Daily Articles

Armed Self-Defense Is Essential in a Free Society

by Richard M. Ebeling April 20, 2021

The recent string of multiple-victim incidents of gun violence and police shootings of black Americans has once again resulted in renewed calls for restrictions on gun ownership. President Biden has said that executive instructions to various branches of the Federal government will attempt to reduce the frequency and possibility of such violence. Some of his proposals, however, are merely using ...

Rule by Fiat: When the Government Does Whatever It Wants

by John W. Whitehead April 19, 2021

“We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.” — Ayn Rand Rule by brute force. That’s about as good a description ...

Carl Menger’s Theory of Institutions and Market Processes

by Richard M. Ebeling April 14, 2021

This year marks the 150th anniversary of a radical change in the way economists came to understand the logic of human decision-making and the formation of prices in society. There occurred what is often referred to as the “marginalist revolution” in place of the classical economists’ notion of a “labor theory of value,” which was generally accepted from the ...

Conservatives, Free Trade, and the WTO

by Laurence M. Vance April 12, 2021

Writing for the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, Anthony B. Kim says that “it’s time to get serious about reforming World Trade Organization.” Kim “researches international economic issues at The Heritage Foundation, with a strong focus on economic freedom.” He maintains that “with a new director at the ...

Letter to Senate Homeland Committee

by Lawrence P. Schnapf April 9, 2021

Read Larry Schnapf's letter here.

Dangerous Monetary Manipulations and Fiscal Follies

by Richard M. Ebeling April 7, 2021

Back in the 1960s, Everett Dirksen (1896-1969) served as the Republican Party minority leader in the U.S. Senate. One of his famous lines about federal government spending was, “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.” Those days are long past. Now it’s: A trillion here, and a trillion there, and then you ...

The UBI, CTC, EITC, and the GOP

by Laurence M. Vance April 5, 2021

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Robert Doar and Matt Weidinger, two scholars at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a conservative think tank, are lamenting the passage of the Democrats’ American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. They see it as the “Democrats’ stealth plan to enact universal basic income” because the “Covid stimulus would give checks ...

The VMI Controversy

by Jacob G. Hornberger April 1, 2021

Last year, the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) in Lexington, Virginia, came under scrutiny for alleged acts of racial discrimination against black members of the corps of cadets. The controversy began with an article in the Washington Post, which was followed by a call by the governor of Virginia for an official state investigation into racism at VMI. Under pressure, ...

Will Treason Mania Destroy America?

by James Bovard April 1, 2021

At the start of the Biden era, America is being torn apart by more allegations of treason than at any time since the Civil War. Historian Henry Adams observed a century ago that politics “has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.” And few things spur hatred more effectively than tarring all political opponents as traitors. The Founding Fathers carved ...

Would the Republicans Have Saved Us?

by Laurence M. Vance April 1, 2021

If Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) had not gotten sick and resigned his Senate seat, then the title of this article would have been “Will the Republicans Save Us?” After serving in the Georgia state house and senate, Isakson served three terms in the U.S. House of Representatives before being elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004. He was re-elected in ...

Jacques Novicow, Sociologist of Peace and Freedom

by Richard M. Ebeling April 1, 2021

One of the most important classical liberal crusades of the nineteenth century was to at least tame, if not end, the death and destruction of war. From time immemorial, wars have been the scourge of mankind. Huge numbers of ordinary people have been uprooted from their homes and families to be the human sacrifices in battle to serve the ...

The Continuing Disaster of the U.S. Drug War in Latin America

by Ted Galen Carpenter April 1, 2021

The following is a statement to the Western Hemisphere Drug Policy Commission: Charting a New Path Forward, Committee on Foreign Affairs, U.S. House of Representatives, December 3, 2020: I wish to express my appreciation to the chairman and members of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs for the opportunity to submit this statement. The Western Hemisphere Drug Policy Commission is ...