Daily Articles

Not Yours to Give

by David Crockett December 1, 2000

MR. SPEAKER — I have as much respect for the memory of the deceased, and as much sympathy for the suffering of the living, if suffering there be, as any man in this House, but we must not permit our respect for the dead or our sympathy for a part of ...

No One Runs the Country

by Sheldon Richman December 1, 2000

Memo to pundits and politicians: You didn’t need to say that we had to finalize the presidential election because it’s important to know who’s going to run the country beginning January 20. The president doesn’t run the country. This country comprises 265 million people who make billions of ...

Book Review: The Faces of Janus

by Richard M. Ebeling December 1, 2000

The Faces of Janus: Marxism and Fascism in the Twentieth Century by A. James Gregor (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2000); 240 pages; $30. IN 1947, Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises published a short book entitled Planned Chaos. He analyzed and put into perspective the intellectual and ideological forces that had been at work in the Western world since the ...

Don’t Just Keep the Electoral College; Repeal the 17th Amendment

by Sheldon Richman December 1, 2000

In the heat of the electoral controversy — the worst possible time to make constitutional decisions — many people, such as Senator-elect Hillary Rodham Clinton, are calling for an end to the Electoral College. Big mistake. Someone once said, Don’t knock down a wall merely because you cannot immediately see what ...

Legal Tender and the Civil War

by Jacob G. Hornberger November 1, 2000

FACED WITH A LACK of Northern enthusiasm for his war against the South, President Lincoln resorted to drastic means to finance his war effort. If Lincoln had resorted to a traditional method of government finance — taxation — he knew that he might be faced with tax riots among the people of the North. And he knew that if ...

CAPSULE COMMENTARY: “Gore’s Fight Legal, Not Principled”

by Jacob G. Hornberger November 1, 2000

"I fall into the camp that says that Al Gore has the right to pursue all legal remedies in his attempt to establish that he is entitled to Florida's electoral votes. But I wish he would stop with all this nonsense about how he's fighting to protect the principles of democracy. ...

Market Liberalism, International Order, and World Peace, Part 1

by Richard M. Ebeling November 1, 2000

Part 1 | Part 2 In this Post–Cold War epoch the world is desperately searching for international order, global peace, and general economic prosperity. The great debate going on around the world is whether these desired goals can be attained through the existing system of national sovereignty or whether they require the establishment of international political organizations with the ...

The Civil War and the American Mind

by Sheldon Richman November 1, 2000

THE CIVIL WAR and its militaristic effect on American society had important consequences for the nationalist collectivization of America that occurred in the following decades. It encouraged collectivist intellectuals to vigorously promote their reform visions and it won thinkers to the collectivist cause. It even convinced ...

No Border Debate in the Presidential Race

by Jacob G. Hornberger November 1, 2000

When Mexican president Vicente Fox visited Washington last August, he raised an idea that caught presidential candidates Al Gore and George W. Bush totally off guard. Fox suggested that it was time to consider opening the borders between Mexico, the United States, and Canada to the free movements of ...

AmeriCorps: Salvation through Handholding

by James Bovard November 1, 2000

PRESIDENT CLINTON, in an August 9, 1999, speech to AmeriCorps members, declared, “AmeriCorps is living, daily, practical, flesh-and-blood proof that there’s a better way to live ... that if we ... hold hands and believe we’re going into the future together, we can change anything we want to change. You are the modern manifestation of the dream of America’s ...

Lincoln Crossing the Rubicon

by Charles Adams November 1, 2000

WHEN THE CIVIL WAR started in the Roman Republic, Julius Caesar defied the civil authority and crossed the River Rubicon in 49 B.C. This was a violation of the Roman constitution, for no army was to cross the Rubicon and enter Rome under arms. Within a few months Caesar was the ...

Why the South Was Right, the North Wrong

by Doug Bandow November 1, 2000

THE VICTORS WRITE history books, and the dominant accounts of the Civil War reflect the victorious perspective: misguided Southerners sought to destroy democratic governance and preserve slavery. Led by the heroic Abraham Lincoln, Northerners responded by saving the Union and emancipating the slaves. And for leading his moral crusade, Lincoln is America’s greatest president, martyred ...