Freedom Daily Archive

Free-Market Liberalism vs. Corrupted “Capitalism” and La-La Land Socialism

by Richard M. Ebeling September 1, 2019

One of the issues that confronts the friends of freedom is how best to make the case for liberty as a political idea and ideal and as a policy proposal.  A central element in that is making sure that we know what it is that we are advocating and why, and what it is that we oppose and why. ...

Insane and Ill-Advised: Trump’s Future War with Iran, Part 2

by Danny Sjursen September 1, 2019

Part 1 | Part 2 Iran is an enigma to most American policymakers. Iranian foreign and defense policies, according to Kenneth Katzman, are “products of overlapping, and sometimes contradictory, motivations.” The key question is whether Iran is an expansionist, theocratic, Shia-chauvinist state, or a rational, defensive bulwark with only limited regional aspirations. While it is a bit of both, ...

Adhering to Principle to Achieve Liberty, Part 2

by Jacob G. Hornberger August 1, 2019

Part 1 | Part 2 In 1990, the first year of The Future of Freedom Foundation’s existence, I wrote an article entitled “Letting Go of Socialism” (www.fff.org/explore-freedom/article/letting-socialism) in which I criticized the idea of school vouchers. I pointed out that vouchers were simply another socialist program in which government forcibly takes money from one group of people and gives ...

2002 Landmarks on the Road to “1984” Orwellian Hell

by James Bovard August 1, 2019

Next month will be the 18th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Politicians and bureaucrats wasted no time after that carnage to unleash the Surveillance State on average Americans, treating every person like a terrorist suspect. Since the government failed to protect the public, Americans somehow forfeited their constitutional right to privacy. Despite heroic efforts by former NSA staffer Edward Snowden and a host of activists ...

Why Republicans Are Powerless against Socialism

by Laurence M. Vance August 1, 2019

If we are to believe the Republicans, they are all that is holding back the forces of socialism from taking over the United States and replacing a free and capitalist society with an authoritarian and socialist society. Nothing could be further from the truth. After suffering the humiliating loss of the House of Representatives in the 2018 midterm election, and having ...

Ludwig von Mises’s Human Action: Marking 70 Years of Continuing Relevance

by Richard M. Ebeling August 1, 2019

German September 2019 marks 70 years since the appearance of Ludwig von Mises’s Human Action: A Treatise on Economics, one of the truly great “classics” of modern economics. Too often a “classic” means a famous book considered to have made important contributions to some field of study and that is reverentially referred to but is unfortunately ...

Insane and Ill-Advised: Trump’s Future War with Iran, Part 1

by Danny Sjursen August 1, 2019

Part 1 | Part 2 It’s an inconvenient truth: the president of the United States has no coherent foreign policy. Period. At times Donald Trump talks sensibly about pulling out of quagmires in Syria and Afghanistan, while simultaneously ratcheting up threats against America’s favorite (at least since 1979) punching bag — Iran.  He’s also loaded up his administration with ...

Adhering to Principle to Achieve Liberty, Part 1

by Jacob G. Hornberger July 1, 2019

Part 1 | Part 2 I believe that when it comes to liberty, principles and ideals are everything. It has been principles and ideals that have given us such grand and glorious achievements as freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, habeas corpus, due process of law, and trial by jury. I also believe that adherence to ...

America’s Benevolent Bombing of Serbia

by James Bovard July 1, 2019

Twenty years ago, President Bill Clinton commenced bombing Serbia in the name of human rights, justice, and ethnic tolerance. Approximately 1,500 Serb civilians were killed by NATO bombing in one of the biggest sham morality plays of the modern era. As British professor Philip Hammond recently noted, the 78-day bombing campaign “was not a purely military operation: NATO also ...

Americans Didn’t Need the Original New Deal

by Laurence M. Vance July 1, 2019

We have heard much this year about how much the country needs a Green New Deal to reverse the negative effects of climate change, ensure economic security, revamp the nation’s transportation system, restore damaged ecosystems, secure a sustainable environment, and achieve justice and equality. Overlooked in all of the analyses of the Green New Deal is that Americans didn’t ...

Learning Liberty and the Power of Principles

by Richard M. Ebeling July 1, 2019

In The Constitution of Liberty, free-market economist and social philosopher F.A. Hayek, quotes in a footnote the famous nineteenth-century scientist Louis Pasteur: “In research, chance only helps those whose minds are well prepared for it.” What Pasteur was, no doubt, getting at is that unless the researcher already has been trained in the principles and methods of his own ...

Gun Ownership: An Individual Right

by Matthew Harwood July 1, 2019

First Freedom: A Ride Through America’s Enduring History with the Gun by David Harsanyi (Threshold Editions, 2018); 321 pages. In David Harsanyi’s First Freedom, an entertaining jaunt through the gun’s important place in American history, the nationally syndicated columnist notes that the first real attempt to institute gun control was New York’s Sullivan Act. The impetus ...