Daily Articles

The Second Amendment Protects an Individual Right

by Benedict D. LaRosa January 1, 2001

THERE IS A popular misconception that the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution refers to a collective right rather than an individual right. Both history and reason argue against this misinterpretation. The right to self- (and collective) defense does not originate with, nor is it dependent upon, the Second Amendment. Man has ...

$44,000 Traffic Ticket

by Jacob G. Hornberger January 1, 2001

"Perhaps we should periodically count our blessings here in the United States. From a recent Associated Press article : 'A dot.com millionaire said he is fighting a huge traffic fine--reportedly $44,100--for driving dangerously. On a recent spin through downtown Helsinki, Jaakko Rytsola, 27, switched lanes too often and endangered other ...

Morals and the Welfare State, Part 4

by F.A. Harper January 1, 2001

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 ISN’T IT a strange thing that if you select any three fundamentally moral persons and combine them into a collective for the doing of good, they are liable at once to become three immoral persons in their collective ...

Book Review: Feeling Your Pain

by Richard M. Ebeling January 1, 2001

Feeling Your Pain: The Explosion and Abuse of Government Power in the Clinton-Gore Years by James Bovard (St. Martin’s Press, 2000); 426 pages; $26.95. WHEN THE HISTORY of the last decade of the 20th century is written sometime in the future, chroniclers of the 1990s will probably, at first, be tempted to emphasize the apparent triumphs of freedom around ...

Reflections on Liberty at Christmastime

by Jacob G. Hornberger December 1, 2000

ONE OF THE biggest differences between Christian statists and Christian libertarians concerns the role of the state in matters pertaining to morality. Christian statists believe that the state should be God’s partner who ensures, through fines and imprisonment, that people follow the correct moral path. Christian libertarians, on ...

Your Vote Doesn’t Count

by Sheldon Richman December 1, 2000

I have followed the presidential election returns pretty closely, and for the life of me, I cannot find a single state where George W. Bush and Al Gore were tied or where the margin victory was one vote. This is important because everyone from President Clinton to the most obscure news anchorperson has repeated incessantly that this election proves once ...

Market Liberalism, International Order, and World Peace, Part 2

by Richard M. Ebeling December 1, 2000

Part 1 | Part 2 In 1952 ,free-market economist Michael A. Heilperin delivered a lecture entitled “An Economist’s Views on International Organization.” He told his audience, It is an elementary, but often forgotten, knowledge that policies of national governments have always been the principle obstacle to economic relations between people living in various countries, and that whenever these relations ...

No One Is Qualified

by Sheldon Richman December 1, 2000

WHEN YOU CLEAR away all of the obfuscation from presidential campaigns, the entire process comes down to each candidates accusing the others of not being qualified for the office. This was certainly true in the 2000 presidential campaign. And every candidate who said or implied that about his opponents was absolutely right. No one is qualified to be president. No ...

Laptops to the Rescue

by James Bovard December 1, 2000

ONE OF of President Clintons favorite boasts is that he put 100,000 new cops on the streets. He claimed in 1994 that putting the new cops on the street would make Americans freer from fear and that there is simply no better crime-fighting tool to be found than multiplying the number of government employees packing heat. Vice President Al ...

The Wills of the Persons

by Sheldon Richman December 1, 2000

Besides “every vote counts,” the most frequently uttered nonsense of the 2000 postelection season is “the will of the people must be respected.” Most memorable is the Florida Supreme Court’s remark: “The will of the people, not a hypertechnical reliance upon statutory provisions, should be our ...

Wishing You a Free and Merry Christmas

by Doug Bandow December 1, 2000

CHRISTMAS IS THE TIME of goodwill, when everyone thinks of giving. And giving their own money, not other people’s money. Even in Washington, D.C. But in Washington, at least, Christmas is probably the only time of the year when anyone thinks about spending his own money.

Morals and the Welfare State, Part 3

by F.A. Harper December 1, 2000

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 ANOTHER POINT of possible confusion has to do with coveting the private property of another. There is nothing morally wrong in the admiration of something that is the property of another. Such admiration may be a stimulus to ...