Freedom Daily Archive

How I Came to Reject the Welfare State, Part 2

by Jacob G. Hornberger September 1, 2013

Part 1| Part 2 During the part of my life that I was a welfare statist, I never gave any thought to how the government raised its money. I just assumed that the government operated like a business — that it earned its money and then figured out ways to spend it. Thus I could ...

It’s Not Edward Snowden Who Betrayed Us

by Sheldon Richman September 1, 2013

When you cut through the fog, the NSA controversy is about whether we should trust people with institutional power. Edward Snowden’s courageous exposure of massive secret surveillance separates those who say yes from those who say, “Hell no!” The trusting attitude can be found among progressives and conservatives alike (with notable exceptions), and even some who have identified themselves as ...

The Sordid History of IRS Political Abuse

by James Bovard September 1, 2013

The power to tax has long conferred the power to destroy one’s political opponents. When the latest IRS politicization scandal erupted in May, many commentators talked as if the abuses were a novelty in American history. But, as David Burnham noted in his masterful 1990 book, A Law Unto Itself: The IRS and the Abuse of Power, “In almost ...

U.S. Government to Blame for Somalia’s Misery

by Scott Horton September 1, 2013

At the beginning of May the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET), a U.S.- and U.K.-government-financed organization that monitors various food crises around the world, released a new report detailing the horrific consequences of the Somali famine of 2011. According to FEWS NET, “An estimated 4.6 percent of the total population and 10 percent of children under 5 died ...

Gabriel Kolko Revisited, Part 1: Kolko at Home

by Joseph R. Stromberg September 1, 2013

Part 1 | Part 2 An earlier generation of libertarians was interested in Gabriel Kolko, a historian of the Left. Who was he? Born in 1932 in Paterson, NJ, historian Gabriel Kolko studied at Kent State, the University of Wisconsin, and Harvard University (PhD: 1962). From 1970 until his retirement he taught history at York University in Toronto, ...

America’s Surveillance State

by Wendy McElroy September 1, 2013

J. Edgar Hoover and the Anti-Interventionists: FBI Political Surveillance and the Rise of the Domestic Security State, 1939-1945, by Douglas M. Charles (Ohio State University Press, 2007), 197 pages. The domestic surveillance state is sometimes called the electronic police state. Those in political power use law enforcement to closely monitor the opinions and peaceful behavior of citizens in order ...

Manufacturing Terrorists

by Matthew Harwood September 1, 2013

The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War on Terrorism by Trevor Aaronson (Ig Publishing, 2013), 272 pages. Predators stalk Muslim-American communities across the nation today. They talk of brotherhood and of sacrifice. They talk of jihad and the duty of fellow Muslims to come to the defense of the faithful. Often they prey on the most vulnerable within ...

How I Came to Reject the Welfare State, Part 1

by Jacob G. Hornberger August 1, 2013

Part 1 | Part 2 According to a Census Bureau announcement during the 1950s, I was growing up in the poorest city in the United States. That was Laredo, Texas, a city that borders the Rio Grande. Even though I was only a kid, that announcement struck me hard. Here I was, actually living in the poorest ...

Government Is the Problem

by Sheldon Richman August 1, 2013

Last spring Barack Obama told the graduating class of Ohio State University, Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems.… They’ll warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices. Because what they suggest is ...

Where’s the Body Count from Shootings by Police?

by James Bovard August 1, 2013

Barack Obama has made curtailing Americans’ right to own firearms one of his highest priorities. Earlier this year, he appealed to “all the Americans who are counting on us to keep them safe from harm.” He also declared, “If there is even one life we can save, we’ve got an obligation to try.” But some perils are not worth ...

The Outrage of Stop-and-Frisk

by David S. D'Amato August 1, 2013

As the subject of an ongoing trial in federal court, Floyd, et al. v. City of New York, et al., the controversial police policy known as “stop and frisk” is receiving more attention than perhaps at any other moment in its history. For most of that time — and indeed it is difficult to know exactly how long the ...

The Zero Interest Option Could Wreck the Economy

by Gregory Bresiger August 1, 2013

Economic history is primed to repeat in the nastiest of ways unless the government stops distorting the price of something we use every day. Every product, good, or service has a price, which is essential to rational decision-making. We use prices every day as vital data that guide us. Without true prices, prices not distorted by government fiat, we would ...