Freedom Daily Archive

Closed-Border Libertarians: It’s Time to End the War on Immigration

by Will Tippens January 1, 2016

Warrantless searches and seizures on a massive scale, bureaucratic logjams, arbitrary edicts that squelch freedom of association, unchecked waste and corruption — it is difficult to reconcile any of these symptoms of big government with liberty. And yet, many who strongly value freedom still support all of them in the name of border control. For these “closed-border libertarians”, the argument ...

Welcome Back to Freedom

by Matthew Harwood January 1, 2016

The Dark Net: Inside the Digital Underworld by Jamie Bartlett (Brooklyn: Melville House Publishing, 2015), 320 pages. Do you really want someone to die? If you could help bring about someone’s demise by anonymously and securely placing a bet on when that particular someone might take a dirtnap, would you? That’s the premise of the Assassination Market, an ...

The Tyranny of Eminent Domain

by David S. D'Amato January 1, 2016

The Grasping Hand: Kelo v. City of New London and the Limits of Eminent Domain by Ilya Somin (University of Chicago Press, 2015), 336 pages. The Supreme Court’s 2005 decision in Kelo v. City of New London has become infamous, singled out by defenders of liberty and property for special opprobrium. The Court’s opinion was a sobering reminder ...

The Inanity of the Cold War

by Jacob G. Hornberger December 1, 2015

There were many inanities that came with the Cold War, the 45-year period of tension between the United States and the Soviet Union. In fact, one might easily argue that the entire Cold War was an exercise in inanity. U.S. officials, of course, have always maintained that the Cold War was necessary to prevent the Soviet Union from imposing communism ...

The Cover-Up of the Damning 9/11 Report Continues

by James Bovard December 1, 2015

Do Americans have the right to learn whether a foreign government helped finance the 9/11 attacks? A growing number of congressmen and senators are demanding that a 28-page portion of a 2002 congressional report finally be declassified. The Obama administration appears to be resisting, and the stakes are huge. What is contained in those pages could radically change Americans’ ...

Unions and Strikes in a Free Society

by Laurence M. Vance December 1, 2015

The labor-union membership rate of American workers has been declining for years. Labor-union strikes have concomitantly decreased as well. Unions have historically been associated with violence, corruption, anti-capitalistic propaganda, Democratic politics — and strikes. Unions According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2014, union membership fell to 11.1 percent, down 0.2 percent from 2013, although the number of workers belonging ...

War of Pure Defense: A First Sketch

by Joseph R. Stromberg December 1, 2015

Few thinkers have ever set forth (much less developed) the rather straightforward idea of purely defensive war, i.e., war limited to repelling invaders — and otherwise doing nothing at all. The term “defensivism” would suit the case, but since philosopher Eric Mack put it (in my view) to different and rather conventional use almost forty years ago (“Permissible Defense,” ...

The Forgotten Meaning of “Sound Money” (and Why It’s Coming Back)

by Guy Christopher December 1, 2015

We Americans no longer carry gold and silver money in our pockets and purses as our grandparents did during their lives. But we still carry the history, legacy, and spirit of those gold and silver coins in our language — with more meaning than you might imagine. “Sound money” has a clear message recognized for centuries around the world. It ...

Patrick Henry’s Choice

by Ben Moreel December 1, 2015

In 1775, an American patriot stood before his neighbors in a small church in Virginia and challenged the tyranny of government — his own government — in a ringing statement on liberty and death. While I subscribe wholeheartedly to Patrick Henry’s choice of death in lieu of slavery to government, I would like to call your attention to another thought ...

The Resurgence of Lochner

by David S. D'Amato December 1, 2015

Rehabilitating Lochner: Defending Individual Rights against Progressive Reform by David E. Bernstein (University of Chicago Press, 2012), 208 pages. David Bernstein begins his short book, Rehabilitating Lochner, by noting that “Lochner is likely the most disreputable case in modern constitutional discourse.” If you want to raise eyebrows in legal circles, he says, simply embark on ...

Opposing America’s Participation in World War II

by Jacob G. Hornberger November 1, 2015

Even in the face of ongoing catastrophes arising out of U.S. interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere in the Middle East, proponents of empire and intervention still trot out America’s entry into World War II to justify their imperialist, militarist, and interventionist philosophy. World War II was the “good” war, they say — a necessary intervention, one that saved ...

The Great Sugar Robbery Continues

by James Bovard November 1, 2015

Seventeen years ago, The Future of Freedom Foundation published my piece “The Great Sugar Shaft.” That article hammered federal sugar policy as one of the most brazen interventionist failures in American history. Unfortunately, the political looting of sugar consumers and food producers continues unabated. Federal price supports and import quotas combine to drive U.S. sugar prices far above the ...