Daily Articles

The Morality of the Welfare State

by Jacob G. Hornberger April 1, 2001

As a compassionate conservative, President Bush wants to give federal aid to faith-based organizations. His plan has drawn attacks from religious leaders on the right and civil libertarians on the left. Religious leaders object to Bush’s plan on the ground that it will lead to governmental interference with religious ...

FDR — The Man, the Leader, the Legacy, Part 12

by Ralph Raico April 1, 2001

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Table of Contents In granting official diplomatic recognition to the Soviet Union ...

Book Review: Revolutionary Language

by George Leef April 1, 2001

Revolutionary Language by David C. Calderwood (Lincoln, Neb.: iUniverse.com, Inc., 1999); 324 pages; $13.95. AN IMPORTANT but little-known battle between the forces of statism and the forces of liberty of the early 1990s pitted the “law-enforcement” community and national security paranoiacs against one man who happened to believe that people ought to be ...

Book Review: Basic Economics

by Richard M. Ebeling April 1, 2001

Basic Economics: A Citizen’s Guide to the Economy by Thomas Sowell (New York: Basic Books, 2000); 366 pages; $30. WHEN ADAM SMITH completed his criticisms of mercantilism, the 18th-century system of government planning and control, in The Wealth of Nations, he expressed a deep pessimism that the free-trade ideal that he had defended, instead of the regulated economy, would ever be ...

VMI on the Dole

by Jacob G. Hornberger April 1, 2001

VMI is back in the news. Two cadets, with the assistance of the ACLU, are asking the school to terminate religious prayers before supper in the VMI mess hall. VMI superintendent Josiah Bunting III has responded by saying that he is ready for a court fight, proclaiming that "the Constitution does ...

Campaign Donations are Not the Problem

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 2, 2001

Yesterday, the U.S. Senate voted to raise the amount that individuals can donate to federal candidates from $1,000 to $2,000. (The old limit was imposed in the post-Watergate period and has never been increased.) As is usually the case with the members of Congress, they're not really addressing the root of the problem. First ...

No Compromise on Campaign Finance Reform

by Sheldon Richman March 2, 2001

President Bush’s tone of bipartisan cooperation has its perils. It could lead him to compromise on the uncompromisable. That danger is looming already on so-called campaign finance reform. Sen. John McCain, Bush’s rival in the primaries, is intent on pushing his bill to interfere further with the right of ...

So Much for Compassionate Conservatism

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 1, 2001

DURING THE CONTROVERSY over Linda Chavezs appointment as secretary of labor, President Bush squandered an excellent opportunity to show some compassionate conservatism toward the tens of thousands of undocumented workers who have risked their lives to live and work in the United States. In the 1960s, I grew up on a farm on the Rio Grande outside of Laredo, Texas, ...

Free Market Education Stops School Violence

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 1, 2001

In case you were wondering where they stood on the issue, the U.S. House of Representatives has issued a formal condemnation of the shooting at Santana High School near San Diego. The vote was unanimous. (Whew!) The House proclamation also "encourages the people of the United States to engage in a ...

The Drug War’s Assault on Liberty

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 1, 2001

ROBERT DOWNEY JR. is a perfect example of the war on drug’s tremendous assault on liberty. Downey is the famous Hollywood actor who has a drug problem. To punish him for being a drug addict, the state has arrested him, prosecuted him, incarcerated him, released him, and arrested him anew. The state won’t leave ...

Fox Should Lead Way on Drug Legalization

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 1, 2001

Another Latin American president is talking about ending the war on drugs. First, there is Uruguay's president, Jorge Batlle, who openly calls for drug legalization. And now there is Vicente Fox, Mexico's newly elected president. Last Monday, (March 19) in an article entitled "Fox Talks Drug Legalization," the Associated Press reported, "In an interview ...

A Libertarian’s Platform

by James Bovard March 1, 2001

THE PLATFORM of the libertarian candidate is simple. It has only one plank in it: No special privilege for anyone. He conceives himself with only two methods of achieving this worthy objective: 1. The free market. 2. Government limited to the defense of life and property. There is no way known to man to determine prices of goods or rates of wages or where ...