Freedom Daily Archive

Medicare & You

by Laurence M. Vance February 1, 2024

Although I am not quite old enough to qualify for Medicare, I recently received in the mail a 131-page large-size book titled Medicare & You 2024: The Official U.S. Government Medicare Handbook, published by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Turns out that the book was intended for a previous owner ...

The 80th Anniversary of F. A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom

by Richard M. Ebeling February 1, 2024

Eighty years ago, in March 1944, the British edition of Friedrich A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom was published. An American edition appeared six months later, in September 1944. During these eight decades, Hayek’s book has become a classic work in defense of the liberal free-market society and against socialist central planning. Often, when a book has received the status ...

Unheralded Resisters in Nazi Germany: The Edelweiss Pirates, Part 2

by Wendy McElroy February 1, 2024

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 In the Hitler Youth, as in classrooms, the goal was to produce obedient, race-conscious Germans who were willing to die for Führer and Fatherland. Hitler explained, “After four years of the Young Folk, they go on to the Hitler Youth, where we have them for another four years.... And even ...

Why Drug Prohibition?

by Jacob G. Hornberger January 1, 2024

During the entire lives of everyone living today, the U.S. government has been waging the so-called war on drugs. Since 1914, beginning with the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act, the federal government has enacted laws that make it a criminal offense to possess or distribute certain drugs or to simply conspire (that is, agree) to do so. The objective has ...

Will TSA Steal Your Mug?

by James Bovard January 1, 2024

Dorothy Parker’s signature line, “What fresh hell is this?” is the new mantra for travelers at American airports. TSA is rapidly expanding a program in which travelers stand in photo kiosks that compare their faces with a federal database of photos from passport applications, drivers’ licenses, and other sources to see if people receive official permission to fly. What could ...

America Has a Uniparty System

by Laurence M. Vance January 1, 2024

The United States has been saddled with a two-party political system almost from the very beginning of its existence. First it was the Federalist Party and the Democratic-Republican Party, then it was the Democrats and the Whigs, and now it is the Democrats and the Republicans. George Wallace’s adage that “there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between the Democrat ...

Franklin Roosevelt’s Bogus Economic Bill of Rights

by Richard M. Ebeling January 1, 2024

Eighty years ago, on January 11, 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered his Annual Message to Congress (now known as the State of the Union Address). Its significance arises from his call for a new Economic Bill of Rights to accompany the existing Bill of Rights in the U.S. Constitution. He wanted to codify as federal constitutional law an ...

Unheralded Resisters in Nazi Germany: The Edelweiss Pirates, Part 1

by Wendy McElroy January 1, 2024

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 Hitler’s power may lay us low, And keep us locked in chains, But we will smash the chains one day, We’ll be free again We’ve got fists and we can fight, We’ve got knives and we’ll get them out We want freedom, don’t we boys? We’re the fighting Navajos! — song of the Cologne Edelweiss Pirates Everyone ...

America’s Forever Immigration Morass

by Jacob G. Hornberger December 1, 2023

All my life I have witnessed America’s ongoing, never-ending, perpetual immigration morass, along with the endless laments, anguish, anxiety, and depression among American statists that have accompanied it. All of this mental anguish has caused immigration-control advocates for the last several decades to ceaselessly cry out for Congress to enact “comprehensive immigration reform” designed to finally — finally! — ...

Is Free Speech a Relic in America?

by James Bovard December 1, 2023

Is the First Amendment becoming a historic relic? On July 4, 2023, federal judge Terry Doughty condemned the Biden administration for potentially “the most massive attack against free speech in United States history.” That verdict was ratified by a federal appeals court decision in September 2023 that concluded that Biden administration “officials have engaged in a broad pressure campaign ...

Conservatives, Hate Crimes, and Victimless Crimes

by Laurence M. Vance December 1, 2023

Libertarianism and conservatism have been described as “uneasy cousins.” There are some issues where they can unite in opposition to the terrible policies of progressives: the green new deal, universal health care, free college tuition, gun-control laws, taxpayer-funded abortions, defunding the police, etc. But even when they seem to agree on something — like hate-crimes laws — the inconsistency ...

The Beginnings of a Reborn Austrian School of Economics

by Richard M. Ebeling December 1, 2023

Fifty years ago, on October 10, 1973, one of the leading members of the Austrian School of Economics, Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973), passed away at the age of 92. There was little notice of Mises’s death in the mainstream of the economics profession, even though he had been one of the most widely recognized economists in Europe during the ...