Daily Articles

The Libertarian Angle: Reject Foreign Interventionism

by Future of Freedom Foundation March 13, 2018

Special guest Doug Bandow, senior fellow a The Cato Institute, talks foreign intervention with Jacob Hornberger and Richard Ebeling. Go to the podcast.

Why Not Private Provision of Many Government Services?

by Richard M. Ebeling March 12, 2018

One of the great controversies in modern society concerns the necessary and required functions of government. There are few who disagree that if government is to exist then it certainly has the duty and responsibility to secure and protect essential rights of every individual, including the right to life, liberty and honestly acquired property. But there are a wide ...

The “Guns Equal Crime” Mantra Doesn’t Hold Water

by Scott McPherson March 9, 2018

Ask any devoted gun-hater and he'll tell you it's just “common sense” that guns in the hands of private citizens will only lead to more crime. The high homicide rate in the United States (relative to other Western industrialized societies) and its high gun-ownership rate are cited without question as evidence for this position. The trouble is, a more thorough ...

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 ...

Libertarian Angle: Trump’s Tariff Folly (video)

by Future of Freedom Foundation March 7, 2018

Do tariffs benefit a society, or is free trade the great engine of productivity and liberty? Jacob Hornberger and Richard Ebeling discuss President Trump's proposal for tariffs on steel and aluminum. Go to the podcast.

The Latest Conservative Argument for the Drug War

by Laurence M. Vance March 6, 2018

The libertarian position on the government’s drug war is straightforward. There should be no laws at any level of government for any reason regarding the buying, selling, growing, processing, transporting, manufacturing, advertising, using, possessing, or “trafficking” of any drug for any reason. All government agencies devoted to fighting the war on drugs should be abolished and the war on drugs ...

Trump’s Protectionist Follies Threaten a Trade War

by Richard M. Ebeling March 5, 2018

President Donald Trump has announced the planned imposition of a new, 25 percent tariff on imported steel and a 10 percent tariff on foreign made aluminum entering the United States. This has brought about threats of trade retaliation by a number of America’s trading partners. The menacing clouds of a possible trade war are showing themselves on the global ...

Dismantling Roosevelt’s New Deal

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 1, 2018

In the midst of the congressional debate over Donald Trump’s tax bill, leftists accused Republicans of planning to dismantle Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. While the fear-mongering was baseless, given that Republicans favor the New Deal programs and philosophy as much as liberals do, the question naturally arises: Why shouldn’t Americans dismantle this almost- century-old socialist and interventionist experiment?   It is ...

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 ...

What Ken Burns Left Out of the Vietnam Story

by Gareth Porter March 1, 2018

The Vietnam War: An Intimate History by Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns (Knopf, 2017; 640 pages) The companion coffee-table book to the 10-part PBS series by Ken Burns, The Vietnam War, is so closely tied to the series that it’s left ambiguous whether Ken Burns himself is the co-author or not. Burns is shown as the ...

A Complete and Utter Failure

by Laurence M. Vance March 1, 2018

President Trump has now completed his first year in office. The Republican majorities in the U.S. House and Senate have now had a year to work with a Republican president. What is so significant about that is that it is only the fourth time since the end of World War II and the end of absolute Democratic control of ...

A Safe Space to Watch a War

by Michael Swanson March 1, 2018

The Vietnam War by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick (PBS, 2017) DVD. The documentary television event of 2017 was the 10-part PBS series titled The Vietnam War, directed by both Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. The series took 10 years and more than $30 million to make. Released last September, it garnered rave reviews all over the ...