Freedom Daily Archive

Equal Employment Opportunity Is Bad Law

by Laurence M. Vance February 1, 2019

Everyone who works a job has seen the same poster on a wall or a bulletin board at his place of employment: Equal Employment Opportunity Is THE LAW. (The last two words are usually in all caps and in a much larger font and in a different color than the first four words.) The poster The poster says that applicants to ...

Abolish the Welfare State to Solve the National Debt Crisis

by Richard M. Ebeling February 1, 2019

Why is it so difficult to win the case for freedom in modern American society? A variety of possible answers come to mind. The collectivists are more effective in appealing to people’s emotions. The interventionist-welfare-statist argument is easier to make than it is to follow the logical chains of reasoning required to make the free-market case. Socialist-leaning teachers and ...

Bin Laden Won

by Matthew Harwood February 1, 2019

Fool’s Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan by Scott Horton (Chicago: The Libertarian Institute, 2017); 317 pages. According to official U.S. government accounts, the body of Osama bin Laden slid off the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson into his watery grave in the Indian Ocean sometime on the morning of May ...

Understanding the JFK Assassination, Part 4

by Jacob G. Hornberger January 1, 2019

This series will be published in a forthcoming book. Details to follow.

Truth Is an Outlaw in Washington

by James Bovard January 1, 2019

“Truth isn’t truth,” declared Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump’s personal attorney, on Meet the Press last August. Giuliani’s comment was the “Trump era’s epitaph,” according to a Washington Post columnist. But truth really is defined differently inside the Beltway — when it is not in total hiding. Trump could face a “perjury trap” from Special Counsel Robert Mueller because of the ...

Your Tax Dollars at Work

by Laurence M. Vance January 1, 2019

We have all seen the signs. They might be referring to a road-widening project, a new city or county park, sidewalks being repaired, new airport terminals being constructed, potholes being filled in, additional trees being planted, or some sort of downtown development. But regardless of the project, the signs are usually the same: Your Tax Dollars at Work. Now, it ...

Liberal Internationalism: True and False, Part 2

by Richard M. Ebeling January 1, 2019

Part 1 | Part 2 The classical liberal international order of the nineteenth century was not planned or designed by anyone. It was, for the most part, the natural outgrowth of the expanding influence of a new political philosophy of freedom, free markets, and free trade. It began to emerge in the wake of the twenty-five years of war ...

The Little House on the Prairie of Laura Ingalls Wilder

by Wendy McElroy January 1, 2019

Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser (Metropolitan Books, 2017); 625 pages. Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder, by Caroline Fraser, is one of the finest biographies I have read, and a fully deserving winner of the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Biography. Prairie Fires is the definitive depiction ...

John McCain’s Disastrous Militaristic Legacy

by James Bovard December 1, 2018

When Sen. John McCain passed away in August, he was lauded far and wide for his long career of public service. Rep. John Lewis, the famous civil-rights activist, hailed McCain as a “warrior for peace.” In reality, McCain embodied a toxic mix of moralism and militarism that worked out disastrously for America and the world. In his funeral eulogies, McCain ...

Businesses That Should Not Exist

by Laurence M. Vance December 1, 2018

Among other things, libertarians — and even most conservatives — are known for extolling the virtues of capitalism, the free market, commerce, trade, free enterprise, and entrepreneurship. They are generally defenders of business as long as there is an absence of protectionism, crony capitalism, and corporate welfare. Even so, from a libertarian perspective, there are still some businesses that ...

Liberal Internationalism: True and False, Part 1

by Richard M. Ebeling December 1, 2018

Part 1 | Part 2 For more than the seventy years of the post–World War II era, the prevailing global order in the West was and has been called “liberal internationalism.” It has had two components, a political one and an economic one: “democracy” and “capitalism.” Both are being challenged at the present time in various parts of the world, ...

The Roots of Voluntary Exchange Lie in the Middle East

by Nima Sanandaji December 1, 2018

It is today commonly believed that free markets and free-market ideology are new Western inventions. In my book The Birthplace of Capitalism: The Middle East, I challenge that notion by pointing out that enterprises, financial institutions, market-based economies, and the intellectual support for economic freedom evolved millennia ago in the Middle East. The book (which is awaiting its international ...