Freedom Daily Archive

Park51 and Collective Guilt

by Sheldon Richman November 1, 2010

If a YMCA or a YMHA were planned for 51 Park Place in Lower Manhattan, two blocks from the Twin Towers’ former site, who would have noticed? Instead, the equivalent of a Muslim Y (without the implied male exclusivity) is to be built there. What’s the big deal? I can think of only one answer: Consciously or not, a majority of ...

Obama Advisor Sunstein’s Peril to Freedom

by James Bovard November 1, 2010

Cass Sunstein is the chief of the Obama administration’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. As Salon’s Glenn Greenwald noted earlier this year, Sunstein “has long been one of Barack Obama’s closest confidants.” His values are probably guiding the Obama administration far more than most Americans realize. Sunstein, formerly a law professor at the University of Chicago, has long spearheaded ...

Regulation and Union Corruption

by Jim Powell November 1, 2010

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters has been a hotbed of violence and corruption ever since it started in 1903. Cornelius Shea was the Detroit-based union’s first president, and he constantly battled rivals. He was charged with graft, criminal libel, and mail fraud, and was indicted for conspiracy to restrain trade, commit violence, and prevent nonunion people from working. During ...

Lessons from a Bloated Budget

by Laurence M. Vance November 1, 2010

President Obama has just sent to Congress the largest federal budget ever in U.S. history. His $3.518 trillion budget is also the most unbalanced in history, with a built-in deficit of $1.413 trillion. The United States has rarely in its history had a balance of receipts and outlays. Deficit spending has been the norm, with the last real budget surplus ...

Nullifying Tyranny

by George Leef November 1, 2010

Nullification: How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century by Thomas E. Woods Jr. (Regnery, 2010); 309 pages. One of the big mistakes made by the drafters of the Constitution was their omission of any provision that says what is to be done if the Congress or president acts unconstitutionally. Although the Constitution places limits on their authority, nowhere does ...

Natural Rights, the Declaration, and the Constitution, Part 1

by Jacob G. Hornberger October 1, 2010

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 We live in a country whose economic system is a welfare state and a government-managed economy and whose foreign policy is now based on an extensive overseas military empire and perpetual war, along with ever-increasing infringements on the civil liberties of the people. The economic consequences of the welfare-warfare state have ...

The Post-9/11 Feeding Frenzy

by Sheldon Richman October 1, 2010

Militarism is the one great glamorous public-works project upon which a variety of elements in the community can be brought into agreement. — John T. Flynn, As We Go Marching (1944) Those who understand the exploitative nature of big government realized that the U.S. response to the 9/11 attacks had little to do with the security of the American people and ...

Clinton’s Forgotten Dictatorial Tendencies

by James Bovard October 1, 2010

It seems like a century since Bill Clinton was president of this country. Unfortunately, the abuses of George W. Bush and the pratfalls of Barack Obama are causing many people to raise their estimate of Clinton’s presidency. But he earned his disdain fair and square, and a brief reminder of his abuses is in order. From concocting new prerogatives to ...

The Incessant Growth of Government Bureaucracy, Part 2

by Gregory Bresiger October 1, 2010

Part 1 | Part 2 A government bureaucracy may be difficult to establish, as supporters of expanded Obama health-care socialism discovered. But the friends of collectivism should take heart. No matter how many times people reject their calls to venture farther down the “road to serfdom,” no matter how many times American outrage is expressed at town halls across ...

The Violence That Empire Engenders

by Matthew Harwood October 1, 2010

On May 1, a naturalized Pakistani-American left the United States a smoking surprise in Times Square meant to maim and murder indiscriminately. Fortunately the car bomb failed because a Senegalese Muslim T-shirt vendor sounded the alarm and because the bomb was ineptly designed. But as all acts of violence warrant, we should ask why. Was homegrown terrorist Faisal Shahzad’s ...

The Addled Theories of John Maynard Keynes

by George Leef October 1, 2010

Where Keynes Went Wrong: And Why World Governments Keep Creating Inflation, Bubbles, and Busts by Hunter Lewis (Axios Press, 2010); 384 pages. In the wake of the bursting of the housing bubble and the resulting financial collapse, many politicians and high-profile economists (such as Nobel winner and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman) have missed no opportunity to push ...

Leading Humanity Out of the Darkness, Part 4

by Jacob G. Hornberger September 21, 2010

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 During the entire 11 years of the sanctions on Iraq, the anger in the Middle East was simmering, not only among Iraqi parents but also among Muslims throughout the Middle East, who could only sit idly by and watch the deaths occur year after year. There ...