Daily Articles

Smedley Butler and the Racket That Is War

by Sheldon Richman October 1, 2014

From 1898 to 1931, Smedley Darlington Butler was a member of the U.S. Marine Corps. By the time he retired he had achieved what was then the Corps’s highest rank, major general, and by the time he died in 1940, at 58, he had more decorations, including two medals of honor, than any other Marine. During his years in ...

American’s Fading Love of Freedom

by James Bovard October 1, 2014

Tea Party protesters, some Republicans, and many libertarians perceive the federal government as a vast engine of oppression. But are anti-Obama activists mistaken in presuming that most Americans still care about freedom? A Gallup poll released in July asked a thousand Americans, “Are you satisfied or dissatisfied with your freedom to choose what to do with your life?” Admittedly, only ...

Bartolomé de las Casas: All Mankind Is One

by Wendy McElroy October 1, 2014

The 16th-century Spanish historian and Dominican Bartolomé de las Casas (1484–1566) fought against the violent colonization of and enslavement in the New World. He spoke against imperialism and for universal human rights. “All mankind is one,” he insisted; every individual possessed an identical, natural right to liberty. Las Casas was born in Seville at a fortunate time. The Italian Renaissance ...

How Laws Are Passed, Maintained, and Changed

by George Leef October 1, 2014

Madmen, Intellectuals, and Academic Scribblers: The Economic Engine of Political Change by Wayne A. Leighton and Edward J. Lopez (Stanford Economics and Finance 2013), 209 pages. Have you ever wondered why democracies so often generate public policies that are wasteful and unjust? Have you asked why such policies persist over long periods, even when they are known to ...

How the Pentagon Really Gets Funded

by Philip A. Reboli October 1, 2014

Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War by Robert Gates (Knop 2014), 640 pages. The most interesting parts of former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’s memoir, Duty, are about how he navigated the Department of Defense (DoD) bureaucracy and the special interests who live off it. A recurring theme is the difficulty Gates had in getting the DoD ...

Imaging Patterns

by David S. D'Amato October 1, 2014

The United States of Paranoia: A Conspiracy Theory by Jesse Walker (Harper 2013), 448 pages. What is the substance of American paranoia? From where does it emanate, and why is its study important? These are some of the questions that, without preaching or bludgeoning us with elitist pretensions, Jesse Walker, books editor at Reason magazine, addresses in The United ...

The Libertarian Angle: The Role of Government in a Free Society

by Future of Freedom Foundation September 29, 2014

FFF president Jacob Hornberger and FFF vice president Sheldon Richman discuss the hot topics of the day. This week: a recent debate with Dinesh D'Souza. The Libertarian Angle airs weekly. Go to the podcast.

TGIF: The “Boomerang Effect”: How Foreign Policy Changes Domestic Policy

by Sheldon Richman September 26, 2014

The late Chalmers Johnson, the great analyst of the American empire, warned that if Americans didn’t give up the empire, they would come to live under it. We’ve had many reasons to take his warning seriously; indeed, several important thinkers have furnished sound theoretical and empirical evidence for the proposition. Now come two scholars who advance our understanding of how ...

Dogs and Diners

by Laurence M. Vance September 26, 2014

Americans are dog lovers. In fact, many people love their dogs so much that they take them wherever they can. Some people would even take their dogs out to eat with them if they could. If they live in California — now they can. Gov. Jerry Brown has signed into law legislation that revises the California Health and Safety Code relating ...

Will American Ground Troops Be Sent to Fight ISIS?

by Sheldon Richman September 25, 2014

With the United States dropping bombs on yet another Muslim country, we might benefit from a close look at President Obama’s anti–Islamic State strategy. Obama and his spokespeople are always quick to make two points: first, that no American ground forces will be sent into combat against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), and second, that the United ...

Altered History: Exposing Deceit and Deception in the JFK Assassination Medical Evidence, Part 5 (video)

by Douglas Horne September 24, 2014

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 In this 5-part video, Douglas P. Horne, who served on the staff of the Assassination Records Review Board and who is the author of the five-volume book Inside the Assassination Records Review Board: The U.S. ...

Democracy Is Not the Same as Freedom

by Richard M. Ebeling September 23, 2014

A fundamental fallacy of our time is that democracy is the open-sesame to peace, freedom, and prosperity. The political events surrounding what was called the ill-fated “Arab Spring” a couple of years ago was a based on the idea that “democracy” would solve all the problems of any society. But democracy in itself does not define or guarantee a ...