Freedom Daily Archive

The Right to Self-Treatment

by Sheldon Richman January 1, 1995

Over the last year or so, much has been said about the right to health care. The advocates of government management of the health-care system believe that everyone should be able to obtain the services of doctors and related practitioners regardless of ability to pay. That is what has fueled the push by the ...

Individualism and the Free Society, Part 2

by Nathaniel Branden January 1, 1995

Part 1 | Part 2 It was the United States of America, with its system of limited, constitutional government, that implemented the principle of capitalism-a free trade on a free market-to the greatest extent. In America, during the nineteenth century people's productive activities were for the most part left free of governmental regulations, controls, and restrictions; most thinkers ...

Book Review: Race and Culture

by Richard M. Ebeling January 1, 1995

Race and Culture: A World View by Thomas Sowell (New York: Basic Books, 1994); 331 pages; $25.00. Through most of history, since before the time of Aristotle, slavery has been considered a natural institution in human society. Indeed, Aristotle believed that some men were born to be slaves, just as others were ...

The Religious Right

by Jacob G. Hornberger December 1, 1994

Sixty years ago, there occurred one of the most monumental revolutions in history. It was a revolution that shook the very foundations of American society. For 150 years, the American people subscribed to a fundamental moral principle with respect to the role of government in their lives: Government shall never be ...

The Future of Freedom-Retrospect and Prospects, Part 2

by Richard M. Ebeling December 1, 1994

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 In spite of the demise of totalitarian collectivism, the world is still enveloped by the ideology of socialism. When Ludwig von Mises began his treatise Socialism in 1922 with the observation: "Socialism is the watchword of the day. The socialist ...

The New, New Left

by Rev. Robert A. Sirico December 1, 1994

The anticapitalist Left has devised a new intellectual attack on the market economy. The straw in the wind was a blistering article in The New York Times that appeared on May 8, 1994. The article, written by Peter Passell, was headlined "Life's Hard? Blame the Market." Like other attacks on market fundamentals, it complains about unequal income distribution. ...

A Catholic Refuses Government Funds

by Margaret Mathers December 1, 1994

From 1984 to 1993, I was director of Catholic Charities for San Juan County, New Mexico. A situation existed which has caused me to do some soul-searching and to reach a conclusion that was not popular. I was criticized — with varying degrees of contempt — for my refusal to accept government funding (FEMA funds, for example) for the agency ...

Taxation

by Jim Russell December 1, 1994

Like many who consider themselves libertarians, I have concluded that taxation, in any form for any purpose, is theft. I agree with the nineteenth-century economist Frederic Bastiat, who called it legal plunder. It ought to be abolished. When I state my position on this matter to others not versed in libertarianism, they invariably jump to the conclusion that I am ...

Christian Charity versus Government Welfare

by Thomas L. Johnson December 1, 1994

The idea that government-sponsored welfare programs to assist the needy are compatible with, and justified by, Christian philosophy is probably the most widespread erroneous belief that permeates American society, and is hastening the destruction of freedom in the United States. This tragic flaw in the thinking of both well-educated and uneducated Christians has already brought misery to millions, and ...

Book Review: Red in Tooth and Claw

by Richard M. Ebeling December 1, 1994

Red in Tooth and Claw: Twenty-Six Years in Communist Chinese Prisons by Pu Ning (New York: Grove Press, 1994) 228 pages; $21. The essential details of the Soviet house of horror are now fairly well known. The story of the Soviet Gulag has been told not only in the great work by Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago , but in ...

The Case for Unilateral Free Trade and Open Immigration

by Jacob G. Hornberger November 1, 1994

The American people are extremely fortunate. Two hundred years ago, their Founding Fathers used the Constitution to prohibit American government officials from ever enacting trade and immigration restrictions between the respective states of the Union. This meant that the citizens of any state could buy and sell goods and services with the citizens of any other state, without tariffs ...

The Future of Freedom-Retrospect and Prospects, Part 1

by Richard M. Ebeling November 1, 1994

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 With the approaching end of 1994, The Future of Freedom Foundation is celebrating its fifth anniversary. For a half-decade, Jacob Hornberger and I, and the other authors who have contributed essays for Freedom Daily, have attempted to make the ethical and economic case for individual liberty and the ...