Daily Articles

TGIF: Crime and Punishment in a Free Society

by Sheldon Richman December 6, 2013

Would a free society be a crime-free society? We have good reason to anticipate it. Don’t accuse me of utopianism. I don’t foresee a future of new human beings who consistently respect the rights of others. Rather, I’m drawing attention to the distinction between crime and tort — between offenses against the state (or society) and offenses against individual persons ...

The Calling: Why I Defend Walmart

by Steven Horwitz December 5, 2013

In the aftermath of Black Friday (or now Thursday, I guess), much will be written about Walmart.  It remains the favorite whipping boy of many on the left, not to mention their enablers in what Deirdre McCloskey calls “the Clerisy,” or what Hayek called “the second-hand dealers in ideas.”  More broadly, even those without strong left-leaning opinions often have ...

In Afghanistan, They Died for No Good Cause

by Sheldon Richman December 5, 2013

Last week a remarkable exchange about the future role of the U.S. military in Afghanistan took place on the MSNBC program Andrea Mitchell Reports. In a discussion of the U.S. government’s uncertain negotiations with Afghan President Hamid Karzai over the continued presence of U.S. troops beyond 2014, NBC’s chief foreign correspondent, Richard Engel, pointed out that, between the Karzai ...

The Nuclear Nudging of Your Food Choices

by Wendy McElroy December 3, 2013

In the book Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness, the “choice architect” Cass R. Sunstein describes his idea of “libertarian paternalism.” The paternalism aspect refers to “nudging” people in a desired direction, for example by putting photos of rotted lungs on cigarette packages. The libertarian aspect refers to not actually stripping people of the freedom to choose. ...

The Libertarian Angle: Minimum Wage and China

by Future of Freedom Foundation December 2, 2013

Jacob Hornberger and Sheldon Richman tackle the minimum wage and relations with China. The Libertarian Angle airs weekly.

Judge John R. Tunheim and the Presumed Innocence of Lee Harvey Oswald

by Jacob G. Hornberger December 2, 2013

In the run-up to the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination, U.S. District Judge John R. Tunheim, not surprisingly, was in the news. He served as chairman of the Assassination Records Review Board during the 1990s. The ARRB had been established by Congress in the wake of the outcry among the American people resulting from the movie JFK in ...

The Origins of America’s Warfare State

by Jacob G. Hornberger December 1, 2013

Given that most Americans living today were born and raised under a massive military establishment, the CIA, and the NSA, a large number of Americans very likely believe that the United States has always had this type of government. Not so, as Michael Swanson shows in a new book, The War State. Swanson points out that America’s warfare state didn’t ...

One Hundred Years of the Federal Reserve

by Sheldon Richman December 1, 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 ...

A Supreme Rebuff for the USDA’s Ruinous Raisin Regime

by James Bovard December 1, 2013

The Supreme Court in June finally opened the door for farmers to escape from one of the most dictatorial bureaucratic regimes in the federal government. But it remains to be seen whether farmers will secure freedom and justice or be dragged into another endless array of court battles and appeals. The latest squabble has its origins in the New Deal. ...

Roger Williams: The Separation of Conscience and State

by Wendy McElroy December 1, 2013

There was a whole country in America ... to be set on fire by the rapid motion of a windmill in the head of one particular man ... one Mr. Roger Williams. — Cotton Mather, New England Puritan minister Roger Williams (c. 1603–1683), founder of Rhode Island, was a key figure in forging the distinctive American character. The American was ...

“Trust Us”

by John Glaser December 1, 2013

On June 7 Barack Obama made his first public statements about the NSA surveillance programs leaked by the whistleblower Edward Snowden. After justifying the programs as subject to congressional and judicial oversight, he insisted he did not want “to suggest that, you know, you just say ‘trust me, we’re doing the right thing, we know who the bad guys ...

The Killing Years

by Matthew Harwood December 1, 2013

The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth by Mark Mazzetti (Penguin Press 2013), 400 pages. Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield by Jeremy Scahill (Nation Books 2013), 680 pages. The young man reached across the table and pushed the timer’s red button. Looking up ...