Daily Articles

TGIF: Warfare/Welfare/Corporate State: All of a Piece

by Sheldon Richman January 24, 2014

If I understand Princeton historian Sean Wilentz correctly, progressives ought not to be grateful to Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, and Glenn Greenwald for exposing government spying because they are not card-carrying progressives. (“Would You Feel Differently About Snowden, Greenwald, and Assange If You Knew What They Really Thought?”) Apparently they have either hung out with libertarians, praised or ...

Everybody Is Asking Me For Money

by James Glaser January 22, 2014

It was decades ago that I was in the Carpenters Union, and that connection must be the reason I get money requests from Democratic Party candidates.  I don’t know why the Republicans hit me up too because I am a registered Independent. As I think about it, there’s probably not one charity that hasn’t solicited funds from ...

The Libertarian Angle: Obama and the NSA

by Future of Freedom Foundation January 21, 2014

Jacob Hornberger and Sheldon Richman discuss the President Obama's planed "reform" of the NSA. The Libertarian Angle airs weekly.

The Surveillance State Lives

by Sheldon Richman January 21, 2014

President Obama has some nerve. He opened his speech on NSA spying by likening his surveillance regime to Paul Revere and the Sons of Liberty. How insulting! They were helping people resist government tyranny, and the British spied on them to put down the coming rebellion. In sizing up Obama’s “reforms” of the indiscriminate gathering of data on ...

TGIF: Rights Violations Aren’t the Only Bads

by Sheldon Richman January 17, 2014

More than a few libertarians appear to hold the view that only rights violations are wrong, bad, and deserving of moral condemnation. If an act does not entail the initiation of force, so goes this attitude, we can have nothing critical to say about it. On its face, this is strange. If you observe an adult being rude to his ...

The Eighteenth Amendment and the War on Drugs

by Laurence M. Vance January 16, 2014

For more than 40 years now the U.S. government has been waging its War on Drugs. After declaring drug abuse to be “America’s public enemy number one” and “a national emergency,” Richard Nixon employed military rhetoric as he launched his war on individual liberty, personal freedom, and private property, calling for a “full-scale attack” on drug abuse “on many ...

They Don’t Mean Well

by Sheldon Richman January 15, 2014

Americans have a strange need to believe that their “leaders” mean well. Nowhere is this more true than in foreign policy. Even when the horror of some government operation is revealed (usually after being kept from the American people), solemn pundits and elder statesmen will drone on about unintended consequences and the fog of war, while admonishing against “pointless” ...

The Libertarian Angle: The Failure of the War on Poverty

by Future of Freedom Foundation January 13, 2014

Jacob Hornberger and Sheldon Richman discuss the government's 50-year war on poverty. The Libertarian Angle airs weekly.

TGIF: Intellectual Property Fosters Corporate Concentration

by Sheldon Richman January 10, 2014

The modern libertarian case against so-called intellectual property (IP) has been building steadily since the late 1980s, when I first encountered it. Since then, an impressive volume of work has been produced from many perspectives: economics, political economy, sociology, moral and political philosophy, history, and no doubt more. It is indeed a case to be reckoned with. ...

El Mal del Estado de la Seguridad Nacional, Parte 1

by Jacob G. Hornberger January 9, 2014

The following is a Spanish translation of “The Evil of the National Security State” by Jacob G. Hornberger. The translation was done for FFF on a complimentary basis by a FFF supporter in Spain. Please share it with your Spanish-speaking friends.   Parte 1 | Parte 2 | Parte 3 | Parte 4 | 

The Future of Food Stamps

by Laurence M. Vance January 8, 2014

“We Accept EBT” says the new large sign outside of a small, local food market near my house. Electronic Benefit Transfer or EBT is the system used by states to issue welfare benefits on a card that looks like a regular credit card. Aside from being convenient and efficient, an EBT card allows users to spend their welfare benefits ...

Deliver Us from Evil in Egypt

by Jacob G. Hornberger January 7, 2014

Every Sunday millions of American Christians go to church, where they recite the Lord’s Prayer, which includes the following plea to God: “Deliver us from evil.” I wonder how many of them think about their own government’s support of evil in Egypt when they say that prayer. Evil is really the only way to describe Egypt’s military dictatorship. It’s not ...