Freedom Daily Archive

Leave Social Security out of It

by Laurence M. Vance June 1, 2018

It was twenty-five years ago that the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) was passed by a Democrat-controlled Congress under Bill Clinton. Although it had minimal Republican support, current efforts to expand the FMLA’s provisions are being spearheaded by Republicans. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the FMLA “entitles eligible employees of covered employers to take unpaid, job-protected leave ...

Are Europeans Re-Thinking Gun Control?

by Scott McPherson June 1, 2018

The civil unrest of the 1960s threatened many Americans, particularly those living in major cities, and the urban population was exploding. Rising crime and particularly armed violent crime shocked and scared voters, and for more than two decades the Second Amendment was the scapegoat — an anachronism, “misinterpreted” by “gun nuts,” deserving of repeal. Draconian gun laws, including gun ...

How to Drain the Swamp: End the Failed War on Drugs, Part 1

by David Stockman June 1, 2018

Part 1 | Part 2 There are few more wasteful and inappropriate federal activities than the seizing and destroying of indoor and outdoor cannabis plants. At the peak of Washington’s pointless war on drugs in 2010 the DEA funded the eradication of 11 million marijuana plants, and has caused 125 million of such “weeds” to be pulled ...

Why Kennedy Had to Be Removed

by Jacob G. Hornberger May 1, 2018

The current, ongoing brouhaha over Russia helps to show explain why the U.S. national-security establishment removed President John F. Kennedy from office in the regime-change operation that took place on November 22, 1963. Yes, I know the official version that we are all expected to adhere to: that it is just inconceivable that the U.S. national-security establishment would initiate one ...

Your Tax Dollars Bankroll Afghan Child-Molesters

by James Bovard May 1, 2018

Donald Trump was hailed by the media last August when he announced he was sending more U.S. troops to fight in Afghanistan. A Washington Post editorial praised his “principled realism” and saluted “a rare but welcome story of self-correction” (since Trump had portrayed Afghanistan as a lost cause when he was a presidential candidate). A New York Daily News ...

Mencken’s Plan, Read’s Rule

by Laurence M. Vance May 1, 2018

H.L. Mencken and Leonard Read couldn’t have been more different, but each of them said some important things about life in a free society. Henry Louis Mencken (1880–1956) was born in the city of Baltimore, Maryland, lived nearly all of his life in the house he grew up in, and died in his bed. He was a third-generation Baltimorean. Although ...

Ralph Raico: Master Historian

by Joseph R. Stromberg May 1, 2018

The death of historian Ralph Raico on December 13, 2016, robbed us of an erudite and insightful scholar whose long life made him witness to (and analyst of) massive changes in American society involving state building, imperialist wars, and loss of effective freedom. Born in 1936, Raico attended Ludwig von Mises’s famous New York seminar and translated Mises’s Liberalism ...

The Case against Schooling

by George Leef May 1, 2018

The Case against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money by Bryan Caplan (Princeton University Press, 2018, 395 pages). Almost every book on education policy (and I have read a great many of them) springs from the set of assumptions that education “experts” embrace: that schooling builds our stock of knowledge and ...

The Tyranny of Immigration Controls

by Jacob G. Hornberger April 1, 2018

Imagine the following conversation: John: Oh, my head hurts so bad. I don’t know what I’m going to do. Jack: If you stopped beating your head against that wall, your headache would go away. John: You libertarians are always so impractical and extreme. My headache has nothing to do with the fact that I am beating my head against this wall. I ...

The Bundy Ranch Case Explains Westerners’ Distrust of Washington

by James Bovard April 1, 2018

The Justice Department was caught in January in another high-profile travesty of due process. On December 20, federal judge Gloria Navarro declared a mistrial in the case against Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy and others after prosecutors were caught withholding massive amounts of evidence undermining federal charges. Two weeks later, she dismissed all charges against Bundy and his sons. Navarro ...

Dress Codes, Discrimination, and a Free Society

by Laurence M. Vance April 1, 2018

A restaurant and nightclub in Washington, D.C. changed its dress code earlier this year after a complaint that it engaged in discrimination against non-whites. The incident serves as a valuable example of the place of dress codes and the practice of discrimination in a free society. Sneakers It was not the night before Christmas, but it was the Saturday night before. ...

Open Borders: Trade, Migration, Entrepreneurship, and Property

by Ken Schoolland April 1, 2018

For good reason people ask how nations can become more prosperous. Usually the start is “Why is there poverty?” But the real question should be “Why is there wealth?” Poverty is the natural condition of all peoples of the world throughout history. Only in the past couple hundred years have we seen an astounding rise in the amount of ...