Daily Articles

A New Year’s Resolution: Becoming a Light of Liberty

by Richard M. Ebeling January 8, 2015

With the beginning of 2015, what might be a “New Year’s resolution” for a friend of freedom? I would suggest that one answer is for each of us to do our best to become “lights of liberty” that will attract others to the cause of freedom and the free society. For five years, from 2003 to 2008, I had the ...

The Ominous Republican Hold on Congress

by Sheldon Richman January 7, 2015

As we face the new year, the biggest concern for peace lovers is Republican control of the U.S. Senate. While Republican votes don’t reach the key number 60, members of the GOP will still be in a strong position to push their belligerent global agenda. I don’t mean to overstate the danger. After all, the Democrats were hardly better. But ...

On the Methodology of Winning Liberty

by Jacob G. Hornberger January 7, 2015

  For the last 25 years of The Future of Freedom Foundation’s existence and even before, the libertarian movement has basically been divided into two wings — those who advocate pure libertarian principles — the “purists” — and those who advocate “reformist” or “gradualist” measures. Throughout that time, it has been assumed that these are simply two alternative ways to advance ...

Why Washington and Wall Street Are Better Off Living Apart (video)

by John Tamny January 6, 2015

On December 18, 2014 John Tamny delivered this talk to a private audience at The Future of Freedom Foundation. John Tamny is Political Economy editor at Forbes, a senior economic adviser to Toreador Research & Trading, and editor of RealClearMarkets.com

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 ...