Freedom Daily Archive

Ten Tenets of Freedom, Part 2

by Jacob G. Hornberger September 1, 2009

Part 1 | Part 2 This two-part essay discusses ten tenets of freedom toward which we must continue to strive in our efforts to restore freedom to our land. Part 1 of the essay discussed the first five tenets and this part covers the other five tenets. 6. Gun control It would have been more appropriate to have made the Second ...

Welcome to Post Office Health Care

by Sheldon Richman September 1, 2009

America’s health-care system has problems — all traceable to government intervention — but it could be worse. And if the so-called reform emerging in Congress is enacted, it will be worse. The nub of the plan is that everyone must have health insurance and that all but the smallest employers should provide it. If someone doesn’t have coverage, he’ll be ...

How George W. Bush Redefined American Freedom

by James Bovard September 1, 2009

George W. Bush is gone from Washington but his legacy, like an abandoned toxic waste dump, lingers on. Like President Franklin Roosevelt before him, President Bush helped redefine American freedom. And like Roosevelt’s, Bush’s changes were perversions of the clear vision the Founding Fathers bequeathed to us. What did freedom mean in the era of George Bush? In Iraq in ...

The Road Waiting to Be Taken

by Christine Smith September 1, 2009

Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves. — Henry David Thoreau Reading Friedrich A. Hayek’s Road to Serfdom, one is amazed that a book published 64 years ago could paint such an accurate picture of where the United States is ...

Welfare Corruption in the New Deal

by Jim Powell September 1, 2009

How likely is it that a big government-spending program — Obama’s or anybody else’s — won’t be manipulated by politicians pursuing their special interests? In two of his recent New York Times columns, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman claimed that Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal was free from corruption. Consequently, he thought it was likely that Obama, too, can have an ...

Langdon, Stark, Bennington, and the Triumph of a Private Army, Part 1

by Scott McPherson September 1, 2009

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 Had we a standing army, when the British invaded our peaceful shores? Was it a standing army that gained the battles of Lexington, and Bunker’s Hill, and took the ill fated Burgoyne? Is not a well-regulated militia sufficient for every purpose of internal defence? And which of you, my fellow ...

The Supreme Court’s Attacks on Freedom, Part 1

by George Leef September 1, 2009

Part 1 | Part 2 The Dirty Dozen: How Twelve Supreme Court Cases Radically Expanded Government and Eroded Freedom by Robert A. Levy and William Mellor (Sentinel, 2008); 299 pages. Americans like lists. Most often, we get “Top Ten” lists, but this book is a ...

Ten Tenets of Freedom, Part 1

by Jacob G. Hornberger August 1, 2009

Part 1 | Part 2 Even while resisting the steady erosion of liberty in America, it is important that we keep in mind an overall vision of what a free society looks like. For if people lose sight of the “big picture,” the risk is that they end up settling for — and even celebrating — an unfree society ...

Obama’s Betrayals

by Sheldon Richman August 1, 2009

After President Obama announced he would fight the release of photographs showing American soldiers abusing “war on terror” detainees, Richard Haass, president of the quintessentially mainstream Council on Foreign Relations, said that Obama had learned the difference between campaigning and governing. He wasn’t being ironic. It was said during the presidential campaign that one of the candidates was running for ...

The Media As Enablers of Government Lies

by James Bovard August 1, 2009

Why do politicians so easily get away with telling lies? In large part, because the news media are more interested in bonding with politicians than in exposing them. Americans are encouraged to believe that the media will serve as a check and a balance on the government. Instead, the press too often volunteer as unpaid pimps, helping politicians deceive ...

Obama’s Link to “Old Iron Pants”

by Jim Powell August 1, 2009

Since Barack Obama pledged a “New New Deal” for the American people, he has been favoring a combination of more government spending, more government regulations, and more power for labor unions. This has led some observers to conclude that he might be drawing inspiration from “Old Iron Pants” — the hard-drinking, fast-talking Gen. Hugh Johnson, Time magazine’s 1933 “Man ...

Imprisoning Musical Creativity

by Jennifer Warren-Baker August 1, 2009

I am a composer. Since the age of 12, I have been painting canvases of sound at the piano. But my teachers never cared. In fact, my type of talent was deemed worthless by the government’s public-school system. Growing up in the D.C. area, I didn’t have any real models to follow. In the shadow of the nation’s capital, ...