Some Reflections on the Right to Bear Arms by Richard M. Ebeling September 1, 2001 For millions of Americans the Second Amendment and its right for the individual to bear arms appears irrelevant and practically anachronistic. It seems a throwback to those earlier days of the Wild West, when many men, far from the law and order provided by the town sheriff and circuit judge, ...
Should Tipping Be Voluntary? by Jacob G. Hornberger September 1, 2001 IF NEW DEAL LEGISLATION had been enacted in the 1930s requiring people to tip waiters 15 percent of the total amount of their restaurant bill, we might have been subjected to the following debate today: Repeal Advocate: Don’t you think we ought to repeal the tipping law and let each person decide for himself how much to tip a waiter ...
Preserving Property through Freedom by Jacob G. Hornberger September 1, 2001 THE WASHINGTON TIMES recently reported on a controversy in Winchester, Virginia, that holds important lessons on freedom, property, and the role of government in the lives of the citizenry. The issue involves the use of 70 acres of property on which occurred the single largest cavalry charge of the Civil War. The owner of the property, a Virginia corporation, has ...
Is This the Wrong Time to Question Foreign Policy? by Jacob G. Hornberger September 1, 2001 Although it is considered by many to be beyond the pale of proper discourse to discuss whether U.S. foreign policy may have contributed to the current crisis, the American people ignore this possibility at their peril. After all, if U.S. foreign policy is giving rise to terrorism against the American ...
Classical Liberalism in the 21st Century: War and Peace by Richard M. Ebeling September 1, 2001 THE HISTORY OF MANKIND is a history of war, conquest, and oppression. From ancient times to the modern era, peace and freedom have been rare occurrences in the sweep of human events. When peace has prevailed for extended periods of time, it has invariably occurred under the yoke of despotic ...
The Sham of Political Compromise by Sheldon Richman September 1, 2001 WRITING IN THE NEW YORK TIMES OP-ED PAGE RECENTLY, new Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle called for “a spirit of principled compromise.” If the top Democrat means compromise with the Republicans, he’s in luck. Compromise with the Senate Republicans is entirely possible, even easy — because they hold the same reactionary statist principles as the Democrats. Daschle is widely praised ...
Senate Farce: Reining in the FBI by James Bovard September 1, 2001 THE FOUNDING FATHERS did not create a national police force. Since Prohibition, however, federal law enforcement agencies have multiplied like mushrooms. Unfortunately, there has been no parallel growth in either curiosity or competence by the legislative branch. Charles Carroll of Maryland, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, declared that it was the task of elected representatives “to ...
Introduction to The Failure of America’s Foreign Wars by Richard M. Ebeling September 1, 2001 (Excerpted from The Failure of America’s Foreign Wars, published by The Future of Freedom Foundation in 1996) America, too, had its global calling, according to the social engineers. America should not merely be a “beacon of freedom” that would be, through its allegiance to its traditional principles of individual liberty and a free, self-governing society, ...
Avoid Phony Public Service by Sheldon Richman September 1, 2001 The dean of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Joseph S. Nye Jr., laments that while in 1980 three-quarters of the graduates took government jobs, just one-third does so these days. That’s a good trend. But not good enough. Here’s hoping the number drops further. Many people will ask, who could ...
Sink the Sugar Boondoggle by James Bovard September 1, 2001 The federal government has gone into the sugar-mountain business. The Agriculture Department (USDA) is paying more than a million dollars a month now to store piles of surplus sugar. USDA spent almost half a billion dollars on the sugar program last year — and federal generosity promises to make the sugar ...
The Colombia Quagmire, Part 3 by Doug Bandow September 1, 2001 Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 IN SEPTEMBER BRAZIL INITIATED Operation Cobra, with some 12,000 personnel, to improve border security. “The whole world was talking about the Colombia Plan,” explained Mauro Sposito, head of the federal police effort: “We had to do something.” Local officials also worry about an influx of refugees. Brazil is concerned not only ...
Book Review: In Defense of Free Capital Markets by Richard M. Ebeling September 1, 2001 In Defense of Free Capital Markets: The Case against a New International Financial Architecture by David F. DeRosa (Princeton, N.J.: Bloomberg Press, 2001); 230 pages; $27.95. IN THE 1930s, during the high watermark of aggressive economic nationalism in Europe, one of the most effective political weapons of regulation used by governments was control over the buying and selling of currencies on ...