Daily Articles

The Presidential Authority to Torture and Assassinate, Part 2

by Jacob G. Hornberger September 1, 2014

Part 1 | Part 2 The 9/11 attacks provided George W. Bush, the Pentagon, and the CIA with the perfect opportunity to seize extraordinary powers. That shouldn’t surprise anyone. A crisis fills much of the citizenry with great fear, and government officials have long known that in the midst of a crisis many people will eagerly trade ...

The Middle East Harvests Bitter Imperialist Fruit

by Sheldon Richman September 1, 2014

The wall-to-wall coverage of the disintegration of Iraq ought to carry this credit: “This bloodshed was made possible by the generosity of British and French imperialists.” The stomach-wrenching violence in Iraq — not to mention the horrendous civil war in Syria, the chronic unrest in Palestine/Israel, and problems elsewhere in the Middle East — are direct consequences of the imperialist ...

Freedom Lost in Obama’s Secrecy-Censorship Crossfire

by James Bovard September 1, 2014

On June 2 the Supreme Court provided invaluable aid to the Obama administration’s campaign to protect Americans from evidence of federal abuses. The Court acceded to the administration’s appeal and refused to hear a free-speech case involving New York Times reporter James Risen. Risen, a courageous Pulitzer Prize winner, has been in the federal crosshairs since his 2006 book, ...

Command Posts: Roads, Railroads, and State

by Joseph R. Stromberg September 1, 2014

As any viewer of the British Channel 4 Time Team series will have noticed, almost everywhere below Hadrian’s Wall that the archaeological team digs, they have a fair chance of finding an Imperial Roman road, or a local road leading to it. The Romans were great engineers and road builders (and not just in Britain). Roman roads were all ...

Government-Rigged Markets

by George Leef September 1, 2014

Crony Capitalism in America 2008 – 2012 by Hunter Lewis (AC2 Books 2013), 399 pages. Ayn Rand called it “the aristocracy of pull.” That was her term for the political-economic system in which people can get ahead (and even become exceptionally wealthy) by virtue of their connections with those in power, rather than by their work, innovations, and ...

The Worst Government Crimes

by Anthony Gregory September 1, 2014

Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder (Basic Books 2010), 560 pages. We can locate the deadliest place and time in world history, certainly for the modern West, in the stretch of land between Berlin and Moscow in the 1930s and 1940s. That setting hosted an unimaginable bloodbath thanks to the worst killers ever to plague Europe — ...

The Calling: Libertarians, Victim Blaming, and Structural Racism

by Steven Horwitz August 28, 2014

The events in Ferguson, Missouri have opened up yet another national conversation on race. This time, however, something is different. The images of a mostly white police department dressed in military outfits using military weaponry and vehicles while attempting to control a largely black crowd protesting the killing of an unarmed black man by a white police officer has ...

Fed Follies: Central Bank Continues to Force Economy in Wrong Direction

by Richard M. Ebeling August 26, 2014

For more than a decade, now, Federal Reserve policy has been guided by the fear of one economic bogyman: the presumed danger of “price deflation.” The fear is unfounded and the inflationary “solution” only leads to disaster. During Alan Greenspan’s and Ben Bernanke’s watches at the helm of America’s central bank and now under Janet Yellen, the claim has been ...

Truth

by Scott McPherson August 26, 2014

  He learns with delight, upon simple exertions Of small minds contrite, facing clever assertions – Resentfully so, for want of good work That likewise inspires – saying "'Tis job for our kirk!" "Traitor or knave, your mind is askew, With thoughts of such an irreverent hue!" Unworthy of they, this unenlightened who tries Yet threatened by his ideas – they mobilize! "Look, behold – he of the ...

The Libertarian Angle: Iraq

by Future of Freedom Foundation August 25, 2014

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

Tobacco and a Free Society

by Laurence M. Vance August 25, 2014

Yet another successful lawsuit against a tobacco company, one that resulted in a jury’s awarding the widow of a tobacco smoker more than $23 billion because of her husband’s premature death, means that it is apropos to revisit the subject of tobacco and a free society. A jury last month in Escambia County (Pensacola), Florida, after a four-week trial and ...

TGIF: “The Police Force Is Watching the People”

by Sheldon Richman August 22, 2014

Political philosophy — the libertarian philosophy included — can take you only so far. The libertarian philosophy provides grounds for condemning aggression, that is, the initiation of force, and along with some supplemental considerations, it identifies in the abstract what constitutes aggression, victimhood, and self-defense. But the philosophy can’t identify the aggressor and victim in particular cases; relevant empirical ...