Daily Articles

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 ...

The Long Pursuit of Accountability for Bush’s Torture Program

by Andy Worthington November 29, 2012

In June 2004, in the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal, a notorious memo from August 2002 was leaked. It was written by John Yoo, a lawyer in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel and it claimed to redefine torture and to authorize its use on prisoners seized in the “war on terror.” I had no idea ...

The Domino Effect of Sugar Protectionism

by Michael Tennant November 29, 2012

“Like most conservatives, I don’t like subsidies or government intervention in markets.” So began a column in the Daily Caller by Rep. Tom Rooney (R-Fla.). Anyone familiar with the ways of Washington knows what’s coming next: a series of sorry excuses for why — just this once — the congressman’s alleged commitment to free-market principles must be jettisoned. Rooney ...

Deportations Guarantee Injustice

by Scott McPherson November 29, 2012

This country’s immigration laws are a travesty. Americans boast that their country is a free and open society, with a long history of immigration and a dedication to fairness and opportunity. They then support laws that arbitrarily limit the number of people allowed to live, work, and pursue their happiness within our borders. Such laws create unfair burdens on businesses, interfering ...

The Real Fiscal Cliff

by Laurence M. Vance November 28, 2012

The combination of expiring tax cuts and unemployment benefits, spending cuts, and tax increases — all scheduled to go into effect on January 1, 2013 — has been termed the “fiscal cliff.” To make matters worse, the debt ceiling of $16.394 trillion — the maximum amount of money the government is legally allowed to borrow — may ...

Jumping off the Fiscal Cliff

by Tim Kelly November 28, 2012

The American people are once again being told of an impending financial catastrophe. Federal Reserve Chairman Benjamin S. Bernanke has said that America will plunge off a “fiscal cliff” if Congress doesn’t do something by January 1, 2013. Former Treasury secretary Robert Rubin has also warned of the dire consequences of Congress not doing something. And the firm JP Morgan ...

Nullify the Drug War!

by Sheldon Richman November 27, 2012

Thomas Jefferson said a revolution every 20 years would be a good thing. Regardless of what one thinks of that, perhaps a little constitutional crisis every now and then would have its benefits. One such crisis may be brewing now. On election day, solid majorities of voters in Colorado and Washington voted to make marijuana a legal product, not just ...