Freedom Daily Archive

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 ...

Government-Rigged Markets

by George Leef September 1, 2014

Crony Capitalism in America 2008 – 2012 by Hunter Lewis (AC2 Books 2013), 399 pages. Ayn Rand called it “the aristocracy of pull.” That was her term for the political-economic system in which people can get ahead (and even become exceptionally wealthy) by virtue of their connections with those in power, rather than by their work, innovations, and ...

The Worst Government Crimes

by Anthony Gregory September 1, 2014

Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder (Basic Books 2010), 560 pages. We can locate the deadliest place and time in world history, certainly for the modern West, in the stretch of land between Berlin and Moscow in the 1930s and 1940s. That setting hosted an unimaginable bloodbath thanks to the worst killers ever to plague Europe — ...

The Presidential Authority to Torture and Assassinate, Part 1

by Jacob G. Hornberger August 1, 2014

Part 1 | Part 2 If our American ancestors in 1787 had been told that the Constitution was going to bring into existence a national government that would have the powers to torture and assassinate people, including American citizens, there is no reasonable possibility that Americans would have approved the document. They would undoubtedly have instead chosen ...

On Work

by Sheldon Richman August 1, 2014

I hear therefore with joy whatever is beginning to be said of the dignity and necessity of labor to every citizen. There is virtue yet in the hoe and the spade, for learned as well as for unlearned hands. And labor is everywhere welcome; always we are invited to work. — Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The American Scholar,” 1837 Work! (Exclaimed in ...

America’s Cluster- Bomb Congress

by James Bovard August 1, 2014

Tens of thousands of Americans have been bushwhacked by a single arcane sentence in a 673-page law Congress enacted six years ago. The IRS is seizing both federal and state tax refunds for individuals whom the Social Security Administration accuses of having received excessive benefits years ago. But the government often has zero evidence of the overpayments, and the ...

Due Process versus Secret Courts

by Wendy McElroy August 1, 2014

Due process is a set of legal requirements that protect the individual against abuse by the state. Examples are a person’s right to be notified of court proceedings in which he is involved and the right against self-incrimination. Due process is woven into the fabric of American society through both the Constitution and legal precedent. Few practices are as damaging ...

The Poverty of Top- Down Anti-Poverty Efforts

by David S. D'Amato August 1, 2014

The Idealist: Jeffrey Sachs and the Quest to End Poverty by Nina Munk (Doubleday 2012), 272 pages. In the idealist, the system-building visionary, there is a certain natural attractiveness, a gravitational pull centered on the strength of his convictions. We desire to be a part of his crusade, or at least to root it on, because we admire the ...

A Conservative Dissents from the Corporate Status Quo

by Anthony Gregory August 1, 2014

The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America by David A. Stockman, (Public Affairs 2013), 768 pages. Most leftist critiques of libertarianism focus on an alleged blind defense of corporate power. Indeed, left-libertarian Kevin Carson has helpfully criticized the very real problem of “vulgar libertarianism,” the working assumption that current economic realities are a product of free-market dynamics ...

The U.S. Embrace of Monetary Tyranny, Part 3

by Jacob G. Hornberger July 1, 2014

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 In 1933, in one of the most shocking events in the history of the United States, Franklin Roosevelt issued a series of executive orders, backed by Congress, that required the American people, on pain of fine and imprisonment, to surrender their gold coins to the federal government, for ...

What Social Animals Owe Each Other

by Sheldon Richman July 1, 2014

If I were compelled to summarize the libertarian philosophy’s distinguishing feature while standing on one foot, I’d say the following: Every person owes it to all other persons not to aggress against them. This is known as the nonaggression principle, or NAP. What is the nature of this obligation? The first thing to notice is that it is unchosen. I never ...

How Early U.S. Trade Policy Spurred Wars and Injustice, Part 2

by James Bovard July 1, 2014

Part 1 | Part 2 In 1845 the Democrats took over the White House and began working for tariff reduction. Secretary of the Treasury Robert Walker issued a report in 1845 on the nature and effects of the tariff, observing, “At least two-thirds of the taxes imposed by the present tariff are paid, not into the treasury ...