Freedom Daily Archive

Reining In Out-of-Control Government

by David S. D'Amato November 1, 2014

The Classical Liberal Constitution by Richard A. Epstein (Harvard University Press 2014), 701 pages. In Book II of his Two Treatises of Government, John Locke says “that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.” A towering figure in the Enlightenment, Locke is often called the father of classical ...

The U.S. Executions of Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi, Part 1

by Jacob G. Hornberger October 1, 2014

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 In 1999, in response to an order issued by Bill Clinton to U.S. departments and agencies to release long-secret records of the U.S. national-security state relating to the 1973 military coup in Chile, the U.S. State Department released a memo ...

Smedley Butler and the Racket That Is War

by Sheldon Richman October 1, 2014

From 1898 to 1931, Smedley Darlington Butler was a member of the U.S. Marine Corps. By the time he retired he had achieved what was then the Corps’s highest rank, major general, and by the time he died in 1940, at 58, he had more decorations, including two medals of honor, than any other Marine. During his years in ...

American’s Fading Love of Freedom

by James Bovard October 1, 2014

Tea Party protesters, some Republicans, and many libertarians perceive the federal government as a vast engine of oppression. But are anti-Obama activists mistaken in presuming that most Americans still care about freedom? A Gallup poll released in July asked a thousand Americans, “Are you satisfied or dissatisfied with your freedom to choose what to do with your life?” Admittedly, only ...

Bartolomé de las Casas: All Mankind Is One

by Wendy McElroy October 1, 2014

The 16th-century Spanish historian and Dominican Bartolomé de las Casas (1484–1566) fought against the violent colonization of and enslavement in the New World. He spoke against imperialism and for universal human rights. “All mankind is one,” he insisted; every individual possessed an identical, natural right to liberty. Las Casas was born in Seville at a fortunate time. The Italian Renaissance ...

How Laws Are Passed, Maintained, and Changed

by George Leef October 1, 2014

Madmen, Intellectuals, and Academic Scribblers: The Economic Engine of Political Change by Wayne A. Leighton and Edward J. Lopez (Stanford Economics and Finance 2013), 209 pages. Have you ever wondered why democracies so often generate public policies that are wasteful and unjust? Have you asked why such policies persist over long periods, even when they are known to ...

How the Pentagon Really Gets Funded

by Philip A. Reboli October 1, 2014

Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War by Robert Gates (Knop 2014), 640 pages. The most interesting parts of former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’s memoir, Duty, are about how he navigated the Department of Defense (DoD) bureaucracy and the special interests who live off it. A recurring theme is the difficulty Gates had in getting the DoD ...

Imaging Patterns

by David S. D'Amato October 1, 2014

The United States of Paranoia: A Conspiracy Theory by Jesse Walker (Harper 2013), 448 pages. What is the substance of American paranoia? From where does it emanate, and why is its study important? These are some of the questions that, without preaching or bludgeoning us with elitist pretensions, Jesse Walker, books editor at Reason magazine, addresses in The United ...

The Presidential Authority to Torture and Assassinate, Part 2

by Jacob G. Hornberger September 1, 2014

Part 1 | Part 2 The 9/11 attacks provided George W. Bush, the Pentagon, and the CIA with the perfect opportunity to seize extraordinary powers. That shouldn’t surprise anyone. A crisis fills much of the citizenry with great fear, and government officials have long known that in the midst of a crisis many people will eagerly trade ...

The Middle East Harvests Bitter Imperialist Fruit

by Sheldon Richman September 1, 2014

The wall-to-wall coverage of the disintegration of Iraq ought to carry this credit: “This bloodshed was made possible by the generosity of British and French imperialists.” The stomach-wrenching violence in Iraq — not to mention the horrendous civil war in Syria, the chronic unrest in Palestine/Israel, and problems elsewhere in the Middle East — are direct consequences of the imperialist ...

Freedom Lost in Obama’s Secrecy-Censorship Crossfire

by James Bovard September 1, 2014

On June 2 the Supreme Court provided invaluable aid to the Obama administration’s campaign to protect Americans from evidence of federal abuses. The Court acceded to the administration’s appeal and refused to hear a free-speech case involving New York Times reporter James Risen. Risen, a courageous Pulitzer Prize winner, has been in the federal crosshairs since his 2006 book, ...

Command Posts: Roads, Railroads, and State

by Joseph R. Stromberg September 1, 2014

As any viewer of the British Channel 4 Time Team series will have noticed, almost everywhere below Hadrian’s Wall that the archaeological team digs, they have a fair chance of finding an Imperial Roman road, or a local road leading to it. The Romans were great engineers and road builders (and not just in Britain). Roman roads were all ...