Daily Articles

Guns and Libertarianism

by David S. D'Amato January 8, 2013

The tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut, has expectedly renewed interest in the “gun debate,” animating the worst inclinations of both the left and right halves of the statist conversation. Some conservative quarters are calling for something like armed-to-the-teeth military police to be stationed in the country’s schools. Progressives have naturally fallen back on all of the stock bilge in adjuring ...

The Washington Con Game Goes On

by Sheldon Richman January 7, 2013

Much of what government does seems unfathomable until you remember one thing: the politicians think the people are morons. Take the latest example: the effort to avert the “fiscal cliff.” If, as the politicians say they believe, the country is in a budgetary deficit and debt crisis combined with an anemic economic recovery, why would they raise taxes on everyone ...

Death and the National Health Service

by Scott McPherson January 7, 2013

“I’ve seen the future, baby: it is murder.” — Leonard Cohen, “The Future” The British are so proud of their National Health Service. Hospitals are falling apart and have become a breeding ground for staph infections; waiting lists and the rationing of care are the norm, and “new medical technologies” has become an oxymoron. But to hear them ...

The Jacob Hornberger Show: January 6, 2013 (video)

by Jacob G. Hornberger January 7, 2013

TGIF: Hayek’s Warning

by Sheldon Richman January 4, 2013

A little over 38 years ago F.A. Hayek, then in Stockholm, Sweden, to accept the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel (popularly known as the Nobel Prize in economics), said, Economists are at this moment called upon to say how to extricate the free world from the serious threat of accelerating inflation which, ...

Canada’s Shameful and Unending Disdain for Omar Khadr

by Andy Worthington January 4, 2013

Three months ago, Omar Khadr, the Canadian citizen seized as a child and held and abused by the U.S. government in Guantánamo for ten years, was returned to Canada, where he now languishes in a maximum-security prison. Technically speaking, the Canadian government is legally entitled to imprison him for another five years and ten months, according to

Obamacare’s Other Achilles Heel

by Wendy McElroy January 4, 2013

With the media obsessing about the fiscal cliff, many people may not have noticed that net American taxes for the next decade just rose by around $1 trillion. That’s the cost of the first phase of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, commonly called Obamacare. Much of the increase will be borne by the average working person. The watchdog ...

The Calling: Why “Rent-Seeking”?

by Steven Horwitz January 3, 2013

Public Choice theory, especially in the hands of James M. Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, has given libertarians a very effective set of arguments against government intervention. In the face of cries of “market failure,” when real-world imperfect markets quite understandably fall short of the unrealistic model of perfect competition that mainstream economists use to portray free markets, the Public ...

Torture and the Rule of Law

by Tim Kelly January 3, 2013

Last week, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a 6,000-page report providing a comprehensive analysis of the CIA’s detention and interrogation policies. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the committee chair, released a statement saying that “the report uncovers startling details about the CIA detention and interrogation program and raises questions about intelligence operations and oversight.” The report could shed some ...

Women, Discrimination, and a Free Society

by Laurence M. Vance January 2, 2013

For the first time in its history, South Korea has elevated a woman to the office of president. Newly elected Park Geun-hye is the daughter of the president and dictator Park Chung-hee, who ruled the country from 1961 until his assassination in 1979. During her presidential campaign, she pledged to increase government aid to single parents, expand maternity and paternity ...

Clinton’s Legacy, Part 2: The Attacks on 9/11

by Sheldon Richman January 1, 2013

Part 1 | Part 2 Last month I sought to correct the record by showing that the administration of Bill Clinton (1993–2001), which is almost universally viewed with nostalgia, played a major role in inflating the housing bubble, which led to the Great Recession, thanks to aggressive polices pushed by his second secretary of Housing and Urban ...

The Forgotten Pox of Government Spending

by James Bovard January 1, 2013

It is only a question of time until Washington is convulsed by the next federal budget crisis. Unfortunately, neither major political party is offering substantive proposals to curb soaring federal outlays. And Washington itself is inherently unable to recognize the true threat of government spending to Americans’ future and freedom. It was a common saying in the 1930s that “we ...