Freedom Daily Archive

Middlemen, Government, and the Free Market

by Laurence M. Vance November 1, 2017

There are multitudes of ways in which goods are exchanged on the free market. The most common way that most people purchase merchandise is by shopping at a general or specialty retail store: Walmart, Sears, Kroger, Home Depot, Office Depot, Target, Best Buy, Walgreens, and so on. But in addition to retail stores, goods are also sold through auctions, ...

Sarah Grimké and Angelina Grimké Weld: Abolitionists and Feminists

by Neera K. Badhwar November 1, 2017

The American women’s rights movement was born in the bosom of the abolitionist movement. The 19th-century abolitionists and feminists Sarah (1792–1873) and Angelina Grimké (1805–1879) were the first female agents of the American Anti-Slavery Society, as well as pioneers of the American women’s rights movement. Their arguments for women’s rights anticipated many of John Stuart Mill’s arguments in The ...

Debauching the Currency

by James Cook November 1, 2017

Often people who make gloomy predictions about the economy have an ulterior motive. They want to sell a newsletter, a book, precious metals, or even storage food. In some cases they have no basis for their views other than an opinion. I like to think that what I write originates with the economic thinkers of the Austrian School of ...

Another Bloody American Century

by Matthew Harwood November 1, 2017

The Violent American Century: War and Terror since World War II by John W. Dower (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2017; 184 pages) Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) was livid. “In the dead of night,” the California Democrat wrote on Twitter in July, House Speaker Paul Ryan did something “underhanded and undemocratic.” He stripped out her bipartisan amendment to repeal ...

The National Security-State and JFK, Part 3

by Jacob G. Hornberger October 1, 2017

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 John F. Kennedy came into the presidency in 1961 as a standard Cold Warrior. Like most Americans, he had bought into the entire rationale for the Cold War — that is, that communism and the Soviet Union posed a grave threat to the United ...

Homeland Security’s Multibillion-Dollar Comedy Show

by James Bovard October 1, 2017

After the 9/11 attacks, Congress and the Bush administration pretended that unlimited federal spending was one of the best ways to thwart terrorist threats. In 2002, Congress created the Homeland Security Department (DHS), sweeping some of the most inept federal agencies, such as the Secret Service and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), into the new mega-department. Congress also ...

What Americans Should Know about the Constitution

by Laurence M. Vance October 1, 2017

Having just finished reading a new biography of H.L. Mencken, I was intrigued when I discovered that the Washington Post had an online section about politics called “Monkey Cage.” It was Mencken who said, “Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage.” “Monkey Cage’”s mission “is to connect political scientists and the political conversation by ...

Slavery and Segregation Were Federal Programs

by David S. D'Amato October 1, 2017

Americans are afflicted with a “collective amnesia” that surrounds the subject of segregation, complacently assured that it was, if anything, a “minor factor” in the striking wealth gap that today divides white from black Americans. In his book The Color of Law, the Economic Policy Institute’s Richard Rothstein argues that not only have Americans forgotten the true legacy of ...

Felix Morley, Champion of the American Republic

by Wendy McElroy October 1, 2017

The American socialist Ed Sard is reported to have originated the concept of a “permanent arms economy” as a way to explain why America experienced a post–World War II boom, while World War I had been followed by recession. Sard concluded that the United States retained many of the characteristics of a war economy, including what today is called ...

A Bad Attack on Libertarian Economics

by George Leef October 1, 2017

Economism: Bad Economics and the Rise of Inequality by James Kwak (Pantheon Books, 2017; 237 pages) There is a nasty genre of writing: books and articles that seek to build the case for socialism and interventionist government policies by smearing those of us who oppose them. That approach appeals greatly to Progressives who think that they are virtuous and their ...

The National Security-State and JFK, Part 2

by Jacob G. Hornberger September 1, 2017

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 In 1970 — twenty years after the election of Jacobo Arbenz as president of Guatemala — the Chilean people did what the Guatemalan people had done. They democratically elected a self-proclaimed socialist and communist named Salvador Allende to be president of their country. Since ...

Will Trump Reduce Federal Spending?

by James Bovard September 1, 2017

Donald Trump’s first proposed budget took a step towards draining the swamp in Washington. His proposal was the first one since the Reagan era in which a president has sought a wholesale demolition of boondoggles. On the other hand, Trump’s defense and homeland-security spending increases will squander bounties that should be reserved for taxpayers, not bureaucrats. Regardless of whether Trump ...