Daily Articles

The Calling: The Challenge of Undesigned and Anonymous Order

by Steven Horwitz March 14, 2013

The spontaneous order of the market has long been an object of both theoretical and aesthetic contemplation for libertarians. From Adam Smith’s discussion of the number of hands it took to make a wool coat, to Leonard Read’s justly famous “I, Pencil,” to the examples that fill Russ Roberts’s parable novel The Price of Everything, libertarians have ...

Economic Liberty Lecture Series: Steven Landsburg

by Steven E. Landsburg March 14, 2013

On March 4, 2013, Steven Landsburg gave the following speech at The Future of Freedom Foundation’s “Economic Liberty Lecture Series.” The speech can viewed above in its entirety.

The Dow Jones Is Lying

by Sheldon Richman March 13, 2013

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) is at a record high, and the unemployment rate has ticked down to 7.7 percent, but this is no time to celebrate. The economy is still in the doldrums. A little perspective: The news media trumpet changes in the Dow as though it tells us almost all we need to know about the economic ...

Is the Supreme Court’s Ruling on Surveillance Really That Significant?

by Tim Kelly March 13, 2013

In a remarkable achievement of legal sophistry, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled against a constitutional challenge to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendments Act. The 5–4 ruling this February upheld the federal law that authorizes the National Security Agency (NSA) to eavesdrop on international telephone calls and emails in the so-called war on terror. The high court’s conservative bloc united to ...

The Libertarian Angle: March 12, 2013 (video)

by Future of Freedom Foundation March 13, 2013

The Libertarian Angle features FFF vice president Sheldon Richman and president Jacob Hornberger. The Libertarian Angle airs weekly.

The Nobel Peace Laureate with a Kill List

by Wendy McElroy March 12, 2013

On February 5, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney offered a rare defense of America’s drone policy. He stated, “These strikes are legal, they are ethical, and they are wise.” The rarity of his statement arises from the fact that the White House has stonewalled reporters on the drone program since its inception. The proximate cause of Carney’s ...

What Sequestration Should Really Look Like

by Laurence M. Vance March 12, 2013

It’s official: sequestration has begun. Barack Obama has formally signed an order to put into effect the across-the-board government spending cuts known as “sequestration.” After failing to broker a deal at a meeting between Democratic (Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi) and Republican (John Boehner and Mitch McConnell) House and Senate leaders, the president told journalists, “Not everyone will ...

TGIF: Entrepreneurship and Social Cooperation

by Sheldon Richman March 8, 2013

We may laud the market order as an indispensable arena for large-scale social cooperation, but let’s not forget that people cannot cooperate with one another if they don’t know that the potential for mutually beneficial exchanges exists. In the real world ignorance is pervasive, and we mustn’t fall prey to the mainstream economists’ unreal assumption that full knowledge about means, ends, ...

A Huge Hunger Strike at Guantánamo

by Andy Worthington March 8, 2013

When is a hunger strike not a hunger strike? Apparently, when the government says it doesn’t exist. At Guantánamo, reports first began to emerge on February 23 about a campwide hunger strike of a scale not seen since before Barack Obama became president. On the “Free Fayiz and Fawzi” page on Facebook, run by lawyers for

Cutting Government Would Boost Economy

by Sheldon Richman March 7, 2013

Budget sequestration is as modest a step toward cutting Leviathan as one can imagine. Further progress will be difficult as long as people believe that slashing the size of government conflicts with reviving the economy. Nothing could be further from the truth. In his recent debate on Charlie Rose, Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul ...

Obama: Dictator or Monarch?

by Wendy McElroy March 7, 2013

As part of his strategy of shifting blame for the sequester onto Republicans, President Obama told reporters that his hands were politically tied. He stated, “I am not a dictator, I’m the president.” In other words, he could not bypass Congress to unilaterally impose his will. And yet this is precisely what Obama has been doing for years. He has ...

More Reflections on the JFK Assassination

by Tim Kelly March 7, 2013

Despite the mounds of evidence indicating that President John F. Kennedy was the victim of an elaborate conspiracy organized by elements of the national-security state, there are many who still believe the Lee Harvey Oswald “lone-nut” explanation proffered by the Warren Commission. A partial explanation for this could be ignorance. Many are simply not aware of the difficulties in the ...