TGIF: The Year That Was by Sheldon Richman December 28, 2012 The year coming to an end has hardly been a banner one in the cause of liberty. Once again, high points are tough to find, but low points abound. In mainstream public discussion, freedom counted for nothing, if it wasn’t ridiculed outright. The presidential election saw the marginalizing (again) of the only figure in the race — Ron Paul — ...
Holding “Public Servants” Accountable by Tim Kelly December 28, 2012 Most would agree that if we must suffer the impositions of government, it would be wise to subordinate it to the rule of law. As Thomas Jefferson said, “In questions of power then, let no more be heard of confidence in man but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.” This is what the Founding ...
Gun-Control, Mental-Health Laws Won’t Make Us Safer by Sheldon Richman December 27, 2012 We would do the young victims of the Newtown shootings no honor by frantically enacting futile restrictions on freedom. It may be satisfying to “do something.” But two things ought to be kept in mind. First, liberty is never more in peril than when politicians sense that the people want them to do something — anything. Second, a false sense ...
Who Should Support the Disabled? by Laurence M. Vance December 26, 2012 Some of the most terrifying words the parents of a newborn will ever hear are “there is a problem with the baby.” Sometimes the dreadful news comes later after a tragic childhood accident or disease. When such children grow to adulthood they are joined by an even larger number of those who lived perfectly healthy lives as children only ...
Repudiate the National Debt by Wendy McElroy December 24, 2012 As of December 19 at 11:50:59 a.m. GMT, the national debt of the federal government was $16,357,278,240,896.86, or $52,080.07 for every individual in the United States. The only sane and moral stance is to repudiate it entirely. “Repudiation” is not a word used by the political mainstream. Part of the reason is who holds the debt. China is ...
Private Murders versus Government Murders by Michael Tennant December 24, 2012 The December 14 murder of 20 children and 6 women at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, has garnered vast media attention and caused countless people with no connection to the victims to grieve for them. This is not a new phenomenon: nearly all mass murders carried out by civilians generate the same type of coverage and response. But ...
TGIF: Intervention Begets Intervention by Sheldon Richman December 21, 2012 Among the many valuable doctrines associated with the great Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises is his “critique of interventionism.” Originally published in German in 1929, then published in English in 1977, Mises’s book A Critique of Interventionism summed up his position this way: In a private property order isolated intervention fails to achieve what its sponsors ...
Is a Balanced Budget the Answer? by Laurence M. Vance December 21, 2012 According to the Treasury Department’s “Monthly Treasury Statement of Receipts and Outlays of the United States Government,” the U.S. government took in $2.449 trillion in revenue during fiscal year 2012 — but spent $3.538 trillion. That means the government spent $1.089 trillion more than it took in. Although it was under George W. Bush that the United States ...
The Fight over Right-to-Work by Sheldon Richman December 20, 2012 The “right-to-work” issue is back. When a state passes a right-to-work law, as Michigan did this month, employers in that state can no longer agree to require workers to pay union fees as a condition of employment. Supporters of right-to-work see it as a way to protect workers from being forced to support unions against their will. Many opponents of ...
The Calling: Risk, Tradeoffs, and Freedom by Steven Horwitz December 20, 2012 In the wake of the Newtown massacre, people from all over the political spectrum are chiming in with their own recommendations of what should be done to prevent this kind of horrific tragedy. For my purposes here, I want to put aside two rather obvious points in order to explore some more subtle ones. First, for American politicians, especially President ...
Torture, Torture Everywhere by Andy Worthington December 20, 2012 For those of us who have been arguing for years that senior officials and lawyers in the Bush administration must be held accountable for the torture program they introduced and used in their “war on terror,” last week was a very interesting week indeed. There were developments in Strasbourg, in London, and in Washington, D.C., that all pointed towards ...
Guns, Security, and Liberty by Tim Kelly December 19, 2012 The barrage of anti-gun-rights rhetoric in the aftermath of last week’s massacre at an elementary school in Connecticut was predictable. The usual suspects appeared on various network and cable news shows to politicize the tragedy by blaming private gun ownership and calling for stricter gun-control laws. Leading the assault on the Second Amendment was New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, ...