Freedom Daily Archive

Would the Republicans Have Saved Us?

by Laurence M. Vance April 1, 2021

If Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) had not gotten sick and resigned his Senate seat, then the title of this article would have been “Will the Republicans Save Us?” After serving in the Georgia state house and senate, Isakson served three terms in the U.S. House of Representatives before being elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004. He was re-elected in ...

Jacques Novicow, Sociologist of Peace and Freedom

by Richard M. Ebeling April 1, 2021

One of the most important classical liberal crusades of the nineteenth century was to at least tame, if not end, the death and destruction of war. From time immemorial, wars have been the scourge of mankind. Huge numbers of ordinary people have been uprooted from their homes and families to be the human sacrifices in battle to serve the ...

The Continuing Disaster of the U.S. Drug War in Latin America

by Ted Galen Carpenter April 1, 2021

The following is a statement to the Western Hemisphere Drug Policy Commission: Charting a New Path Forward, Committee on Foreign Affairs, U.S. House of Representatives, December 3, 2020: I wish to express my appreciation to the chairman and members of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs for the opportunity to submit this statement. The Western Hemisphere Drug Policy Commission is ...

The Lies of the National-Security State

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 1, 2021

I recently came across a plaque with the heading “Died in Service to the Nation — Vietnam 1961-1975.” The plaque then listed several members of the U.S. Armed Forces who were killed in the Vietnam War. The plaque demonstrates a central ill afflicting many Americans — an ill that can be described as living the “life of the lie.” Until ...

Congress Is Still Unfit to Govern

by James Bovard March 1, 2021

“In politics, stupidity is not a handicap,” Napoleon is reputed to have said more than two centuries ago. Boundless ignorance is also not a handicap, as Congress demonstrated last December by approving a 5593-page bill without reading it. Plenty of activists and editorial pages howled over the sloppy procedures propelling $2.3 trillion in new federal spending. James Madison warned in ...

The Conflict of the Ages

by Laurence M. Vance March 1, 2021

The year 2020 was a dreadful year as it relates to individual liberty, free association, commercial freedom, and private property, and 2021 isn’t looking much better. The main reason, of course, is not the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), but the government response to it. Volumes could be written about the government-mandated restrictions on peaceful activity  that have been instituted during this ...

Frank Knight and the Place of Principles in Economics and Politics

by Richard M. Ebeling March 1, 2021

It is sometimes necessary to recall the old adage that the more things change, the more they stay the same. That never seems truer than when turning to the character and content of economic and social policy issues in modern America. Every time it seems that one of the collectivist confusions and fallacies has been once more shown to ...

Liberty in Peril

by George Leef March 1, 2021

Liberty in Peril: Democracy and Power in American History by Randall G. Holcombe, Independent Institute, 2019, 245 pages. I finished reading Prof. Randall Holcombe’s book Liberty in Peril during the 2020 election. I have yet to hear any candidate say the word “liberty” and would be shocked if I did. We are bombarded with messages for candidates and messages ...

Salvador Allende and the JFK Assassination, Part 2

by Jacob G. Hornberger February 1, 2021

Part 1 John Kennedy came into the presidency as pretty much a standard Cold Warrior. Like most Americans in 1961, he believed that there was an international communist conspiracy to take over the world, a conspiracy that was based in Moscow. America, it was believed, was in a life-or-death struggle for survival as a free nation. The communists were ...

200th Anniversary of a Great American Demolition of Tyranny

by James Bovard February 1, 2021

This is the 200th anniversary of the publication of one of the best American books on trade policy by one of the most thoughtful and least appreciated political analysts of the Founding Fathers era. I ran into John Taylor of Caroline when I was roaming the shelves of the Library of Congress in 1987. A few weeks earlier, I had ...

Marijuana Wins

by Laurence M. Vance February 1, 2021

Who really won the 2020 election? Was it Donald J. Trump or Joseph R. Biden? This is a question that will be argued for years to come. And because it is a highly partisan political question, it may never result in a satisfactory answer. There was one clear winner in the 2020 election, though, and it wasn’t Trump or ...

Moritz J. Bonn: A Classical Liberal Voice in a Collectivist World

by Richard M. Ebeling February 1, 2021

Ninety years ago, the United States and most of the rest of the Western industrial world was in the throes of the Great Depression. Usually demarcated as having begun with the U.S. stock market crash of October 1929, the Depression is most often dated as having reached bottom at the end of 1932 and the early part of 1933. Unemployment, ...