Daily Articles

Book Review: Against the Dead Hand

by Richard M. Ebeling April 1, 2002

Against the Dead Hand: The Uncertain Struggle for Global Capitalism by Brink Lindsey (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2002); 336 pages; $29.95. THE WORLD IS BECOMING increasingly smaller. Commodities, capital, and people move around the world with far greater ease than at any time since before the First World War. Market-oriented reforms have been the watchword for economic policy for ...

Real Campaign-Finance Reform

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 2, 2002

Congress has recently engaged in another flurry of activity over ampaign-finance reform. Yet, congressmen never ask a fundamental question: Why shouldn’t people be free to do whatever they want with their own money, including donating whatever amounts they want to political candidates? The usual answer that congressmen give is: “That type of system would make us crooked and corrupt ...

Thank Goodness for the Bill of Rights!

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 2, 2002

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s recent admission that a U.S. raid in Afghanistan mistakenly killed 16 innocent people suggests how grateful Americans should be that their ancestors insisted on the inclusion of a Bill of Rights as a condition of adopting the U.S. Constitution. While the U.S. raiders were convinced that the victims of the ...

Did the Framers Forget the Bill of Rights?

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 1, 2002

AFTER THE CONSTITUTION WAS RATIFIED in 1788, the states adopted the first 10 amendments, which became known as the Bill of Rights. Given the importance of the provisions in those amendments, an obvious question arises: Why didn’t the Framers of the Constitution include those provisions in the original Constitution, thereby obviating the need to amend the document so soon ...

Classical Liberalism in the 21st Century: Freedom of Trade, Part 1

by Richard M. Ebeling March 1, 2002

Part 1 | Part 2 BEFORE THE 19TH CENTURY, governments in the major European countries and their colonial empires around the world took it for granted that they had both the right and responsibility to control and direct the economic activities of their subjects. Indeed, the lands and peoples in these countries were considered to be the property of ...

Are We Safer?

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 1, 2002

Wasn’t the bombing of Afghanistan supposed to make Americans safer and more secure? A just-released Gallup Poll might raise some doubts as to whether that goal is being achieved. Gallup conducted face-to-face interviews with 10,000 people from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Indonesia, Iran, Lebanon, Kuwait, Morocco, and Jordan. Fifty-three percent of those interviewed expressed an ...

War Is the Health of the State

by Sheldon Richman March 1, 2002

SOME CONSERVATIVES are surprised to find people on the left supporting the war in Afghanistan. It’s not surprising at all. War collectivizes society (the euphemism is “unites”) and increases the government’s domestic power. There is no mystery here. In war there seems to be one overriding goal for the entire society: defeat the enemy. Everything else ...

State Terrorism and Bush’s War

by James Bovard March 1, 2002

ON OCTOBER 18, President George W. Bush declared, “So long as anybody’s terrorizing established governments, there needs to be a war.” Bush thereby signaled his acceptance of the legitimacy of almost every government in the world. Bush’s war on terrorism is a moral crusade. This is clear from his constant references to “the evil ones” and ...

Netscape Gets the Green

by Sheldon Richman March 1, 2002

Imagine the nerve of a company that gives away its product in an attempt to knock off the dominant firm in an industry. I have one such company in mind right now. It went all out to make it easy for consumers to have free access to its product. You couldn’t ...

The New England Labor Reform League

by Wendy McElroy March 1, 2002

IN GRAPPLING with the same strategic questions that confront modern libertarianism, the 19th-century movement evolved a remarkable organization that engaged in both education and grassroots activism. The New England Labor Reform League (NELRL) sprang from an 1869 gathering of labor radicals in Boston. The leading force in its founding was ...

Book Review: Rebels on the Air

by George Leef March 1, 2002

Rebels on the Air — An Alternative History of Radio in America by Jesse Walker (New York University Press, 2001); 326 pages; $24.95. YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE harboring an escaped Cuban child to receive an unexpected, pre-dawn visit from a federal SWAT team. Early in ...

The Right to Confront and Cross-Examine Witnesses

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 1, 2002

Included among the Bush administration’s new rules for the trials of suspected terrorists captured abroad is the right of the accused (or his attorney) to confront and cross-examine witnesses, a right guaranteed to Americans in criminal prosecutions by the Sixth Amendment. But the Bush administration is being disingenuous in the ...