Freedom Daily Archive

Free the Gas Pumps!

by Laurence M. Vance November 1, 2015

Aside from both being coastal states, New Jersey and Oregon have little in common except for one infamous thing. Drivers vacationing or passing through either state for the first time who have to stop to gas up their cars are in for a rude awakening if they try to pump their own gas. They will quickly find out from ...

Americans Toss Lady Liberty Overboard during Crises

by Ted Galen Carpenter November 1, 2015

Americans take great pride in their country’s commitment to the values enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. At the top of that list are the rights enumerated in the first ten amendments to the Constitution — the Bill of Rights. Americans are fond of contrasting the protections that freedom of speech, due process of law, equal ...

Inhumanity of the Minimum Wage

by Paul L. Poirot November 1, 2015

A dictator, it is true, can arbitrarily declare human labor to be the only thing of value in the world; and he can set a minimum or a maximum wage, or just fix prices. But he cannot enforce his dictates, because they run contrary to the rules of human behavior. As long as men harbor their own distinctive sense ...

Why We Don’t Compromise, Part 6

by Jacob G. Hornberger October 1, 2015

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 A few days after the 9/11 attacks, I was attending a big libertarian dinner at an area hotel. As I was walking out at the conclusion of the dinner, a longtime libertarian friend approached me and said ...

The Failure of the Americans with Disabilities Act

by James Bovard October 1, 2015

The Americans with Disabilities Act was enacted 25 years ago. It promised a brave new era of equality and freedom. Instead, it has spawned endless lawsuits and absurd federal decrees while harming some of the people it sought to relieve. The original law was badly drafted and subsequent amendments and administrative decrees have made it far worse. The 1990 ADA ...

The Morality of Libertarianism

by Laurence M. Vance October 1, 2015

Libertarianism is a political philosophy that says that people should be free from government interference to live their life any way they desire and engage in any economic activity they choose as long as their actions are peaceful and consensual and they don’t violate the personal or property rights of others. It is that simple. Violence is justified only ...

Free Markets and Human Freedom

by Dean Russell October 1, 2015

There the market is freest, human liberty is highest. If labor is controlled (e.g., slavery), there is neither a free market nor freedom. If capital is controlled (e.g., government ownership), you can’t produce without permission; that’s not freedom. The free-market economy and human freedom are mutually dependent; destroy one, and the other automatically falls…. Governments control people (you and me) ...

The Political Economy of “Exporting” Democracy

by Christopher Coyne October 1, 2015

In 1917, President Woodrow Wilson justified the American entry into World War I on the ground that it was necessary to make the world “safe for democracy.” Since that time, U.S. presidents have used this same line of reasoning to justify military interventions around the world. More than eight decades after Wilson’s decree, George W. Bush stated that “it ...

Two Days in the Life of President John F. Kennedy

by Michael Swanson October 1, 2015

Two Days in June: John F. Kennedy and the 48 Hours That Made History by Andrew Cohen (McClelland & Stewart, 2014), 404 pages.  To Move the World: JFK’s Quest for Peace by Jeffrey Sachs (Random House, 2013), 249 pages. November 22, 2013, marked the passage of fifty years since John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. The milestone garnered a lot of ...

Two Police State’s War on America

by David S. D'Amato October 1, 2015

Battlefield America: The War on the American People by John W. Whitehead (SelectBooks, 2015), 352 pages. John W. Whitehead is among the most dedicated and articulate civil libertarians of his generation. His latest book, Battlefield America: The War on the American People, is a cogent argument that today the clear and present danger to Americans and their freedom ...

Why We Don’t Compromise, Part 5

by Jacob G. Hornberger September 1, 2015

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 Like every other welfare-state program, health care is in constant crisis. That shouldn’t surprise anyone. That’s what socialism does. It produces crises in every area of society it touches. It’s not a coincidence that America’s healthcare system ...

Supreme Demolition for the Raisin Racket

by James Bovard September 1, 2015

The December 2013 Future of Freedom contained my article “A Supreme Rebuff for USDA’s Ruinous Raisin Regime.” The legal case surrounding that controversy kept percolating in the courts for another 18 months. The Obama administration won a big victory in federal appeals court last year before getting squashed by the Supreme Court this past June. The Supremes put an ...