Daily Articles

The Libertarian Angle: The War in Afghanistan

by Future of Freedom Foundation January 5, 2015

Each week, FFF president Jacob Hornberger and FFF vice president Sheldon Richman discuss the hot topics of the day. This week: the continuing saga that is Afghanistan. The Libertarian Angle airs weekly. Go to the podcast.

The U.S. Executions of Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi, Part 4

by Jacob G. Hornberger January 1, 2015

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 During the 1960s, the U.S. government became obsessed with a man named Salvador Allende, a physician who had entered politics in Chile and repeatedly ran for president. Since Allende’s political and economic philosophy was communism, U.S. officials were determined to ...

Leonard P. Liggio (1933–2014)

by Sheldon Richman January 1, 2015

I lost one of my favorite teachers in October, as did so many other libertarians, not to mention the freedom movement as a whole. Leonard P. Liggio, 81, died after a period of declining health. Leonard was a major influence on my worldview during the nearly 40 years I knew him. While I had not seen him much in ...

Forgotten Civil War Atrocities Bred More Carnage

by James Bovard January 1, 2015

George Orwell wrote in 1945 that “the nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.” The same moral myopia has carried over to most Americans’ understanding of the Civil War. While popular historians have recently canonized the war as a practically holy ...

The Root of Support for the Drug War

by Laurence M. Vance January 1, 2015

Although many states have legalized the use of marijuana for medical purposes, some states have decriminalized the possession of certain amounts of marijuana, and four states (Alaska, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington) have legalized the recreational use of marijuana, bipartisan support for the drug war throughout the United States continues unabated and unquestioned. Why? Why do so many Americans think that the ...

Uniting Constitutional Protection for Economic and Social Liberties, Part 3: Can the Ninth Amendment Save Us?

by Steven Horwitz January 1, 2015

In part 2 of this series (December), I argued that unenumerated noneconomic rights such as those of parents or the right to marry are generally considered “fundamental rights” under the approach libertarian legal scholar Randy Barnett labels “Footnote Four-Plus.” That is, the rights of parents are nowhere enumerated in the Constitution including the Bill of Rights, but are nonetheless ...

Why Doesn’t Democracy Work?

by David S. D'Amato January 1, 2015

Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government Is Smarter by Ilya Somin (Stanford University Press 2013), 280 pages. In Democracy and Political Ignorance, law professor Ilya Somin looks down into the apparently fathomless depth of voter ignorance and concludes that dividing and decentralizing the power of the federal government can alleviate many of the ills attending such ignorance. Somin ...

Nothing to Fear from New Technologies If the Market Is Free

by Kevin Carson January 1, 2015

The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee (W.W. Norton & Company 2014), 320 pages. The subject of this book is the “second machine age,” in which “computers and other digital advances are doing for mental power — the ability to use our brains to understand ...

The Unpredictable Future and Winning Liberty

by Richard M. Ebeling December 31, 2014

As a new year begins, it is easy to consider that the prospects for freedom in America and in many other parts of the world to seem dim. After all, government continues to grow bigger and more intrusive, along with tax burdens that siphon off vast amounts of private wealth. Extrapolating these trends out for the foreseeable future, it would ...

Last Chance for an End-of-Year Donation to FFF

by Jacob G. Hornberger December 31, 2014

If you haven’t yet made an end-of-year (tax-deductible) donation to The Future of Freedom Foundation, you still have today to drop a check in the mail, call us, or use our online donation form. Another great way to support our work is to purchase a subscription to our monthly journal of ideas on liberty, Future of Freedom, and ...

Uncompromising Principles — The Key to a Free Society

by Jacob G. Hornberger December 31, 2014

Here’s an important question for you: Why should you donate your hard-earned money to The Future of Freedom Foundation? For 25 years, people have said to me, “Jacob, you need to be less radical, more moderate, and more compromising. That will make FFF more credible, respectable, and influential.” Nonsense! Was it moderation and compromise that brought us such ...

The Libertarian Angle: The Cuban Embargo (video)

by Future of Freedom Foundation December 30, 2014

Each week, FFF president Jacob Hornberger and FFF vice president Sheldon Richman discuss the hot topics of the day. This week: the Cuban embargo.