Freedom Daily Archive

AmeriCorps: Idealistic Triumph or Usual Buffoonery?

by James Bovard November 1, 2013

National service is the latest fashionable panacea for all that ails America. Time magazine ran a July cover story, “How Service Can Save Us,” on the potential benefits of pressing all young people into service. The article approvingly quoted a retired Air Force veteran: “There isn’t an 18-year-old boy who doesn’t need to get his butt kicked by someone ...

The Fault in Fairness

by Joseph S. Diedrich November 1, 2013

The coffee aisle at the supermarket has become the latest front in the crusade for “social justice.” Coffee roasters proudly tout their allegiance to the ideals of the fair-trade movement, which ostensibly aims to elevate the economic and social welfare of disadvantaged Third-World farmers. Despite its meteoric rise in popularity, does fair trade translate its stated intentions into tangible results? ...

Freedom of Speech: Abridge to Nowhere

by Michael Tennant November 1, 2013

Americans, known for their outspokenness on matters of politics, sports, American Idol contestants, and practically every other topic, would appear to treasure few things more highly than their freedom of speech. Why, it’s even right there in the Constitution: “Congress shall make no law  ... abridging the freedom of speech.” In America, everyone is allowed to speak his mind ...

Whither Power?

by Kevin Carson November 1, 2013

The End of Power: From Boardrooms to Battlefields and Churches to States, Why Being in Charge Isn’t What It Used to Be by Moisés Naím (Basic Books 2013), 320 pages. The topic of Moisés Naím’s book is the decay of power — the shift of power “from brawn to brains, from north to south and west to east, ...

The Business Cycle Explained

by George Leef November 1, 2013

It Didn’t Have to Be This Way: Why Boom and Bust Is Unnecessary — and How the Austrian School of Economics Breaks the Cycle by Harry C. Veryser (Intercollegiate Studies Institute 2012), 318 pages. This is one instance where a book’s subtitle tells the reader much more about its content than the title does. You know at once that ...

Egypt’s Lessons for Americans, Part 1

by Jacob G. Hornberger October 1, 2013

Part 1 | Part 2 The military coup in Egypt last summer holds some valuable lessons for Americans, especially with respect to such things as freedom, democracy, and the U.S. national-security state, which has been an important part of American life since the end of World War II. The coup provides an especially important lesson with respect ...

Is Edward Snowden a Lawbreaker?

by Sheldon Richman October 1, 2013

Most people believe that Edward Snowden, who has confirmed that the U.S. government spies on us, broke the law. Even many of his defenders concede this. While in one sense the statement “Snowden broke the law” may be trivially true, in another, deeper sense it is untrue. He may have violated the terms of legislation passed by Congress and signed ...

Voting Rights as Bogus Panaceas

by James Bovard October 1, 2013

The Supreme Court struck down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act last June. “Liberals” were horrified and reacted as if the Civil War had been fought in vain. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Ginsburg denounced the decision for its “hubris,” Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) condemned it as a “dagger” stab at civil rights, and Attorney General Eric Holder ...

Gabriel Kolko Revisited, Part 2: Kolko Abroad

by Joseph R. Stromberg October 1, 2013

Part 1 | Part 2 Gabriel Kolko’s historical writing hinges on the interrelations of economic, political, and ideological power in American history. His later work increasingly focused on those phenomena in relation to war, peace, and empire. As his project went forward, Kolko increasingly departed from that Marxist framework in which state power becomes so utterly subordinate ...

Digging Out

by Richard W. Fulmer October 1, 2013

Pundits are full of advice about how and how not to pull the country out of its financial morass. Rebuild infrastructure or cut spending, increase deficit spending or reduce the debt, raise or lower taxes, regulate or deregulate, implement a new industrial policy or get government out of the economy, open the monetary floodgates or end the Fed’s easy-money ...

Revisiting Vietnam

by Laurence M. Vance October 1, 2013

Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam by Nick Turse (Metropolitan Books, 2013), 386 pages. The Vietnam War polarized Americans in the 20th century like no other event, dividing the people as no war had since the so-called Civil War a century earlier. Even though Vietnam was thousands of miles away, had not attacked the United ...

The Welfare State Exposed

by George Leef October 1, 2013

After the Welfare State, edited by Tom G. Palmer (Jameson Books, 2012), 180 pages Most Americans (indeed, most people in every advanced nation) walk around in a fog of myths and misconceptions concerning the subject of this book — the welfare state. They believe that in the absence of governmental welfare programs, there would be little or no support ...