Freedom Daily Archive

Liberalism Is the Enemy of the Poor

by Jacob G. Hornberger May 1, 2010

I was a liberal back in my late 20s. I was practicing law in my hometown of Laredo, Texas, where I was serving on the board of trustees for the local Legal Aid Society, a government agency that provided free legal services for the poor. I also served as the local representative for the ACLU. I believed that government’s ...

Capitalism and the Free Market, Part 1

by Sheldon Richman May 1, 2010

Part 1 | Part 2 Writing in the Guardian last January under the headline “Caribbean Communism v. Capitalism,” respected journalist Stephen Kinzer began his article like this (https://tinyurl.com/y8wfrxb): Visiting unhappy Cuba is especially thought-provoking for anyone familiar with its unhappy neighbours. Cubans live difficult lives and have much to complain about. So do Jamaicans, Dominicans, Haitians, Guatemalans, Hondurans, Salvadorans, and ...

Bringing Freedom and Prosperity to Afghanistan

by James Bovard May 1, 2010

The Obama administration is seeking to rechristen the Afghan debacle it inherited from the Bush administration. Obama’s efforts to legitimize the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan simply ignore the previous record of American actions in that nation. But the past debacles ensure the failure of Obama’s ramped-up interventions. Afghanistan was recently judged to be the second most corrupt nation on Earth. ...

Unnatural Law, Natural Tyranny, Part 2

by William L. Anderson May 1, 2010

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 While the founding of the United States (and its legal system based on the English common law) was carried out by people who believed strongly in natural law, nonetheless the seeds of dissent were already being sown in England. Jeremy Bentham, a philosopher who also had a strong effect on ...

Lessons for America from Germany’s Hyperinflation, Part 1

by Jim Powell May 1, 2010

Part 1 | Part 2 Many Americans may be inclined to assume that Germans were barbaric because they supported Hitler, and whatever happened there couldn’t possibly apply to the United States. But the Germans have had much more in common with Americans than we might realize. Germans were educated and industrious. Germany had world-class universities. Germans long led the world ...

The Anti-Fed Revolution

by Anthony Gregory May 1, 2010

End the Fed by Ron Paul (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2009), 212 pages. Through his 2008 presidential campaign, Ron Paul managed to make monetary policy a national political issue. For nearly a century it had been a relatively obscure topic, and throughout my lifetime respectable opinion considered it a fringe inclination even to be interested in it. ...

The CIA and the Assassination of John Kennedy, Part 3

by Jacob G. Hornberger April 1, 2010

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 Even though the CIA was the premier government agency in the world whose expertise was assassination, coups, and regime change, it does not necessarily follow that it employed its talents and abilities here in the United States in November 1963. But it’s an important factor that should have been considered ...

Haiti Needs Freedom

by Sheldon Richman April 1, 2010

The heartbreaking devastation of Haiti shows again that as deadly as Mother Nature can be when acting alone, she is far more lethal when she conspires with poverty. The immediate cause of the deaths of the hundreds of thousands Haitians was the earthquake, but most of those people might be alive today if Haiti weren’t poor. And why is ...

The Fraud of Big Picture Thinking

by James Bovard April 1, 2010

Politicians, pundits, and others perennially invoke the “Big Picture.” Recognizing the role of the Big Picture is vital to understanding how contemporary democracies are going off the rail. The Big Picture provides preemptive exoneration for almost anyone who wants to kowtow and cheerlead for political power. Fifteen years ago, there was a hullabaloo to denounce “politically correct” mandates and imperatives. ...

The Disaster of Government-Run Businesses, Part 2

by Jim Powell April 1, 2010

Part 1 | Part 2 In the 1870s, the Japanese had many government-run businesses — among them, mining, shipbuilding, railways, and silk production. According to economic historians Johannes Hirschmeier and Tsunehiko Yui, they “were a heavy burden on government finance, and on the whole were running in the red.” The government couldn’t even make money with silk production, something ...

John Maynard Keynes, Defunct Economist

by Edmund Contoski April 1, 2010

John Maynard Keynes, who rose to prominence in the 1930s, wrote, “The ideas of economists and political philosophers ... are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men ... are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority ... are usually distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of ...

Unnatural Law, Natural Tyranny, Part 1

by William L. Anderson April 1, 2010

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 A typical federal courtroom scene has the trappings of ages gone by. The judge wears a black robe, everyone stands when he enters, the bailiff utters the “Oyez” sayings, and much of the language is the same as what might have been said two centuries ago in an American or ...