Daily Articles

The Most Absurdities per Kilo

by James Bovard February 1, 2006

The war on drugs has produced more absurdities per kilo than any other federal policy. Drug warriors have had high-profile belly flop after belly flop. Yet most of the media and the vast majority of American politicians continue to treat this war with deference, if not reverence. One of the biggest farces of the George W. Bush-era war on drugs ...

Democracy, Hypocrisy, and U.S. Foreign Policy

by Jacob G. Hornberger February 1, 2006

After singing the praises of democracy all over the world, not to mention bombing, killing, and maiming people in the name of spreading it, the overwhelming win in Palestinian elections by Hamas, which U.S. officials have labeled a terrorist organization, is reminding U.S. officials that democracy sometimes produces results that are ...

The Progressive Era, Part 1: The Myth and the Reality

by William L. Anderson February 1, 2006

Part 1 | Part 2 One of the most enduring set of myths from U.S. history comes from the political and social developments in what is called the “Progressive Era,” a period lasting from the late 1800s to the end of World War I. (Of course, one could argue, convincingly, that the Progressive Era never has ended.) ...

The Disastrous World of the New York Subway, Part 1

by Gregory Bresiger February 1, 2006

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 New York City just went through another egregious subway strike. Again. Yet this was a strike of public workers that was never supposed to occur. The workers are covered by the state’s Taylor law, which isn’t much of a law, since the workers repeatedly violate it. (There were ...

Mary Wollstonecraft

by Wendy McElroy February 1, 2006

O, why was I born with a different face? Why was I not born like this envious race? Why did Heaven adorn me with bountiful hand, And then set me down in an envious land? William Blake’s poem “Mary” (1803) could have been an epitaph for Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797) — a woman born with a “different face” in a society hostile to her ...

The Farcical Definition at the Heart of the War on Terrorism

by James Bovard January 30, 2006

A recent denunciation of U.S. government foreign policy offers insights into a paradox of the war of terrorism. On January 24, 2006, the East Timor Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation denounced the U.S. government for backing the 1975 Indonesian invasion of East Timor. In the following decades, a quarter million East Timorese residents ...

Attention Deficit Democracy

by James Bovard January 27, 2006

The following is the introduction to James Bovard’s new book, Attention Deficit Democracy. The forms of our free government have outlasted the ends for which they were instituted, and have become a mere mockery of the people for whose benefit they should operate. — “Americus” Delusions about democracy ...

Osama’s Back

by Jacob G. Hornberger January 27, 2006

Osama bin Laden undoubtedly infuriated President Bush with his most recent audiotape, which was played last week on Aljazeera, for four reasons: First, bin Laden’s tape serves as a reminder to the American people that he is still alive despite the untold number of innocent people that U.S. personnel killed and maimed in the attack on ...

Government Perpetuates the Underclass

by Sheldon Richman January 25, 2006

Sunday’s New York Times ran a depressing story about a new study showing that day laborers, most of whom are “illegal aliens,” are often stiffed by employers. Of course, they’re already working in dangerous low-paid construction jobs. The Times reported, “Forty-nine percent of those interviewed said that in the previous two ...

Hurting Wal-Mart’s Employees

by Sheldon Richman January 20, 2006

Government is little more than a coercive transfer machine. If you can’t acquire something through consent and exchange, you ask politicians to compel others to provide it. This goes on every day. Never was it more blatant than when the Maryland legislature passed a law to compel Wal-Mart to spend at ...

It Takes Government to Create a Reading Crisis

by Sheldon Richman January 11, 2006

When Horace Mann and his colleagues launched the public-school movement some 175 years ago, they made extravagant promises. Turn the education of children over to enlightened altruistic experts working under government auspices, they said, and illiteracy, vice, and crime will become things of the past. I’m not kidding. Most people don’t know ...

Selective Posturing on Guns

by Scott McPherson January 9, 2006

I was recently in the Passport Agency in Washington, D.C., and while standing in line I noticed a number of fliers published by the State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs providing travel tips for those going to the Middle East, China, Mexico, and Canada. Tips for travelers in China or the Middle ...