Daily Articles

The Misplaced Fear of “Monopoly”

by Thomas E. Woods Jr. November 1, 2012

Those of us who get drawn, often against our better judgment, into Internet debates soon discover that the case against the market economy in the popular mind boils down to a few major claims. Here I intend to dissect one of them: under the unhampered market we’d be at the mercy of vicious monopolists. This fear can be attributed in ...

Limits on the Right to Exit: The New Slavery

by Ridgway K. Foley Jr. November 1, 2012

The federal fascists respond with threats and vilification when a few knowledgeable citizens renounce their American citizenship and move — with capital and assets that they have accumulated by honest endeavor — to a more hospitable state, one that does not mulct them as rigorously by the theft benignly called taxation. The government bullies, who threaten to follow the ...

Destroying the Young with the Minimum Wage, Part 2

by Gregory Bresiger November 1, 2012

Part 1 | Part 2 What is the case for raising the minimum wage? Supporters say it will help the low-paid worker, the teenager or the young person in his 20s, just starting out. They claim that it helps the economy because it will generate more buying power. More people at the bottom of the economic scale have more ...

Meeting Frédéric Bastiat

by Martin Morse Wooster November 1, 2012

The Collected Works of Frédéric Bastiat. Volume 1: The Man and the Statesman: The Correspondence and Articles on Politics, Jacques de Guenin, general editor, and Jane Willems and Michael Willems, translators (Liberty Fund 2011); 600 pages. Of all the great classical liberal thinkers, Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850) remains one of the least well-known. His works, of course, continue to be ...

George McGovern Reconsidered

by Tim Kelly October 31, 2012

The late George McGovern will probably be most remembered as the man who suffered the worst defeat of any presidential candidate in United States history. In 1972, he lost 49 states, including his home state of South Dakota, to the incumbent Richard M. Nixon. The electoral drubbing would make McGovern the butt of more than a few political jokes, and ...

Conservatives and Medical Freedom

by Laurence M. Vance October 30, 2012

If there is one thing that Republicans all over the country who are running for House and Senate seats in the upcoming election have in common, it is their opposition to Obamacare. A litmus test of their conservative bona fides is their commitment to repealing Obamacare. Although the House of Representatives has voted to repeal Obamacare (the Patient Protection and ...

Another Torture Victim on Trial at Guantánamo

by Andy Worthington October 29, 2012

In the last two weeks, the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay enjoyed a brief resurgence of interest, as pre-trial hearings took place in the cases of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other men accused of directing and supporting the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, and in the case of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a Saudi national accused of ...

Americans Should Reject Obama-Romney Foreign Policy

by Sheldon Richman October 26, 2012

If we needed evidence of the impoverishment of American politics, the so-called debate between President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney gave us all we could ask for. We normally expect a debate to highlight some disagreement, but in American politics disagreement is reserved for minor matters. The two parties — actually the two divisions of the uniparty that represents the ...

Supreme Court Considers the Warrantless Sniff

by Wendy McElroy October 24, 2012

Florida v. Jardines and Florida v. Harrisare scheduled to be heard by the United States Supreme Court on Wednesday, October 31. The cases pivot on whether the use of police dogs to detect illegal drugs violates the Fourth Amendment privacy rights of the person being sniffed. General background K-9 ...

Do Libertarians Hate the Poor?

by Laurence M. Vance October 23, 2012

The U.S. Census Bureau has released its annual poverty report based on the 2012 Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC) of the Current Population Survey (CPS). The CPS ASEC is a sample survey of approximately 100,000 households nationwide conducted over a three-month period in February, March, and April. The data reflect conditions in calendar year 2011. The

The 9/11 Trial: Torturing Justice

by Andy Worthington October 22, 2012

The last time the U.S. government wheeled out Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the four other men accused of initiating and being involved in the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, was in May this year, and, as is usual, the mainstream media turned out in force. That occasion was the formal arraignment of the men and it was ...

America’s Drone Terrorism

by Sheldon Richman October 19, 2012

In the United States, the dominant narrative about the use of drones in Pakistan is of a surgically precise and effective tool that makes the U.S. safer by enabling “targeted killing” of terrorists, with minimal downsides or collateral impacts. This narrative is false. Those are the understated opening words of a disturbing, though unsurprising, nine-month study of the Obama administration’s official, ...