Freedom Daily Archive

Fighting Discrimination without the Government

by Sheldon Richman June 1, 2014

Should the government coercively sanction business owners who refuse to serve customers because of their race or ethnicity? While such behavior is troubling — judging persons by their involuntary membership in a group eats at the foundation of libertarianism, respect for human dignity — the refusal to serve someone on such a basis is nevertheless an exercise of self-ownership, property ...

How Trade Wars Shaped Early America, Part 1

by James Bovard June 1, 2014

Part 1 | Part 2 Fair trade is once again a rallying cry for many Americans. Many contemporary leftists believe that the U.S. government should impose restrictions or tariffs on imported goods that are alleged to have been produced by underpaid or oppressed Third World workers. Few contemporary protectionists are aware of the sordid history of trade ...

Class Theory, Part 2: Modern Progressive Class Analysis

by Anthony Gregory June 1, 2014

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 On September 17, 2011, the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement staged its first protests in Zuccotti Park, a location in New York’s financial district. This “direct action” movement has been defined in terms of its opposition to economic inequality, institutional corruption, and the revolving door between corporate America ...

The Defining Challenge of our Time

by George Leef June 1, 2014

Why Liberty — Your Life, Your Choices, Your Future edited by Tom G. Palmer (Jameson Books 2013) 116 pages. With this short, easily read, yet intellectually powerful book, Tom Palmer continues his work of making libertarianism the philosophy that will appeal to and animate young people around the globe. While the arguments for vastly downsizing our enormous, meddlesome, and ...

The Boast in the Machine

by Joseph R. Stromberg June 1, 2014

Average Is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation by Tyler Cowen (Dutton 2013), 304 pages. In Average Is Over, George Mason University economist Tyler Cowen delivers good news and bad news with nearly equal enthusiasm. Basically, artificial “intelligence” (AI) is aggregating the “knowledge of the entire world” and intruding everywhere, ready to overturn our lives, ...

The U.S. Embrace of Monetary Tyranny, Part 1

by Jacob G. Hornberger May 1, 2014

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 The rise of Bitcoin as an alternative currency raises some important questions about America’s monetary system. Why does the United States have a fiat-money system — that is, a system of irredeemable paper currency? Why aren’t Americans free to use any money they want? What is the role ...

Libertarianism: The Moral and the Practical

by Sheldon Richman May 1, 2014

If I say that a government activity — “public” schooling, perhaps, or the war on selected drug merchants and users — helps turn the inner cities into hellholes and otherwise makes people’s lives miserable, is that a moral objection or a practical (utilitarian or generally consequentialist) objection? Some libertarians are inclined to say it’s a utilitarian objection, but I’ve long ...

FDR Farm-Folly Lessons for Obamacare

by James Bovard May 1, 2014

As the Obama administration wreaks further havoc on health care, many people expect the politicians to recognize their follies and relent. However, history indicates that rulers will continue seizing new power regardless of how much wreckage results. The farm policy of Franklin Roosevelt exemplifies how politicians “double down” on their most brazen follies. Roosevelt’s Brain Trust agricultural planners had unlimited ...

Class Theory, Part 1: Modern Conservative Class Analysis

by Anthony Gregory May 1, 2014

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 Since the 2008 financial collapse, class rhetoric has arisen on both prevalent sides of the U.S. political spectrum. The grassroots “base” in both the Republican and Democratic party has become animated by a new or invigorated perception of class struggle. The politicians in each party have echoed these ...

A Treacherous Undertow

by David S. D'Amato May 1, 2014

American Coup: How a Terrified Government Is Destroying the Constitution by William M. Arkin (Little, Brown and Company 2013), 368 pages. Among the philosophy of liberty’s core ideas is the well-known precept that a free society must be one of laws and not of men, that the rule of law should stand above the arbitrary caprice of some empowered ...

Broken

by Matthew Harwood May 1, 2014

They Were Soldiers: How the Wounded Return from America's Wars — The Untold Story by Ann Jones. (Haymarket Books/Dispatch Books 2013), 191 pages. Members of the American armed forces are props. They wave from convertibles as Independence Day parades make their way down Main Street U.S.A. They are trotted out at football games to bless the proceedings as some ...

Let’s Raise Our Vision

by Jacob G. Hornberger April 1, 2014

There was once a time when religious liberty had never before been considered. Throughout history, people lived under political systems in which government and religion were combined. Since it was the system under which they had been born and raised and which existed all over the world, people just didn’t give any thought to an alternative. Then one day, ...