Freedom Daily Archive

The Cataclysm of World War II

by Anthony Gregory June 1, 2013

Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization by Nicholson Baker (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2008), 567 pages. World War II was the great event of the 20th century. It greatly altered political boundaries, ushered in the Cold War, effected a total transformation in American governance, and consumed more lives than any other event ...

National Defense, Foreign Policy, and Gun Control

by Jacob G. Hornberger May 1, 2013

One of the most popular mantras in the post–9/11 era involves praising the troops for “defending our nation” and “protecting our rights and freedoms.” But how many people ever really think about what those mantras really mean? Indeed, how many people ever give serious thought to what would happen to our nation and to our rights and freedoms if ...

Venturing into Mali

by Sheldon Richman May 1, 2013

Murray Rothbard once observed that it was getting harder and harder to use the reductio ad absurdum device to ridicule U.S. government policy. Things haven’t changed. Thanks to recent events, we may no longer use “Timbuktu,” a name associated with a far-off middle-of-nowhere location, in a reductio about U.S. interventionist foreign policy. The U.S. government has helped the French ...

How Drug-Courier Profiles Begot Terrorist Watch Lists

by James Bovard May 1, 2013

Friends of freedom have been chagrined over the past decade to learn that federal terrorist watch lists incorporate criteria — such as openly praising the Constitution or the Second Amendment — that put them in the crosshairs. More than a million names are now included on the catch-all terrorist watch list maintained by U.S. government agencies. The feds’ definition ...

Who Killed Greece?

by Anthony J. Papalas May 1, 2013

The Greek tragedy began in 1981 when PASOK, the Pan-Hellenic Socialist Party, won the national elections. Andreas Papandreou, who had been a member of the Greek Communist Party and had received his Ph.D. in economics at Harvard in 1942, founded and led PASOK. He had published significant scholarly works with a Keynesian slant and served as chairman of the ...

Food Safety: A Market Solution

by Paul Schwennesen May 1, 2013

The FDA is trumpeting, with unseemly giddiness, sweeping implementation of new rules within the now thoroughly moldered food-safety bill, passed two long years ago. Like any dish served past its prime, this one smells a bit off. As a producer in the ascendant food renaissance (defined by a sudden respect for all things small and local) I’ve noticed a curious ...

Regulatory Herding, Regulatory Stampedes

by Richard W. Fulmer May 1, 2013

Perfect storms occur when many factors align. Sandy was one of the most damaging hurricanes in the history of the United States, but it took the confluence of a number of elements to make it so. Under normal conditions the storm would have moved northeast, away from the U.S. coast. Instead, a high-pressure cold front forced Sandy to turn ...

Book Review: What Reality Teaches Us

by Laurence M. Vance May 1, 2013

No, They Can’t: Why Government Fails — But Individuals Succeed by John Stossel (New York: Threshold Editions, 2012), 324 pages. John Stossel is the well-known host of Stossel on Fox Business. A graduate of Princeton, he has won an incredible 19 Emmy awards, is a five-time honoree for excellence in consumer reporting, and is a New York Times bestselling ...

Chile’s Gun-Control Lesson for Americans

by Jacob G. Hornberger April 1, 2013

One of the popular arguments for gun control is that people don’t need assault rifles, high-capacity magazines, and certain types of high-powered pistols to shoot deer. That argument, however, ignores the primary rationale for the Second Amendment, which was to ensure that people retained the means to resist tyranny at the hands of the federal government. Statists give short shrift ...

James Buchanan’s Subjectivist Economics

by Sheldon Richman April 1, 2013

James Buchanan, the Nobel laureate who died at 93 in January, was well known for his pioneering work in Public Choice (the application of economic principles to politics), constitutional economics (as a device for limiting government power), and many other key subjects in political economy. His voluminous work has long been of interest to libertarians and classical liberals for ...

Obama and His “Most Evident” Right: Equality

by James Bovard April 1, 2013

In his second inaugural address, Barack Obama quoted the Declaration of Independence and hailed “the most evident of truths — that all of us are created equal.” Obama never explained why “created equal” was more evident than the right to liberty. He understands that he can capture far more power by invoking equality than he could by promising to ...

Why James Buchanan Matters for Those Who Love Freedom

by Steven Horwitz April 1, 2013

On January 9 the world of political economy and the community of libertarian academics lost one of the 20th century’s most important thinkers with the death of James Buchanan at age 93. Although he was not as well known as Mises and Hayek, or even Milton Friedman or perhaps Robert Nozick, his work belongs with theirs in any discussion ...