Daily Articles

The Libertarian Angle: The Trump Revolution

by Future of Freedom Foundation November 10, 2016

FFF president Jacob Hornberger and Richard Ebeling talk about the surprising results of the recent U.S. presidential election. Go to the podcast.

Seven Principles for Free Government

by John W. Whitehead November 8, 2016

“As I look at America today, I am not afraid to say that I am afraid.”—Former presidential advisor Bertram Gross As history teaches us, if the people have little or no knowledge of the basics of government and their rights, those who wield governmental power inevitably wield it excessively. After all, a citizenry can only hold its government accountable if ...

Economic Ideas: Inflation, Price Controls and Collectivism During the French Revolution

by Richard M. Ebeling November 7, 2016

Governments have an insatiable appetite for the wealth of their subjects. When governments find it impossible to continue raising taxes or borrowing funds, they have invariably turned to printing paper money to finance their growing expenditures. The resulting inflations have often undermined the social fabric, ruined the economy, and sometimes brought revolution and tyranny in their wake. The political economy ...

Not Guilty: The Power of Nullification to Counteract Government Tyranny

by John W. Whitehead November 4, 2016

“The people have the power, all we have to do is awaken that power in the people. The people are unaware. They’re not educated to realize that they have power. The system is so geared that everyone believes the government will fix everything. We are the government.”—John Lennon How do you balance the scales of justice at a ...

The Libertarian Angle: The Principles of Socialism

by Future of Freedom Foundation November 3, 2016

FFF president Jacob Hornberger and Richard Ebeling discuss the moral and practical failings of socialism. Go to the podcast.

The Supreme Court, Federalism, and Limited Government

by Laurence M. Vance November 2, 2016

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case of whether a biological female who identifies as a male can use the boys’ restroom in a Virginia high school. Parties who are not satisfied with the decision of a U.S. Court of Appeals (or a state supreme court if it is deemed a constitutional issue) can ...

A Military Coup in America?

by Jacob G. Hornberger November 1, 2016

Ever since I started writing about the assassination of John F. Kennedy several years ago, people have been asking me why I do it. Since the event happened 53 years ago this month, what possible relevance could the assassination have to Americans living today? Even if Kennedy had been the victim of a conspiracy, wouldn’t the malefactors probably be ...

The Great Goober Train Wreck of 2016

by James Bovard November 1, 2016

The history of federal peanut policy is the perfect antidote to anyone who still believes that Congress could competently manage a lemonade stand. Federal spending for peanut subsidies will have risen eightfold between last year and next year — reaching almost a billion dollars and approaching the total value of the peanut harvest. This debacle is only the latest ...

The Change America Needs Is Libertarianism

by Laurence M. Vance November 1, 2016

The French writer Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr (1808–1890) famously said that “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” This epigram is a perfect description of the American electoral process. Americans elect a new president every four years. Members of the U.S. House of Representatives have a two-year term. U.S. senators are elected for six years. That means that ...

The New Deal, Part 1: Domestic Policy

by Joseph R. Stromberg November 1, 2016

Part 1 | Part 2 Today, few Americans are left from the Greatest Generation (a phrase which my father, born in 1912, would have seen as obvious propaganda). There are more, perhaps, who experienced the New Deal directly as very small children. Most of us know it only from history, family lore, popular culture, film, and (yes) ...

The Right to Try to Live

by George Leef November 1, 2016

The Right to Try: How the Federal Government Prevents Americans from Getting the Lifesaving Treatments They Need by Darcy Olsen (HarperCollins, 2015); 311 pages. The highly acclaimed 2013 movie Dallas Buyers Club told the story of Ron Woodroof, who tried desperately to get drugs that might help arrest Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome back in the mid 1980s. ...

Economic Ideas: The French Physiocrats and the Case for Laissez-faire.

by Richard M. Ebeling October 31, 2016

In the middle decades of the eighteenth century two schools of thought emerged, one in France and the other in Great Britain that were critical of Mercantilism, the government system of economic planning and regulation in the 1700s. In Great Britain, the primary thinkers were members of what has become known as the Scottish Moral Philosophers. In France the ...