Freedom Daily Archive

An Echo, Not a Choice

by Sheldon Richman July 1, 2012

Last November, Barack Obama stood before an audience and said government needs to be “responsive to the needs of people, not the needs of special interests.” He added, “That is probably the biggest piece of business that remains unfinished.” He made those remarks, the New York Times reports, before a $17,900-a-plate fundraising dinner at the home of Dwight and Antoinette ...

The Federal Wetlands War, Part 1

by James Bovard July 1, 2012

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 Since the 1980s, federal wetlands crackdowns have been one of the most brazen violations of American property rights. Federal agents have continually sought to play trump cards that effectively turned owners into serfs of federal bureaucracies. And despite a recent Supreme Court ruling vindicating landowners, the ...

Keynesians, Austrians, and the Continuing Economic Depression, Part 2

by William L. Anderson July 1, 2012

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 The existence of business cycles — the boom-and-bust patterns — has puzzled economists. While Marx might have created a theory of why depressions occur, nonetheless there was nothing in Marxism to explain the boom period that preceded the bust. Furthermore, there was nothing in Marxism that could ...

Book Review: The Reality of Race Oppression

by Anthony Gregory July 1, 2012

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander (New York: New Press, 2010); 312 pages. Many Americans deny that their country is home to any serious problem of institutional racism. Segregation was abolished generations ago and slavery has been extinct nearly a century and a half. Those favoring smaller government often see that the ...

Obama’s Logic of War

by Sheldon Richman June 29, 2012

Despite the alleged difference between Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Iran, both embrace a position that logically commits them to war. If war is to be avoided, as Obama says he wishes, he will have to abandon his current stance. The difference between Obama and Netanyahu is more apparent than real. Both say Iran’s possession of ...

How Roosevelt’s Farm Policy Paved the Way for Obamacare

by James Bovard June 28, 2012

The Obama administration invoked a 1942 Supreme Court agricultural-policy case to justify its sweeping health- care law compelling individual Americans to purchase health insurance. The role of Wickard v. Filburn in sanctifying Obamacare is a reminder of how the New Deal continues to imperil our rights and liberties. Unfortunately, few U.S. Supreme Court justices or journalists recognized the sordid ...

Keynesians, Austrians, and the Continuing Economic Depression, Part 1

by William L. Anderson June 27, 2012

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 During a news talk show on August 14, 2011, Princeton University economist and 2008 Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman made a startling declaration: If the United States were to mobilize for a supposed invasion of “space aliens,” the current economic downturn would be over “in 18 months.” The ...

I Was Fooled by the War-Makers

by Thomas E. Woods Jr. June 24, 2012

Twenty years ago, as I was completing my freshman year in college, I was a full-blown neoconservative. Except I didn’t know it. Having concluded that I was not a leftist, I simply decided by process of elimination that I must be a Rush Limbaughian. Like most people, I was unaware that any alternative to those two choices existed, or that ...

Book Review: Unequal Justice

by Matthew Harwood June 23, 2012

With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful by Glenn Greenwald (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2011), 304 pages. In August, something incredible happened: a three-judge panel of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, in a split decision, allowed a lawsuit seeking monetary damages to proceed against former Defense ...

The Obama Administration “Brainwashes” the Public on Afghanistan

by Sheldon Richman May 20, 2012

In 1967 Gov. George W. Romney of Michigan, a potential contender for the 1968 Republican presidential nomination, abandoned his earlier support for the war in Vietnam, which he had previously called “morally right and necessary.” Asked why he had changed his position, Romney said, “When I came back from Vietnam , I’d just had the greatest brainwashing ...

Federal Labor Law and Mob Tyranny

by James Bovard May 16, 2012

Since Barack Obama took office, the National Labor Relations Board has become a hotbed of controversy. Republicans charge that the NLRB is brazenly favoring unions and thwarting corporations on one bogus pretext after another. Unfortunately, those controversies are simply the latest chapter in a long history of federal subversion of freedom of contract. Prior to the 1930s, courts and legislatures ...

Soldier of Empire

by Scott McPherson May 12, 2012

Soldier, soldier, how you soar Aloft in that elevated status Reserved to those who trade In war and oppression. Soldier, soldier, do not fear; You’ll never hear an unkindness — Insulated from the truth Of murder and rapine. Soldier, soldier, may you take This blue-blood daughter’s hand? Honored would her father be To hear tales of empire. Soldier, soldier, how is it that Across the spectrum of politeness We speak of hope and ...