Daily Articles

Another Conservative Social Security Reform Plan

by Laurence M. Vance December 15, 2020

Just reading the title is enough to make a libertarian cringe. “How Social Security Reform Could Make a Popular Federal Program Better,” by Rachel Greszler and Ilana Blumsack, was published last month by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that, for almost fifty years, claims to have “advanced the principles of free enterprise, limited government, ...

Mandatory Vaccination and Liberty

by Christine Smith December 14, 2020

Compulsory vaccination has no place in a free society. On December 4, 2020, a bill ( ) was introduced to the New York State Legislature which would, if passed and enacted, result in mandatory Covid-19 vaccinations. The pertinent text from the bill, "If public health officials determine that sufficient immunity has not been developed, this legislation will allow the Department ...

Why Hayek was Right About Nazis Being Socialists

by Richard M. Ebeling December 11, 2020

Words are powerful things in that they enable us to share a common world of understanding with our contemporaries and, in the written form, with generations long past. But too often words can just as easily cause confusion, misunderstanding, and conflict among people in any society. One such word that keeps causing this type of confusion and conflict is ...

The Stench Of Bipartisan Cooperation On The Potomac

by David Stockman December 9, 2020

Well, here is a picture worth a thousand words. Featured front and center is Mr. Crony Capitalist Never Trumper, Mitt Romney, explaining how  another $908 billion of Everything Bailouts–on top of the $3.5 trillion that have gone before—is  just the thing to do. In the above photo Romney is speaking for a “bipartisan” group ...

The Cunning Plot to Assassinate JFK

by Jacob G. Hornberger December 8, 2020

In a radio interview with WVW, FFF president Jacob Hornberger discusses the national-security establishment's sophisticated plot to assassinate President Kennedy, given Kennedy's plans to move America in a different direction from the Cold War direction favored by the Pentagon and the CIA.

Republicans and the Minimum Wage

by Laurence M. Vance December 7, 2020

Republicans claim to believe in limited government, the free market, and the free-enterprise system, but their claims often ring hollow. A case in point is the outcome of a recent ballot measure in Florida. It is not just men and women who won elections in the fifty states last month. According to Ballotpedia, “Voters in 32 ...

Don’t Confuse Free Markets with the Interventionist State

by Richard M. Ebeling December 4, 2020

When most people put on their “reality” hats about politics, there are few among them who do not cynically see the power-lusting, the corruption, and the hypocrisy in most of what is said and done by those running for or sitting in political office. A constant point of dispute and disagreement is over how and why it is that ...

Black Lives Matter, But Not to Everyone, Part 2

by Jacob G. Hornberger December 1, 2020

Part 1 | Part 2 Some people argue that the solution to the problem of police abuse of blacks is to defund or dismantle the police. But that is no solution at all. That only opens the door to those who violate the rights of others through the commission of violent crimes. As we have seen in Portland and ...

Federal Censorship Protects Leviathan’s Crimes

by James Bovard December 1, 2020

Ever since the 9/11 attacks, Republicans and Democrats have conspired to keep Americans increasingly ignorant of what the federal government does. The number of secret federal documents skyrocketed, and any information that was classified supposedly cannot be exposed without dooming the nation. Politicians and federal agencies recognize that “what people don’t know won’t hurt the government.” James Madison, the father ...

Conservative Principles

by Laurence M. Vance December 1, 2020

Back at the beginning of the coronavirus crisis in the United States in March of this year, two Democratic representatives (Tim Ryan of Ohio and Ro Khanna of California) proposed that the federal government give at least $1,000 to every American making less than $65,000 a year. Three Democratic senators (Michael F. Bennet of Colorado, Cory Booker of New ...

Collectivism Breeds Indifference to the Loss of Liberty

by Richard M. Ebeling December 1, 2020

Who does not want to make the world a better place? With so much sorrow and suffering, poverty and plunder, cynicism and corruption in far too many places, nearly everyone, if asked, will usually say that if he could he would try to make this shared planet of ours a safer, prettier, more prosperous, and less unjust shared domicile ...

The Gold Clause: A Free-Market Gold Standard

by Wendy McElroy December 1, 2020

President Franklin Roosevelt destroyed one of the most valuable uses of gold when he nationalized ownership of the metal in 1933: the gold clause. This value did not return when private ownership of gold was legalized once more in 1974, partly because its use is still discouraged by anti-usury laws. The impact of its sudden absence was dramatized by a ...