestic restraining orders into felons. The Clinton administration is appealing the ...

NATO’s Balkans Disaster and Wilsonian Warmongering, Part 2

by Doug Bandow August 1, 1999

Part 1 | Part 2 The Founders vested the power to declare war in Congress because they feared presidents would do precisely what they are doing today — regularly taking the nation into overseas conflicts. It is all too easy to loose the dogs of war; it is impossible to control where they go afterwards. The administration launched an unprovoked ...

Book Review: The Passing of an Illusion

by Richard M. Ebeling August 1, 1999

The Passing of an Illusion: The Idea of Communism in the Twentieth Century by François Furet (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999); 596 pages; $35. Even now, though it is less than 10 years since the end of the Soviet Union, it is hard to imagine that in the 20th century, millions of people believed in and dedicated their lives ...

A Libertarian Visits Cuba, Part 2

by Jacob G. Hornberger July 1, 1999

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 My trip to Cuba last spring entailed talking primarily to two groups of people — those in research centers at the University of Havana and people whom I encountered in daily life in Cuba. The meetings with the research centers were arranged by the Cuban Interest Section in Washington, D.C., which ...

Monetary Central Planning and the State, Part 31: Ludwig von Mises on the Case for Gold and a Free Banking System

by Richard M. Ebeling July 1, 1999

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 ...

Clinton’s Quagmire

by Sheldon Richman July 1, 1999

"The man of system ... seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board; he does not consider that the pieces upon a chess-board have no other principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them; but that, ...