Freedom Daily Archive

The Commerce Clause: Route to Omnipotent Government

by Sheldon Richman August 1, 1995

In 1990, the U.S. Congress passed a law forbidding possession of a firearm within 1,000 feet of any school. The Gun-Free School Zones Act was touted as a blow on behalf of education and against violence among children. Two years later, Alfonso Lopez Jr., a 12th-grader at Edison High School in San Antonio, Texas, carried a concealed .38-caliber pistol ...

Book Review: Hard Bargain

by Richard M. Ebeling August 1, 1995

Hard Bargain: How FDR Twisted Churchill’s Arm, Evaded the Law and Changed the Role of the American Presidency by Robert Shogan (New York: Scribner, 1995); 329 pages; $24. Franklin Roosevelt was a master of manipulation and intrigue. His entire New Deal was presented to the American public as a scheme to save the American system of free enterprise, when it actually ...

Repatriation — The Dark Side of World War II, Part 5

by Jacob G. Hornberger July 1, 1995

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 When Franklin Roosevelt assumed the presidency in 1933, Americans expected him to fulfill certain promises that he had made during the presidential campaign: balance the budget; lower taxes; reduce government spending; downsize government; and ...

Takings: The Evils of Eminent Domain

by Sheldon Richman July 1, 1995

The "takings clause" of the U.S. Constitution is the portion of the Fifth Amendment that says "nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation." It is one of the few parts of the Bill of Rights that authorizes the government to violate individual liberty, since under ...

Central Planning, American Style

by Harold J. Lanfield July 1, 1995

The November 5, 1993, issue of The Narragansett Times announced the completion of the Narragansett Comprehensive Plan (NCP). Clarkson A. Collins, director of community development, said: "It's a very enthusiastic and aggressive plan that takes an awful lot on." My reaction: Eccccchhh! I can envision only an ominous future ...

Covering the Map of the World — The Half-Century Legacy of the Yalta Conference, Part 5

by Richard M. Ebeling July 1, 1995

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 When Adolf Hitler's foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, came to Moscow on August 23, 1939, to sign the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, Joseph Stalin hosted a late-night ...

Have We Abandoned Our Principles?

by Robert Chamberlain July 1, 1995

America was founded upon commonly held principles of right and wrong. Our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution recognize these principles and enumerate several of them. Among these principles is the acknowledgment that we, as individuals, have certain unalienable rights — namely the rights to life, liberty, and the ...

Demystifying the State

by Wendy McElroy July 1, 1995

Mystification is the process by which the commonplace is elevated to the level of the divine by those who have a vested interest in its unassailability. Government is a perfect example of mystification at work. Government is a group of individuals organized for the purpose of extracting wealth and exerting ...

Horrors! Maybe the Schools Are Working Just Fine

by Sheldon Richman July 1, 1995

Most people today are convinced that the public schools are failing. Dissatisfaction with public education is at an all-time high. But have the public schools really failed? That depends on what they were originally set up to do. In a profound sense, the public schools are not an American institution. They were ...

What’s Wrong with History Standards?

by Sheldon Richman July 1, 1995

The latest fight on the nation's bloody educational battlefield is over the newly released national standards for teaching history to America's schoolchildren. The standards were drawn up by the federally funded National Center for History in the Schools at the University of California, Los Angeles. They are part of ...

Resolving the School Prayer Conflict

by Sheldon Richman July 1, 1995

The controversy about school prayer threatens to aggravate the already intense dispute over the role of public schools in America. Flush from their midterm election victory, the new Republican congressional majority is talking about launching a constitutional amendment to reverse the 30-year-old Supreme Court ruling barring formal prayer in ...

Just Say No to the War on Drugs

by Karen Selick July 1, 1995

Although I don't practice criminal law, I recently found myself waiting in a courtroom during a sentencing. The accused was a young man of perhaps twenty, who had rather imprudently sold six grams of cannabis resin to a police officer, pocketing the grand sum of about $100. He pleaded guilty, and the crown and ...