Freedom Daily Archive

The Market Is a Beautiful Thing

by Sheldon Richman July 1, 2013

Market advocates tend to respect the intellect of their fellow human beings. You can tell by their reliance on philosophical, moral, economic, and historical arguments when trying to persuade others. But what if most people’s aversion to the market isn’t founded on philosophy, morality, economics, or history? What if their objection is aesthetic? More and more I’ve come to think ...

Obama’s Latest Democracy Scam

by James Bovard July 1, 2013

In his campaign earlier this year to subvert the Second Amendment, Barack Obama unveiled one of the oldest tricks in the demagogue playbook. Speaking in Colorado, he scoffed at Americans who say, “I need a gun to protect myself from the government” or “We can’t do background checks because the government is going to come take our guns away.” Obama ...

The War on Americans

by David S. D'Amato July 1, 2013

That the consumption of certain drugs ought to be proscribed by law is probably taken for granted by most people. The presumption in favor of banning some drugs has become so strong, so embedded in the mainstream of popular discourse as to be practically beyond debate — notwithstanding either philosophical or empirical issues that stand in contradiction to the ...

Stupidity or Plan?

by Scott Horton July 1, 2013

Are America’s disasters abroad a result of stupidity or some elaborate plan? An observer of modern U.S. foreign policy can be torn on that one. It makes sense that generals, contractors, and other national-security state types will invent and follow a deliberate policy of divide and rule, as well as to create crises to move on to the next big job. ...

Book Review: Slightly Limited Government’s Nearly Last Hurrah

by Joseph R. Stromberg July 1, 2013

Coolidge by Amity Shlaes (New York: Harper, 2013), 456 pages. I am for economy. After that, I am for more economy. — Calvin Coolidge (1920) Amity Shlaes’s Coolidge is a compelling biography of John Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933), 30th president of the United States. It is a well-paced narrative with elements of novelistic plotting and repeated themes both great and small. Indeed, ...

Book Review: Jingo Democrats

by Matthew Harwood July 1, 2013

The Emergency State: America’s Pursuit of Absolute Security at All Costs by David C. Unger (New York: Penguin Press, 2012), 368 pages. During a meeting on the Bosnian crisis in the early 1990s, Madeleine Albright, the U.S. ambassador to the UN, furiously asked Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “What’s the point of having this superb ...

The Texas Public-School Controversy on 9/11

by Jacob G. Hornberger June 1, 2013

A public-school controversy over 9/11 that erupted last spring in Texas demonstrates perfectly the statist mindset in America and how that mindset blocks the libertarian effort to create a proper foreign policy. The controversy also exemplifies the wide gulf between statists and libertarians with respect to moral principles, critical thinking, the exercise of conscience, and the role of government ...

Loving Economics

by Sheldon Richman June 1, 2013

“My love affair with economics began in the fall of 1979.” With those words, Peter Boettke begins his valentine to the economics discipline, that is, his latest book: Living Economics: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow (Independent Institute and Universidad Francisco Marroquin, 2012). Boettke, besides being a University Professor of Economics and Philosophy at George Mason University, the BB&T Professor for the ...

Destroying Freedom in the Name of Equal Opportunity

by James Bovard June 1, 2013

The Obama administration is finding new ways to use civil-rights laws to attack freedom and common sense. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) last year issued a byzantine “enforcement guidance” to browbeat businesses into ceasing to conduct criminal-background checks on job applicants. The agency’s edict will chill hiring and spur a backlash across the nation. The 1964 Civil Rights Act ...

Will the Rich Stick Around to Be Soaked?

by Wendy McElroy June 1, 2013

On December 8, the website Breitbart heralded, “Despite Tax Increase, California State Revenues in Freefall.” In the November state elections, a successful Proposition 30 imposed a 13.3 percent tax rate on income over $1,000,000 — an increase of 29.13 percent and the highest state tax rate in the nation. The predicted tax revenue was hailed as a way to ...

The Worst Protection

by Isaac Morehouse June 1, 2013

You feel safe in your neighborhood, but worry about the small chance of a break-in or act of vandalism. To protect yourself from those risks, you pay a security company to look after your house. It costs a little more than you’d like, but you determine it’s worth it. They put an unarmed guard in front of your house at ...

Collapsing the Tent on the Mercantilist Revival

by Alexander William Salter June 1, 2013

Harvard professor Dani Rodrik’s recent mercantilist apology attempts to illustrate the unappreciated benefits of a much-maligned political-economic system: mercantilism. “Today, mercantilism is typically dismissed as an archaic and blatantly erroneous set of ideas about economic policy,” Rodrik acknowledges. Thus his essay provides a defense of this system, which he believes has much to offer ...