The Conservative Blind Spot by Laurence M. Vance December 5, 2012 It was just a few months ago that conservatives came to the defense of the Christian-owned Chick-fil-A restaurant chain after its president, Dan Cathy, said the company was “guilty as charged” in its opposition to same-sex marriage. Now it is the Christian-owned Hobby Lobby Stores and its fight against Obamacare. Oklahoma-based Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., from its humble beginnings in ...
Was the “Good War” Really Good? by Tim Kelly December 5, 2012 The Second World War is often called “the good war.” But was it? After all, this “good war” brought mass destruction; death to tens of millions of men, women, and children; and enormous suffering to many more. How can such a horrible event be called “good?” Well, that description comes from the war’s popular portrayal as a necessary Manichean struggle between ...
God versus Government by Wendy McElroy December 4, 2012 Freedom of religion is the most powerful constitutional protection left in America. It is on a collision course with the contraception mandate in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). The mandate requires employers with more than 50 workers to provide health plans that include contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs. Many employers object to paying for practices prohibited by their ...
Don’t Trust Your Safety to Fascists by Scott McPherson December 3, 2012 The car fascists are at it again. Several technologies have been invented over the last decade that can help prevent vehicle collisions. A story in the Boston Globe reports that among these are “lane-departure warning, forward-collision warning, adaptive cruise control, automatic breaking, and electronic stability control.” Great news, right? The wonders of the market never cease. And, according to ...
Clinton’s Legacy, Part 1: The Financial and Housing Meltdown by Sheldon Richman December 1, 2012 Part 1 | Part 2 Bill Clinton leads a charmed life. The former president is treated like a respected elder statesman whose tenure in office was so good that even some Republicans look back fondly on the years 1993–2001. On the surface the record indeed looks good. The 1990s were a period of economic growth, and the central ...
The Mirage of Welfare State Freedom by James Bovard December 1, 2012 Government dependency was one of the hottest issues in this year’s presidential race. Unfortunately, neither major-party candidate focused on the perils of “freedoms” that rely on government handouts. Instead, “welfare state freedom” has become the coin of the political realm. Lyndon Johnson declared in 1964, “For the first time in world history we have the abundance and the ability to ...
Two Extraordinary African-American Entrepreneurs by Wendy McElroy December 1, 2012 As the 19th century neared its end, two African-American women became rivals as they became millionaires in the beauty-care industry. Annie Turnbo Pope Malone and Madam (Sarah) C.J. Walker were wildly successful entrepreneurs at a time when both blacks and women were marginalized by society. Annie and Sarah broke racial and sexual barriers; they created economic independence for an ...
Women Who Made a Difference by George Leef December 1, 2012 Ladies for Liberty: Women Who Made a Difference in American History by John Blundell (New York: Algora Publishing, 2011); 230 pages. In contemporary American politics, women are generally assumed to be more inclined to socialistic ideas than men are. Women are more likely to favor candidates and policies that are supposed to help people, to provide a “safety ...
Authentic Liberalism Vindicated, Part 1: The Great Liberal Heritage by Anthony Gregory December 1, 2012 Part 1 | Part 2 Classical Liberalism and the Austrian School by Ralph Raico, (Auburn, Ala.: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2012); 347 pages. If any one word is responsible for more confusion in the United States than “liberalism,” I’d surely like to know what it is. To the average American, a liberal is someone who votes Democratic, ...
The Goal Is Freedom: In Praise of Profit by Sheldon Richman November 30, 2012 In the last two weeks, I presented a defense of key libertarian concepts — the market, private property, and competition — in a way intended to make them palatable to people who believe in individual liberty yet have something like an aesthetic aversion to the market economy. (See those articles here and here.) Today let’s examine profit, another ...
Why Is Foreign Policy Neglected? by David S. D'Amato November 30, 2012 Throughout the (thankfully concluded) election year, everyone — including the electorate and the blindly shilling punditry — was so very zeroed in on the domestic economy, as they perceived it, that foreign-policy issues were virtually completely neglected. No one in the mainstream debate, which was hardly one at all, cared to remark on or decry the fact that the ...