Freedom Daily Archive

How Food Stamps Subverted Democracy, Part 1

by James Bovard December 1, 2016

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 The federal government is now feeding more than 100 million Americans. The vast increase in dependency fundamentally changes the relationship of Washington to the citizenry. The more Americans rely on handouts, the more difficult it becomes to roll back politicians’ power over those who do not. There was no ...

Workplace Smoking

by Laurence M. Vance December 1, 2016

While making a brief trip recently to a place of business in a local outdoor mall in central Florida, I noticed that a new sign had been posted on the information board in the middle of one of the sidewalks: “Smoking in Workplaces Is Prohibited by Law.” The sign was gone the next week, replaced by an ad for ...

The New Deal, Part 2: Foreign Policy

by Joseph R. Stromberg December 1, 2016

Part 1 | Part 2 As noted in part 1, the New Deal was in serious political trouble by 1937. (See Frederic Sanborn, “Collapse of the New Deal,” in W.A. Williams, ed., Shaping of American Diplomacy, II.) Agriculture Secretary Henry Wallace’s book New Frontiers (1934) was an early sign of the administration’s turn toward foreign markets as ...

The Tyranny of the Distance

by Matthew Harwood December 1, 2016

The Assassination Complex: Inside the Government’s Secret Drone Warfare Program by Jeremy Scahill and the Staff of The Intercept (Simon & Schuster, 2016); 256 pages. Last summer, the Obama administration finally made good on its promise to provide some transparency to its targeted killing program — well, sort of. On a Friday before the long July Fourth ...

A Military Coup in America?

by Jacob G. Hornberger November 1, 2016

Ever since I started writing about the assassination of John F. Kennedy several years ago, people have been asking me why I do it. Since the event happened 53 years ago this month, what possible relevance could the assassination have to Americans living today? Even if Kennedy had been the victim of a conspiracy, wouldn’t the malefactors probably be ...

The Great Goober Train Wreck of 2016

by James Bovard November 1, 2016

The history of federal peanut policy is the perfect antidote to anyone who still believes that Congress could competently manage a lemonade stand. Federal spending for peanut subsidies will have risen eightfold between last year and next year — reaching almost a billion dollars and approaching the total value of the peanut harvest. This debacle is only the latest ...

The Change America Needs Is Libertarianism

by Laurence M. Vance November 1, 2016

The French writer Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr (1808–1890) famously said that “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” This epigram is a perfect description of the American electoral process. Americans elect a new president every four years. Members of the U.S. House of Representatives have a two-year term. U.S. senators are elected for six years. That means that ...

The New Deal, Part 1: Domestic Policy

by Joseph R. Stromberg November 1, 2016

Part 1 | Part 2 Today, few Americans are left from the Greatest Generation (a phrase which my father, born in 1912, would have seen as obvious propaganda). There are more, perhaps, who experienced the New Deal directly as very small children. Most of us know it only from history, family lore, popular culture, film, and (yes) ...

The Right to Try to Live

by George Leef November 1, 2016

The Right to Try: How the Federal Government Prevents Americans from Getting the Lifesaving Treatments They Need by Darcy Olsen (HarperCollins, 2015); 311 pages. The highly acclaimed 2013 movie Dallas Buyers Club told the story of Ron Woodroof, who tried desperately to get drugs that might help arrest Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome back in the mid 1980s. ...

Dysfunctionality, Violence, and Race in American Society

by Jacob G. Hornberger October 1, 2016

The following are five libertarian proposals that would help to resolve the conflict and violence between blacks and the police across America and, to a large extent, alleviate much of the dysfunctionality that afflicts American society: End the drug war. A free society necessarily entails the fundamental right to ingest anything an adult wants, no matter how destructive or dangerous. ...

My Blowup at the Enviro Checkpoint

by James Bovard October 1, 2016

As I sat in a seemingly endless line of cars at the Maryland vehicle-emissions check-point, the engine in my 1999 Ford suddenly growled, shuddered, and conked out cold. Maybe it was karma for my decades of scoffing at harebrained government regulations? As I waited 90 minutes for a tow truck, I watched a stream of vehicles tarry up to half ...

Does the Second Amendment Even Exist?

by Laurence M. Vance October 1, 2016

Gun control was going to be a campaign issue even before the Orlando Pulse nightclub shooting back on June 12. Donald Trump was endorsed by the National Rifle Association (NRA) after he spoke at the group’s convention in May and remarked that “the Second Amendment is under threat like never before” and that “crooked Hillary Clinton is the most anti-gun, ...