Daily Articles

Lysander Spooner on the National Debt

by Sheldon Richman January 1, 2014

Once again, last autumn we were inundated with dire warnings about what would befall the American people and the world economy if Congress did not raise the debt ceiling — or, as I call it, the debt sky, because apparently the sky’s the limit. As he has each time this issue has come up, Barack Obama emphasized that increasing the ...

Common Sense versus Obama’s Next War

by James Bovard January 1, 2014

The Obama administration tottered on the edge of launching a cruise missile attack on Syria this past August and September. Obama hesitated and decided to seek congressional approval before blowing up many targets on the Syrian landscape. After Americans made it loud and clear that they did not want another war, congressional opposition helped curb his bellicosity. But he ...

Contested Ground: The Semantics of “Laissez Faire”

by Joseph R. Stromberg January 1, 2014

One frequently runs across accounts of the modern world which hold that laissez faire (or some ideally free market) never existed but yet was (or is) somehow responsible for most ills that have faced mankind for several centuries. The writers seem to have it both ways. How, you might well ask, can that be done? Rather easily, it seems. On ...

Exit over Voice

by Alexander William Salter January 1, 2014

By what standard should we judge collective decision-making? In the liberal-democratic tradition, the overwhelming consensus affirms the supremacy of process. On this view, the justness and efficacy of collective decision-making depend on the inclusiveness of the process. That concern, what philosophers and social scientists call “voice,” has manifested itself in many familiar and important ways, chiefly through an expansion ...

The Classical Liberal legacy of Percy Bysshe Shelley

by Wendy McElroy January 1, 2014

“I have deserted the odorous gardens of literature to journey across the great sandy desert of Politics.” In this manner, the English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) announced a political treatise entitled A Philosophical View of Reform (1819). It states, “The first principle of political reform is the natural equality of men, not with relation to their property ...

The Great Writ

by David S. D'Amato January 1, 2014

The Power of Habeas Corpus in America: From the King’s Prerogative to the War on Terror by Anthony Gregory (Independent Institute/Cambridge University Press 2013), 390 pages. Among libertarians generally, there is a somewhat dependable tendency to hark back to the halcyon days of a supposed free age somewhere in the past, and to spotlight certain related features of Anglo-American ...

Fighting to Win: A Message from Jacob Hornberger

by Jacob G. Hornberger December 31, 2013

Imagine how despondent statists must have been in the late 1800s. The vast majority of Americans were continuing to embrace the fundamental principle proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence: that everyone has been endowed with inherent, natural, God-given rights which no government can legitimately infringe. Our American ancestors were living in a society that was, indeed, unique and exceptional in ...

The Libertarian Angle: The Postal Monopoly

by Future of Freedom Foundation December 30, 2013

Jacob Hornberger and Sheldon Richman discuss the postal monopoly. The Libertarian Angle airs weekly.

TGIF: The Moral Case for Freedom Is the Practical Case for Freedom

by Sheldon Richman December 27, 2013

If I say that a government activity — “public” schooling, perhaps, or the war on selected drug merchants and users — helps turn the inner cities into hellholes and otherwise makes people’s lives miserable, is that a moral objection or a practical (utilitarian or generally consequentialist) objection? Some libertarians are inclined to say it’s a utilitarian objection, but I’ve long ...

Congress Must Not Cede Its War Power to Israel

by Sheldon Richman December 26, 2013

The American people should know that pending right now in Congress is a bipartisan bill that would virtually commit the United States to go to war against Iran if Israel attacks the Islamic Republic. “The bill outsources any decision about resort to military action to the government of Israel,” Columbia University Iran expert Gary Sick wrote ...

One Hundred Years of the Federal Reserve

by Sheldon Richman December 24, 2013

Two days before Christmas 1913, President Woodrow Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act, creating America’s latest and current central bank, the Federal Reserve System. It’s a sobering thought that in the 100 years since the Fed’s creation, the dollar has lost 95 percent of its value. Had the Fed never been created, America would be dotted with Nickel Stores ...

The Libertarian Angle: Victims of the Warfare-Welfare State

by Future of Freedom Foundation December 23, 2013

Jacob Hornberger and Sheldon Richman discuss how a socialist economy and an imperialistic foreign policy impacts the citizenry. The Libertarian Angle airs weekly.