Socialism

“Democratic Socialism” Means the Loss of Liberty

by Richard M. Ebeling November 30, 2015

Democratic Party hopeful, Bernie Sanders, recently outlined what it means for him to be a “democratic socialist.” The problem is that the same label might be applied to most of the other candidates running in both the Democratic and Republican parties running to be the nominee for presidency of the United States.

The Fiscal and Ethical Stranglehold of the Welfare State

by Richard M. Ebeling October 28, 2015

The welfare state threatens to fiscally weaken and morally undermine the United States. In the Federal government’s fiscal year that ended on September 30, 2015, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid expenditures, alone, made up over 48 percent of all of Uncle Sam’s spending. And it will only get worse. According to the Congressional Budget Office, in fiscal year 2015, Social ...

The Libertarian Angle: End the War on Poverty

by Future of Freedom Foundation October 14, 2015

Each week, FFF president Jacob Hornberger and Richard M. Ebeling discuss the hot topics of the day. This week, Jacob and Richard talk about the the socialism that has resulted from decades of waging war on poverty. The Libertarian Angle airs weekly. Go to the podcast.

Fifty Years of Socialized Art and Culture

by Laurence M. Vance October 8, 2015

Overshadowed by the fiftieth anniversary of Medicare and Medicaid this year was the fiftieth anniversary of the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. On September 29, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act that created the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) ...

The Libertarian Angle: FDR’s New Deal Destroyed Free Enterprise

by Future of Freedom Foundation September 22, 2015

Each week, FFF president Jacob Hornberger and Richard M. Ebeling discuss the hot topics of the day. This week, Jacob and Richard discuss the New Deal and its effects that we are still feeling today. The Libertarian Angle airs weekly. Go to the podcast.

The Human Cost of Socialism in Power

by Richard M. Ebeling September 9, 2015

The attempt to establish a comprehensive socialist system in many parts of the world over the last one hundred years has been one of the cruelest and most brutal episodes in human history. Some historians have estimated that as many as 200 million people may have died as part of the dream of creating a collectivist “Paradise on Earth.” Making ...

Eighty Years of Socialism

by Laurence M. Vance August 12, 2015

Social Security reaches an important milestone in August of this year. The Social Security Administration is celebrating 80 years of “public service” with a tree-planting ceremony at the agency’s headquarters in Baltimore, a public-policy discussion in Washington, D.C., and activities at sporting events across the country. The Social Security Administration is celebrating 80 years of socialism. With little opposition, ...

The Crisis of the Welfare State

by Clarence Carson August 1, 2015

The welfare state is more like a vast overlay of interventions on the market and economy than the displacement of it. They burden the economy, distort it, disrupt it, but they do not replace it. The interventions produce episodic disorders as well as crises. Some of these have been called by such varied names as recessions, inflation, economic stagnation, ...

Build It and They Will Come

by Laurence M. Vance July 1, 2015

The city of Los Angeles is the country’s second-largest media market. Yet, the city has not had an NFL football team to call its own since the 1994 season, when the Rams and the Raiders each played their last games there. After beginning in Cleveland, the Rams called Los Angeles home from 1946 to 1994 before moving to St. ...

American Progressives are Bismarck’s Grandchildren

by Richard M. Ebeling June 17, 2015

American “progressives” portray themselves as “forward-looking,” advocates of a higher and better freedom than the traditional American conception of liberty as freedom from government coercion and control. In fact, they are the intellectual great-grandchildren of the “reactionary” nineteenth century Imperial German “Iron Chancellor,” Otto von Bismarck. A recent example of the progressive’s retrogressive notion of the meaning of freedom was ...

A World without the Welfare State

by Richard M. Ebeling March 25, 2015

We live in an era in which few can even conceive of a world without the welfare state. Who would care for the old? How would people provide for their medical needs? What would happen to the disadvantaged and needy that fell upon hard times? In fact, there were free market solutions and non-government answers to these questions long ...

Cruel Compassion

by George Leef March 1, 2015

Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed by Jason L. Riley (Encounter Books 2014), 407 pages. When he was asked, following the abolition of slavery, what the country should do with the Negro, Frederick Douglass issued this thunderous reply: “I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing ...