Freedom Daily Archive

Efficiency Experts for the Welfare State

by Laurence M. Vance September 1, 2018

Bordered by two oceans, encompassing 3.8 million square miles, and populated by more than 325 million people, the United States is a vast country. But although the United States is not yet a cradle-to-grave welfare state like many European countries, it is also a vast welfare state. There are in the United States about 80 means-tested welfare programs. These are ...

The Sanctifying of Plunder

by Leonard Read September 1, 2018

The law ...  has converted plunder into a right, in order to protect plunder. — Frédéric Bastiat The commandment “Thou shalt not steal” would be far better kept today had not theft assumed various disguises under which its practice has been generally sanctified. The gilding of an evil gives it a virtuous face — a Mr. Hyde’s ugliness covered by ...

Socialists Masquerading as Liberals

by James Cook September 1, 2018

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune (a left-wing newspaper) featured a quotation on the Sunday editorial page that claims that without intensive regulation “capitalism is a menace to society.” From the end of the Civil War in the United States to World War I federal government regulations barely existed. This laissez-faire capitalism catapulted living standards upward and generated a host of new ...

The Boomerang Effect

by Matthew Harwood September 1, 2018

Tyranny Comes Home: The Domestic Fate of U.S. Militarism by Christopher J. Coyne and Abigail R. Hall (Stanford University Press, 2018); 264 pages. On the evening of July 7, 2016, Micah Xavier Johnson turned a protest against police brutality into a bloodbath. Angry at police killings of black men nationwide, the Army reservist and Afghan war ...

U.S. Anti-Communist Propaganda at SiriusXM

by Jacob G. Hornberger August 1, 2018

If you want to get a taste of what life was like in Cold War America, buy a subscription to SiriusXM, the privately owned satellite radio broadcasting service. Then tune in to Channel 153. You will think that you have entered into a Cold War time warp. That’s because SiriusXM Channel 153 serves as an anti-communist propaganda channel for ...

Beltway Baloney on “Speaking Truth to Power”

by James Bovard August 1, 2018

Lying and piety go together in Washington like ham and eggs. After 9/11, a profusion of government falsehoods on Iraq and other topics ravaged official credibility. The political class responded with an endless profusion of promises to “speak truth to power.” Unfortunately, there are far more Washingtonians praising honesty than there are honest politicians. According to Wikipedia, “Speaking truth to ...

Balanced-Budget Baloney

by Laurence M. Vance August 1, 2018

It wasn’t that long ago (1987) that the entire budget of the federal government was “only” a trillion dollars. It reached the $2 trillion mark in 2002, and didn’t exceed $3 trillion until 2009. Even after a long series of budget deficits, the national debt didn’t exceed $1 trillion dollars until 1982 and $5 trillion until 1996. The first budget ...

Private Government in Genoa

by Lawrence M. Ludlow August 1, 2018

Genoa’s Freedom: Entrepreneurship, Republicanism, and the Spanish Atlantic by Matteo Salonia (Lexington Books, 2017); 214 pages. If the city of Genoa had advertised for security services in the 15th century, the job description might have looked like this: Security-Services Wanted Entrepreneurs in the city of Genoa recently fired the king of France and seek a replacement to provide ...

Freedom’s Frauds

by George Leef August 1, 2018

Freedom Frauds: Hard Lessons in American Liberty by James Bovard (Future of Freedom, 2017), 184 pages. James Bovard has been a thorn in the side of the statists for decades. His books and columns have exposed the incompetence, hypocrisy, arrogance, and sheer venality of the American political class much as H.L. Mencken did in the early part ...

Nonintervention: America’s Founding Foreign Policy

by Jacob G. Hornberger July 1, 2018

On the Fourth of July, 1821, John Quincy Adams delivered one of the most remarkable speeches in U.S. history. Having gone down in history with the title “In Search of Monsters of Destroy,” Adams’s speech summarized the founding foreign policy of the United States. Adams pointed out that there are lots of bad things that happen around the world. Brutal ...

James Comey and the Unending Bush Torture Scandal

by James Bovard July 1, 2018

The vast regime of torture created by the Bush administration after the 9/11 attacks continues to haunt America. The political class and most of the media have never dealt honestly with the profound constitutional corruption that such practices inflicted. Instead, torture enablers are permitted to pirouette as heroic figures on the flimsiest evidence. Former FBI chief James Comey is the ...

Seven Implications of Protectionism

by Laurence M. Vance July 1, 2018

In a speech on the campaign trail in 2016, then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said about Hillary Clinton and trade, Hillary Clinton unleashed a trade war against the American worker when she supported one terrible deal after another, from NAFTA, to China to South Korea. It doesn’t matter. No matter where she went, the American worker was hurt and you’ll ...