Daily Articles

Sunday Shopping

by Laurence M. Vance January 22, 2015

Just before Christmas, the country of Hungary joined other European countries such as Germany, Austria, and Switzerland in banning Sunday shopping. Although the Hungarian Parliament passed the bill on December 16, it isn’t scheduled to take effect until March 15 of this year. The legislation, which was supported by the prime minister but opposed by the economy minister, ...

The Libertarian Angle: Charlie Hebdo and Gun Control

by Future of Freedom Foundation January 20, 2015

Each week, FFF president Jacob Hornberger and FFF vice president Sheldon Richman discuss the hot topics of the day. This week: that attacks in Paris and their relation to gun control. The Libertarian Angle airs weekly. Go to the podcast.

Global Free Trade Makes for Mutual Prosperity and World Peace

by Richard M. Ebeling January 20, 2015

The recent brutal events in France have reminded us how small the world is that we all share. Violence and conflicts that have their origin in one part of the globe shows itself in another part of our planet. And mass media immediately shares those events to the rest of us, no matter where we are. The impression that is ...

TGIF: The Open Society and Its Worst Enemies

by Sheldon Richman January 16, 2015

Last week’s bloody events in Paris demonstrate yet again that a noninterventionist foreign policy, far from being a luxury, is an urgent necessity -- literally a matter of life and death. A government that repeatedly wages wars of aggression — the most extreme form of extremism — endangers the society it ostensibly protects by gratuitously making enemies, some of whom will seek revenge against ...

Understanding the Paris Violence

by Sheldon Richman January 14, 2015

Contrary to American officialdom and its stalwart “manufacturers of consent” — the intelligentsia and mainstream media — we will never comprehend the reasons for the slaughter of 17 innocent people in Paris as long as we ignore the history of Western violence against the Muslim world. Perpetrators and cheerleaders of Western violence stifle discussion of what motivates young Muslims to ...

L’affaire Charlie Hebdo and Western Colonialism

by John V. Walsh January 14, 2015

To understand the attack on Charlie Hebdo in Paris last week, we need only invert George W. Bush’s 2005 mantra*, thus: “They will continue to attack us over here so long as we slaughter them by the millions over there.” In a word, this is one more instance of blowback, as Ron Paul tells us in his perceptive essay, “

Lessons for Winning Liberty in a World of Statism

by Richard M. Ebeling January 13, 2015

Friends of freedom often become despondent when it seems that every day brings another growth and intrusion of government over people’s lives. But there is no reason to be disheartened, because there are lessons for winning liberty – from the opponents of freedom. Beginning in the last decades of the nineteenth century, through most of the twentieth century and into ...

Free Trade: The Engine of Revolution

by Wendy McElroy January 12, 2015

To say that a country so remote and insignificant as Korea is our first line of defense is to say that every nation in every part of the world is also our “first line of defense” — a conception which is obviously fantastic and grotesque to the borders of megalomania. —Louis Bromfield, 1954 Louis Bromfield (1896–1956) may ...

The Libertarian Angle: Charlie Hebdo

by Future of Freedom Foundation January 12, 2015

Each week, FFF president Jacob Hornberger and FFF vice president Sheldon Richman discuss the hot topics of the day. This week: the attacks in France on the offices of Charlie Hebdo. The Libertarian Angle airs weekly. Go to the podcast.

TGIF: In Memory of the Charlie Hebdo Victims

by Sheldon Richman January 9, 2015

Words can hardly convey the grief and disgust felt at Wednesday’s executions of the editor, cartoonists, and others — 10 people in all — at France’s satirical weekly magazine, Charlie Hebdo. Two policemen also were killed, and 11 other people were wounded by the three fanatics who reportedly declared they were avenging the prophet Muhammad, founder of Islam. Nothing can justify ...

Rein In the Police, Not Protesters

by Scott McPherson January 9, 2015

My brother once quipped, “The great thing about being a Leftist is never having to say you’re sorry.” He was talking about the propensity of those who erroneously describe themselves as “liberals” to endlessly pat themselves on the back for their allegedly grand intentions, while conveniently ignoring the actual consequences of their failed policies. As P.J. O’Rourke observed, ...

Conservatives Just Don’t Get It on Taxes

by Laurence M. Vance January 8, 2015

Now that the Republicans have regained the control of the Senate that they lost in the 2006 midterm election, conservatives are salivating about the prospect of “real” or “genuine” tax reform. Conservatives believe that reforming the tax code by making it more efficient, more coherent, more transparent, and more equitable; eliminating the double taxation that discourages saving and investment; eliminating ...