The Worst Protection by Isaac Morehouse June 1, 2013 You feel safe in your neighborhood, but worry about the small chance of a break-in or act of vandalism. To protect yourself from those risks, you pay a security company to look after your house. It costs a little more than you’d like, but you determine it’s worth it. They put an unarmed guard in front of your house at ...
Collapsing the Tent on the Mercantilist Revival by Alexander William Salter June 1, 2013 Harvard professor Dani Rodrik’s recent mercantilist apology attempts to illustrate the unappreciated benefits of a much-maligned political-economic system: mercantilism. “Today, mercantilism is typically dismissed as an archaic and blatantly erroneous set of ideas about economic policy,” Rodrik acknowledges. Thus his essay provides a defense of this system, which he believes has much to offer ...
The Cataclysm of World War II by Anthony Gregory June 1, 2013 Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization by Nicholson Baker (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2008), 567 pages. World War II was the great event of the 20th century. It greatly altered political boundaries, ushered in the Cold War, effected a total transformation in American governance, and consumed more lives than any other event ...
TGIF: So What If Freedom Isn’t Free? by Sheldon Richman May 31, 2013 “Freedom isn’t free.” We’ve all heard this glib line. It usually is uttered as an admonition to those who criticize some government imposition that is defended in the name of national security. The last time I heard it I had just condemned military conscription — the draft — as slavery. It’s also brought out to rebut those who refuse to ...
Obama’s Willful Foreign-Policy Blindness by Sheldon Richman May 30, 2013 Republicans are upset about President Obama’s May 23 foreign-policy address, yet politics aside, it’s hard to say why. “We show this lack of resolve, talking about the war being over,” Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told Fox News Sunday. But four days later in his Memorial Day remarks, Obama said, “Our nation is still at war.” Why did the ...
Conservatives Are Clueless by Laurence M. Vance May 30, 2013 All eyes are on the Supreme Court as it gets ready to issue its decisions in the cases of Hollingsworth v. Perry, the challenge to California’s Proposition 8, and United States v. Windsor, the challenge to the federal Defense of Marriage Act. The Court heard oral arguments on both cases in late March. The intense media focus on these cases ...
Close Guantánamo, Free the Afghans by Andy Worthington May 29, 2013 In the coverage of the ongoing, prisonwide hunger strike at Guantánamo, which is now in its fourth month, there has been widespread recognition that it is unacceptable to indefinitely detain the 86 prisoners (out of 166 in total) who were cleared for release more than three years ago by the president’s own interagency task force. These men ...
The Libertarian Angle: May 28, 2013 by Future of Freedom Foundation May 28, 2013 FFF president Jacob Hornberger and FFF vice president Sheldon Richman discuss the Memorial Day, foreign policy, and the war on terrorism.
TGIF: The Greatness of Peace Activist John Bright by Sheldon Richman May 24, 2013 As we approach Memorial Day — or what I like to call Revisionist History Day — it’s fitting to contemplate the words of one of the world’s great peace activists, John Bright (1811–1889). Bright, a Quaker and Nonconformist, is best known for leading (with Richard Cobden) Britain’s Anti-Corn Law League, the organization that fought successfully to abolish ...
Bangladeshi Workers Need Freed Markets by Sheldon Richman May 22, 2013 Since November, more than a thousand Bangladeshi garment workers have perished in two tragic factory calamities: a fire in Tazreen and a building collapse in Savar, outside the capital, Dhaka. Bangladesh is a major exporter of apparel to the West and “is set to become the world’s largest apparel exporter over the next few years,” the Economist reports. ...
The Libertarian Angle: May 20, 2013 by Future of Freedom Foundation May 20, 2013 FFF president Jacob Hornberger and FFF vice president Sheldon Richman discuss the IRS scandal and the income tax.
TGIF: Government Is the Problem by Sheldon Richman May 17, 2013 Barack Obama recently told the graduating class of the Ohio State University, Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems.… They’ll warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices. Because what they suggest is that ...