Politics

Inessential Government Workers

by Laurence M. Vance November 12, 2019

Government “shutdowns” in the United States occur when Congress and the president cannot agree on appropriations bills to fund the federal government before the previous ones expire. Since the current budget and appropriations process began in 1976, the federal government “shut down” three times during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, once under George H.W. Bush, twice under Bill Clinton, once ...

Max Weber on Politics as a Vocation

by Richard M. Ebeling October 31, 2019

Political election seasons are always interesting times. An array of candidates offer themselves to the voters, each one promising a bundle of policy programs targeting what government will do for those who elect them, as well as all those who did not vote for them. They are all about how much they want to “give back” and to do ...

Asking the Wrong Questions

by Laurence M. Vance May 1, 2019

In the 1968 presidential election that pitted Democrat Hubert H. Humphrey against Republican Richard M. Nixon, American Independent Party candidate George C. Wallace famously quipped that there was not a dime’s worth of difference between the two major political parties. Since Wallace made that observation, we have had every conceivable combination of Democrats and Republicans in the ...

Term Limits Are Not the Answer

by Laurence M. Vance March 4, 2019

Franklin D. Roosevelt has the distinction of being the only man to be elected to the office of the presidency four times (1932, 1936, 1940, and 1944). The nation’s first president, George Washington, after serving two terms as president (1789–1797), famously declined to seek a third term as president. (If he had done so, and won, he would have ...

Truth Is an Outlaw in Washington

by James Bovard January 1, 2019

“Truth isn’t truth,” declared Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump’s personal attorney, on Meet the Press last August. Giuliani’s comment was the “Trump era’s epitaph,” according to a Washington Post columnist. But truth really is defined differently inside the Beltway — when it is not in total hiding. Trump could face a “perjury trap” from Special Counsel Robert Mueller because of the ...

John McCain’s Disastrous Militaristic Legacy

by James Bovard December 1, 2018

When Sen. John McCain passed away in August, he was lauded far and wide for his long career of public service. Rep. John Lewis, the famous civil-rights activist, hailed McCain as a “warrior for peace.” In reality, McCain embodied a toxic mix of moralism and militarism that worked out disastrously for America and the world. In his funeral eulogies, McCain ...

Libertarian Angle: Election Day!

by Future of Freedom Foundation November 6, 2018

Jacob Hornberger and Richard Ebeling discuss why it doesn't make any difference, insofar as liberty is concerned, whether you vote Democrat or Republican.

Donald Trump’s Authoritarian Opponents

by James Bovard February 1, 2018

President Trump has said and done many things to appall the friends of freedom. From Trump’s pro-torture comments to his praise of police brutality to his cruise-missile barrage against Syria to his threat to annihilate North Korea, there are ample signs that he scorns a freedom-and-peace posture. Unfortunately, many of Trump’s opponents are even more statist than the president. Marking ...

Government Shutdowns, If Only It was True!

by Richard M. Ebeling January 22, 2018

The media once more has been agog with the terror and fear of the government shutdown that occurred following the failure of the Congress to pass another stop-gap spending bill, when federal spending approval officially ran out at one minute past midnight on Friday, January 19, 2018. This is all smoke and mirrors because: (a) the government has not ...

State of the Nation: Progressives, Conservatives, and Trump

by Richard M. Ebeling January 8, 2018

Anyone reading the news and especially the political “liberal” and conservative commentaries might easily conclude that he is living in a world of two parallel political universes. It is as if modern American liberals and conservatives are, respectively, occupying alternative realities about how they look at the economy and culture of the country, and evaluate Donald Trump and his ...

If Political Candidates Advocated Liberty

by Richard M. Ebeling October 23, 2017

In modern democracies, political cycles never end. As soon as one election is over, those in government office or aspiring to such an office are already running for the next election. Having recently attended a public forum of state-level candidates looking to the 2018 election, I wondered what a real friend of freedom might say if he was offering ...

The Political and Economic Mystiques of State Power

by Richard M. Ebeling September 25, 2017

One of the great political mysteries has been the success of governments in ruling over societies with little opposition and resistance from the vast majority of the population, even when those governments have been brutal tyrannies and openly dictatorial in their control. This has been true, no less, under democratic regimes, as well, under which levels of taxation have been ...