Daily Articles

Government the Exploiter, Not Protector

by Sheldon Richman July 14, 2006

If you begin with an incorrect premise, you are bound to arrive at bad conclusions. Nowhere is this more true than in matters of government. The debates over the “war on terror,” the Iraqi occupation, and the Bush administration’s casual approach to civil liberties are premised on the idea that the ...

Theodore Roosevelt Is No One to Emulate

by Sheldon Richman July 7, 2006

We shouldn’t be surprised that President George W. Bush’s Svengali, Karl Rove, is an admirer of Theodore Roosevelt. TR is hot these days. He made the cover of Time magazine, heralding a series of hagiographic articles, including Rove’s, that make him out to be the first modern American president. In Time’s view, that ...

Libertarianism Is the Key to Our Future

by Jacob G. Hornberger July 1, 2006

Why do I remain convinced that the American people will return to their libertarian heritage, especially given the continued trend toward socialism and interventionism in Washington, D.C.? There are three reasons: freedom, morality, and pragmatism. Freedom Almost everyone prizes the concept of freedom. Yet relatively few people in history have realized it. Throughout recorded history, most people have had to live ...

Jane Jacobs: The Spontaneity of Cities

by Sheldon Richman July 1, 2006

Lovers of freedom, cities, and spontaneous social processes lost a great champion April 25 when Jane Jacobs died at age 89. She was truly a remarkable woman. With no more than a high-school diploma, but also a keen eye for what other people miss and the ability to turn a phrase, ...

Operation Founding Fathers

by James Bovard July 1, 2006

Few subjects generate more official lies than the U.S. government’s devotion to spreading democracy abroad. Iraq has been the largest most recent geyser of such deceits. In order to understand future U.S. government messianic democracy efforts, it is worthwhile to review the opportunism with respect to representative government in Iraq. In a late February 2003 Washington speech, George W. Bush ...

Housing Socialism, Part 2

by Gregory Bresiger July 1, 2006

Part 1 | Part 2 The desire for self-improvement is not the mentality behind price-control laws and rent-control laws. Behind them is the mentality of social engineering. It is a mentality subscribed to by those who want the government to micro-manage prices, wages, and even the level of ...

The Drug War’s Immorality and Abject Failure

by Anthony Gregory July 1, 2006

If the idea is to create a drug-free America, then we can safely say that after hundreds of billions of dollars spent, millions of arrests, and decades of escalating police and military efforts, the war on drugs is a complete failure. The reason is clear if you think about it. The ...

Better Surfing Comes with Property Rights

by Bart Frazier July 1, 2006

Property rights have long been recognized as a cornerstone of individual liberty and economic prosperity. As long as people are secure in their right to use, alter, and trade their belongings as they see fit, freedom and an ever-increasing standard of living are the result. However, not all rights to property are clearly defined. When property rights are unclear ...

A Man’s Home Is His Castle

by Wendy McElroy July 1, 2006

The Castle is a tacky tract house in Melbourne, Australia, where the quirky Kerrigans live in the firm belief that they are the luckiest family in the world. Their house is so close to the airport that planes almost scrape their roof. But instead of complaining, patriarch Darryl feels lucky to have such an up-close view of man’s conquest ...

Thank You … for a Free Market

by Jacob G. Hornberger June 30, 2006

Have you ever noticed how often both sides to an economic transaction say, “Thank you” to each other? For example, when the cashier at the grocery store says to the customer, “Thank you,” more often than not the customer responds, “Thank you,” rather than “You’re welcome.” Why is this so? The reason has ...

Government Keeps People Poor

by Sheldon Richman June 28, 2006

Washington reruns are boring. A Democrat beholden to Big Labor proposes an increase in the mandated minimum wage. Republicans beholden to Big (and small) Business defeat the bill. End of episode. Each side has thus reestablished its bona fides with its respective constituency and thus can return to what it really ...

Americans Should Be “Anti-American”

by Sheldon Richman June 21, 2006

“The Iraq war has also made anti-Americanism respectable again, as it was during the Cold War but had not been since the demise of the Soviet Union.” Those words come from Robert Kagan of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace, writing in the June 18 issue of the Washington Post. In his article ...