Daily Articles

U.S. Has No Moral Standing to Condemn Assad

by Sheldon Richman August 28, 2013

Whether or not Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons, President Obama has no legitimate grounds to intervene. U.S. airstrikes, intended to punish and deter Assad and degrade his military but not overthrow his regime, would deepen the U.S. investment in the Syrian civil war and increase the chances of further intervention. Obama’s previous intervention is what has brought us to this ...

Libertarian Angle: Manning, Debt, and the Middle East

by Future of Freedom Foundation August 26, 2013

Jacob Hornberger and Sheldon Richman discuss Bradley Manning, federal debt, and tensions in the middle east. The Libertarian Angle airs weekly.

TGIF: Heroic

by Sheldon Richman August 23, 2013

Bradley Manning (who wishes to be known as Chelsea Manning) sure was naïve. During the sentencing phase of Manning’s court martial, Alexa O’Brien reports, a forensic psychiatrist said, Well, Pfc Manning was under the impression that his leaked information was going to really change how the world views the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and future ...

Why We Should Not Raise the Minimum Wage

by Laurence M. Vance August 21, 2013

The federal minimum wage has been $7.25 an hour since July 24, 2009. Although this is a long way from the first federal minimum wage of $0.25 an hour in the 1930s, it is not high enough according to some members of Congress, a group of over one hundred professional economists, President Obama, the executive director of the National ...

Delete the Fed

by Sheldon Richman August 20, 2013

Who should run the Federal Reserve System when chairman Ben Bernanke’s term expires next year: Vice Chair Janet Yellen or former Obama adviser Lawrence Summers? Neither. Who then? No one. The fact is, we need the Federal Reserve like we need a hole in the head. Contrary to folklore, the Fed is not needed to stabilize the economy or to prevent unemployment. As ...

FFF Webinar: The Myth of Market Failure (video)

by Sheldon Richman August 19, 2013

On Wednesday, August 14, 2013 FFF vice president and editor Sheldon Richman hosted a free, interactive online webinar entitled “The Myth of Market Failure." The webinar was an interactive experience with Sheldon and was limited to 24 participants. Download the audio here. Subscribe to the FFF podcast RSS feed.

TGIF: The Phony Trade-off between Privacy and Security

by Sheldon Richman August 16, 2013

Most people take it for granted — because they’ve heard it so many times from politicians and pundits — that they must trade some privacy for security in this dangerous world. The challenge, we’re told, is to find the right “balance.” Let’s examine this. On its face the idea seems reasonable. I can imagine hiring a firm to look after ...

Stop-and-Frisk: How Government Creates Problems, Then Makes Them Worse

by Sheldon Richman August 14, 2013

Two recent law-enforcement decisions illustrate yet again that when government sets out to solve a problem it created, things get much worse. This week, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Justice Department will keep nonviolent small-scale drug sellers who have no links to criminal organizations from getting caught in the mandatory-minimum-sentence trap. Under current law, judges must impose a ...

The Libertarian Angle: Drug War and Foreign Policy

by Future of Freedom Foundation August 12, 2013

Jacob Hornberger and Sheldon Richman discuss the ongoing drug war and U.S. foreign policy. The Libertarian Angle airs weekly.

TGIF: Truman, A-Bombs, and the Killing of Innocents

by Sheldon Richman August 9, 2013

Sixty-eight years ago today a president of the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki, a city full of innocent Japanese. It was the second time in three days that Harry Truman had done such a thing: He had bombed Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. The fatalities in the two cities totaled 150,000–246,000. The victims – mostly children, ...

How Ron Paul Changed My Heart and Mind on War

by Mike Marion August 9, 2013

My wife and I were in the middle of a three-month cross-country road trip in the fall of 2011. We had just driven for over three hours to a small community center in northwestern Iowa where I found myself shaking hands with a man who had transformed my thinking. I was nervous, and the only words I could get ...

The Calling: Bumper-Sticker Political Economy

by Steven Horwitz August 8, 2013

If you live in a college town, it’s almost a certainty that you’ve seen a bumper sticker along these lines: “Live simply so that others may simply live.” That phrase has the advantage of sounding like it’s based on some underlying economic theory as well as expressing a kind of moral superiority because of its concern for the least ...