Freedom Daily Archive

Clinton’s Legacy, Part 1: The Financial and Housing Meltdown

by Sheldon Richman December 1, 2012

Part 1 | Part 2 Bill Clinton leads a charmed life. The former president is treated like a respected elder statesman whose tenure in office was so good that even some Republicans look back fondly on the years 1993–2001. On the surface the record indeed looks good. The 1990s were a period of economic growth, and the central ...

The Mirage of Welfare State Freedom

by James Bovard December 1, 2012

Government dependency was one of the hottest issues in this year’s presidential race. Unfortunately, neither major-party candidate focused on the perils of “freedoms” that rely on government handouts. Instead, “welfare state freedom” has become the coin of the political realm. Lyndon Johnson declared in 1964, “For the first time in world history we have the abundance and the ability to ...

Two Extraordinary African-American Entrepreneurs

by Wendy McElroy December 1, 2012

As the 19th century neared its end, two African-American women became rivals as they became millionaires in the beauty-care industry. Annie Turnbo Pope Malone and Madam (Sarah) C.J. Walker were wildly successful entrepreneurs at a time when both blacks and women were marginalized by society. Annie and Sarah broke racial and sexual barriers; they created economic independence for an ...

Women Who Made a Difference

by George Leef December 1, 2012

Ladies for Liberty: Women Who Made a Difference in American History by John Blundell (New York: Algora Publishing, 2011); 230 pages. In contemporary American politics, women are generally assumed to be more inclined to socialistic ideas than men are. Women are more likely to favor candidates and policies that are supposed to help people, to provide a “safety ...

Authentic Liberalism Vindicated, Part 1: The Great Liberal Heritage

by Anthony Gregory December 1, 2012

Part 1 | Part 2 Classical Liberalism and the Austrian School by Ralph Raico, (Auburn, Ala.: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2012); 347 pages.  If any one word is responsible for more confusion in the United States than “liberalism,” I’d surely like to know what it is. To the average American, a liberal is someone who votes Democratic, ...

Medicare Is Doomed

by Sheldon Richman November 1, 2012

When Democrats accuse Republicans of wanting to “end Medicare as we know it,” they are right. Of course ending Medicare as we know it is not the same as ending Medicare. What Democrats fail to point out is that “Medicare as we know it” is no longer an option for anyone. They too will end “Medicare as we know ...

The Lingering Curse of “Bush Freedom”

by James Bovard November 1, 2012

It has been almost four years since George W. Bush’s presidency ended. Unfortunately, it increasingly appears that Bush did permanent damage to this nation’s political vocabulary and understanding. Rather than repeal his worst precedents, Barack Obama used them as launch pads for his own abuses. And the scant discussion of Obama’s power grabs in this fall’s presidential campaigns illustrate ...

The Misplaced Fear of “Monopoly”

by Thomas E. Woods Jr. November 1, 2012

Those of us who get drawn, often against our better judgment, into Internet debates soon discover that the case against the market economy in the popular mind boils down to a few major claims. Here I intend to dissect one of them: under the unhampered market we’d be at the mercy of vicious monopolists. This fear can be attributed in ...

Limits on the Right to Exit: The New Slavery

by Ridgway K. Foley Jr. November 1, 2012

The federal fascists respond with threats and vilification when a few knowledgeable citizens renounce their American citizenship and move — with capital and assets that they have accumulated by honest endeavor — to a more hospitable state, one that does not mulct them as rigorously by the theft benignly called taxation. The government bullies, who threaten to follow the ...

Destroying the Young with the Minimum Wage, Part 2

by Gregory Bresiger November 1, 2012

Part 1 | Part 2 What is the case for raising the minimum wage? Supporters say it will help the low-paid worker, the teenager or the young person in his 20s, just starting out. They claim that it helps the economy because it will generate more buying power. More people at the bottom of the economic scale have more ...

Meeting Frédéric Bastiat

by Martin Morse Wooster November 1, 2012

The Collected Works of Frédéric Bastiat. Volume 1: The Man and the Statesman: The Correspondence and Articles on Politics, Jacques de Guenin, general editor, and Jane Willems and Michael Willems, translators (Liberty Fund 2011); 600 pages. Of all the great classical liberal thinkers, Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850) remains one of the least well-known. His works, of course, continue to be ...

Don’t Let the Aurora Shooting Curtail the Right of Self-Defense

by Sheldon Richman October 1, 2012

The July shooting in the Aurora, Colorado, movie theater, which took 12 lives and injured 58 during the midnight premier of The Dark Knight Rises, has incited the usual bitter controversy over guns. One side says tighter gun restrictions could have prevented the horrible incident that night. The other responds that more guns in the hands of law-abiding people ...