Presidency

Freedom Frauds: No Halo for George H.W. (video)

by James Bovard December 11, 2018

With the recent death of former president George H.W. Bush, there has been an outpouring of praise for his statesmanship and civility. FFF policy advisor James Bovard know that Bush was no Boy Scout. Go to the audio podcast.

The Imperial Presidency Embodies Political and Economic Hubris

by Richard M. Ebeling November 30, 2018

Historian Arthur M. Schlesinger coined the term “imperial presidency” in the 1960s. It was meant to indicate that the role of the president of the United States had dramatically grown in the 20th century from being an important but fairly limited position of implementing the laws of the land as specified in the Constitution and congressional legislation to being ...

Presidential Hubris: “Let Me Run the Country”

by Richard M. Ebeling November 16, 2018

The television news cycle and social media have been filled with comments and criticisms concerning the combative exchange of words between the current president and CNN reporter James Acosta during a recent White House press conference. What seemingly received little or no attention were the words that Donald Trump used in describing his role as the president of the ...

The Rise of the American Imperial President

by John W. Whitehead March 8, 2018

“The presidency will survive. The real question is what leads American presidents into the imperial temptation. When the American presidency conceives itself as the appointed savior of a world in which mortal danger requires rapid and incessant deployment of men, weapons, and decisions behind a wall of secrecy, power rushes from Capitol Hill to the White ...

Trump and the Right to #Resist

by James Bovard March 1, 2018

Since Donald Trump’s election, it has become fashionable for his opponents to use a #Resist hashtag on their social media postings. Public demonstrations have become more fashionable than at any time since the Vietnam War. Federal agencies are actively working to thwart the Trump administration; the Obama holdover chief of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau even refused to vacate ...

Donald Trump as Carnival Hawker and His Leftist Enemies

by Richard M. Ebeling April 1, 2017

Politics has a strange influence on people. People who in their daily lives seem to act quite normal are driven into various forms of madness by politics. For instance, I have friends and acquaintances on both the political Right and Left, with whom totally normal conversations and interactions may be had — unless it turns to politics. Donald Trump is ...

Obama’s Legacy and What It Means for a Trump Presidency

by John W. Whitehead January 13, 2017

“This light of history is pitiless; it has a strange and divine quality that, luminous as it is, and precisely because it is luminous, often casts a shadow just where we saw a radiance; out of the same man it makes two different phantoms, and the one attacks and punishes the other, the darkness of the despot struggles with ...

The Libertarian Angle: Obama vs Trump

by Future of Freedom Foundation January 11, 2017

FFF president Jacob Hornberger and Richard Ebeling talk about the executive powers that Obama is bequeathing to Trump. Go to the podcast.

The Libertarian Angle: Trump’s Cabinet Picks, Part 2

by Future of Freedom Foundation December 14, 2016

FFF president Jacob Hornberger and Richard Ebeling talk about the choices that president-elect Donald Trump has been making for his cabinet. Go to the podcast.

The Libertarian Angle: Millennial Support for Gary Johnson

by Future of Freedom Foundation October 5, 2016

FFF president Jacob Hornberger and Richard Ebeling discuss how younger voters are supporting Libertarian presidential nominee Gary Johnson. Go to the podcast.

The Libertarian Angle: Presidential Debate Follies

by Future of Freedom Foundation September 28, 2016

FFF president Jacob Hornberger and Richard Ebeling discuss the recent presidential debates. Go to the podcast.

TGIF: The War of 1812 Was the Health of the State, Part 1

by Sheldon Richman February 27, 2015

Part 1 | Part 2 In 1918, having watched in horror as his Progressive friends gleefully jumped onto Woodrow Wilson’s war wagon, Randolph Bourne penned the immortal words: “War is the health of the state.” As he explained it, The republican State has almost no trappings to appeal to the common man’s emotions. What it has ...