Daily Articles

Two Great Books

by Sheldon Richman August 1, 2003

Libertarians love books. They hunger for reading material and are always eager to hear of new works dealing with the broad and deep subject of individual liberty and its social and economic implications. In my opinion, two books in particular belong on every libertarian’s shelf. I mean this literally because these are books that libertarians will want to consult often. One, ...

The Greatest Ignorance of the Greatest Number

by James Bovard August 1, 2003

The specter of an ignorant or indifferent populace has long haunted democracy. Montesquieu wrote in 1748, The tyranny of a principal in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy. James Madison warned, A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue ...

The Abolitionist Adventure, Part 2

by Wendy McElroy August 1, 2003

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 On August 31, 1831, a Virginia slave named Nat Turner instigated a slave revolt in which a slave owner and his family were killed. Eventually, the victims of Turner’s band exceeded 50. The South exploded with fear and rage, with many blaming Northern abolitionists, especially William Lloyd Garrison. A Virginia paper called ...

Book Review: Defend America First

by Richard M. Ebeling August 1, 2003

Defend America First: The Antiwar Editorials of the Saturday Evening Post, 1939–1942 by Garet Garrett (Caldwell, Idaho, 2003); 285 pages; $13.95. It has now long been taken for granted by the American citizenry that the president of the United States, in his role as commander in chief, has the authority and power to send American armed forces into harm’s ...

Reimporting Drugs Is OK, But It Misses the Point

by Sheldon Richman July 30, 2003

The U.S. House and Senate have approved bills to legalize the reimportation of U.S.-manufactured prescription drugs from Canada and elsewhere. Here’s a case of Congress doing something right for the wrong reason. It’s right because the U.S. government has no business telling the American people what they may and may ...

Is “Bambi” Libertarian?

by Scott McPherson July 25, 2003

Many libertarians are labeled amoral or immoral because they refuse to allow ethics to impinge upon politics. For libertarians, government exists not to make people do what are generally perceived as good things so much as it exists to keep them from doing genuinely bad things to other people. ...

Barges and Birds, Politics and the Market

by Bart Frazier July 25, 2003

In a move that delighted environmentalists, a U.S. district judge recently ordered the Army Corps of Engineers (ACE) to lower the water level of the Missouri River in order to provide suitable nesting habitat for endangered bird species. However, the move will have detrimental effects on shipping, and the ...

Even with Weapons, Hussein Was No Threat

by Sheldon Richman July 23, 2003

The glaring absence of unconventional Iraqi arms should not blind us to the fact that even if Saddam Hussein had amassed chemical, biological, and — yes — even nuclear weapons, he would not have posed a threat to the American people. As offensive tools, those weapons would have been ...

Justices Show Their True Colors

by Scott McPherson July 16, 2003

The recent Supreme Court ruling overturning a Texas sodomy law has received a great deal of attention from “gay rights” groups, Christian conservatives, and just about everyone in between, all ready to offer their opinion of how the Court’s decision will affect future legislation, federalism, and social conduct in ...

Is Fraud a High Crime or Misdemeanor?

by Jacob G. Hornberger July 16, 2003

In claiming that 16 controversial words in his State of the Union address last January were technically correct, the president is implying that he didn’t actually deceive — or intend to deceive — the American people. Nothing could be further from the truth. While the president wants people to focus only on the technical wording ...

The Lake of the Woods

by Bart Frazier July 16, 2003

Like most other Americans, this past Independence Day found me watching fireworks. I was with my family at Lake of the Woods, a private community in Orange County, Virginia, where we were all gathered along a lake’s edge with thousands of other people to watch one of the best ...

False in One, False in All

by Sheldon Richman July 14, 2003

When I was a newspaper reporter covering the criminal courts in Pennsylvania, lawyers always told juries they were entitled to apply this old legal principle to any witness: falsis in unum, falsis in omnibus — false in one thing, false in all things. This means that if jurors determined that ...