Freedom Daily Archive

Book Review: The Crisis Ahead

by George Leef March 1, 2013

The Real Crash: America’s Coming Bankruptcy — How to Save Yourself and Your Country by Peter D. Schiff (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2012), 352 pages. As  I write this review, the presidential campaign of 2012 has recently (and mercifully!) come to its end. Neither major-party candidate ever addressed the most salient issue facing the nation, namely, the fact ...

Time to Nullify the Drug Laws

by Sheldon Richman February 1, 2013

Thomas Jefferson said a revolution every 20 years would be a good thing. Regardless of what one thinks of that, perhaps a little constitutional crisis every now and then would have its benefits. One such crisis may be brewing now. On election day solid majorities of voters in Colorado and Washington voted to make marijuana a legal product not just ...

The Continuing Forfeiture Scourge

by James Bovard February 1, 2013

A federal crime wave is sweeping the nation, and prosecutors and G-men could not be happier about it. The Wall Street Journal reported that government “forfeiture programs confiscated homes, cars, boats, and cash in more than 15,000 cases . The total take topped $2.5 billion, more than doubling in five years, Justice Department statistics show.” Beginning in 1970, Congress ...

Taxi Tyranny

by Laurence M. Vance February 1, 2013

One of the most prevalent and persistent myths about the American economy is that it is based on the free market, or laissez-faire capitalism. True, when compared with much of the rest of the world, the United States appears to have a relatively free economy. The truth, however, is that in some sectors of the American economy, government intervention ...

Milking the Truancy Cow for Cash

by Wendy McElroy February 1, 2013

Diane Tran is a 17-year-old honor student who was jailed for truancy in Texas. When a tearful Tran gave an interview for a local television station, the story went viral. Her parents had recently divorced, leaving Tran to support herself and her siblings by working two jobs in addition to attending school. Fury was unleashed on the truancy court ...

Deflation, Liquidation, and Necessary Revisionism

by Tim Kelly February 1, 2013

During his ill-fated 1932 reelection campaign Herbert Hoover delivered a speech in which he said, In the midst of this hurricane the Republican administration kept a cool head, and it rejected every counsel of weakness and cowardice. Some of the reactionary economists urged that we should allow the liquidation to take its course until it had found its own bottom. ...

New Deal Utopianism

by George Leef February 1, 2013

Back to the Land: Arthurdale, FDR’s New Deal, and the Costs of Economic Planning by C.J. Maloney (Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley, 2011), 292 pages. Drive south from Morgantown, West Virginia, and you soon come to the little town of Arthurdale. At the outskirts of town, there is a roadside plaque informing those who stop to read it that Arthurdale was ...

Clinton’s Legacy, Part 2: The Attacks on 9/11

by Sheldon Richman January 1, 2013

Part 1 | Part 2 Last month I sought to correct the record by showing that the administration of Bill Clinton (1993–2001), which is almost universally viewed with nostalgia, played a major role in inflating the housing bubble, which led to the Great Recession, thanks to aggressive polices pushed by his second secretary of Housing and Urban ...

The Forgotten Pox of Government Spending

by James Bovard January 1, 2013

It is only a question of time until Washington is convulsed by the next federal budget crisis. Unfortunately, neither major political party is offering substantive proposals to curb soaring federal outlays. And Washington itself is inherently unable to recognize the true threat of government spending to Americans’ future and freedom. It was a common saying in the 1930s that “we ...

The Successes and Failures of Social Security

by Laurence M. Vance January 1, 2013

One of the oldest, largest, most popular, and most expensive government programs is Social Security. After appealing to the “general welfare” clause of the Constitution in a speech to Congress in June of 1934, Franklin Roosevelt appointed a Committee on Economic Security to report and make recommendations on the task of “furthering the security of the citizen and his family ...

The Heroism of Dietrich Bonhoeffer

by Wendy McElroy January 1, 2013

A destructive myth hangs over the history of World War II. It is that a flaw within the German character allowed the rise of Hitler and Nazism. How else can you explain the coming of the Holocaust from one of the world’s most cultured nations? Oddly, no one seems to consider Mussolini as indicating a flaw in Italians or ...

Authentic Liberalism Vindicated, Part 2: The Economics of Liberty

by Anthony Gregory January 1, 2013

Part 1 | Part 2 Classical Liberalism and the Austrian School by Ralph Raico, (Auburn, Ala.: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2012); 347 pages. The passionate interest in economics among libertarians is not immediately understood by all students of liberty. Even those generally in favor of economic freedom for ethical reasons may wonder why so many libertarians adhere ...