Daily Articles

Americans Didn’t Need the Original New Deal

by Laurence M. Vance July 1, 2019

We have heard much this year about how much the country needs a Green New Deal to reverse the negative effects of climate change, ensure economic security, revamp the nation’s transportation system, restore damaged ecosystems, secure a sustainable environment, and achieve justice and equality. Overlooked in all of the analyses of the Green New Deal is that Americans didn’t ...

Learning Liberty and the Power of Principles

by Richard M. Ebeling July 1, 2019

In The Constitution of Liberty, free-market economist and social philosopher F.A. Hayek, quotes in a footnote the famous nineteenth-century scientist Louis Pasteur: “In research, chance only helps those whose minds are well prepared for it.” What Pasteur was, no doubt, getting at is that unless the researcher already has been trained in the principles and methods of his own ...

Gun Ownership: An Individual Right

by Matthew Harwood July 1, 2019

First Freedom: A Ride Through America’s Enduring History with the Gun by David Harsanyi (Threshold Editions, 2018); 321 pages. In David Harsanyi’s First Freedom, an entertaining jaunt through the gun’s important place in American history, the nationally syndicated columnist notes that the first real attempt to institute gun control was New York’s Sullivan Act. The impetus ...

The Hypocritical Double Standards of Political Outrage

by John W. Whitehead June 27, 2019

“She was asked what she had learned from the Holocaust, and she said that 10 percent of any population is cruel, no matter what, and that 10 percent is merciful, no matter what, and that the remaining 80 percent could be moved in either direction.”—Kurt Vonnegut Please spare me the media hysterics and the outrage and ...

Austrian Economics on the 45th Anniversary of Its Rebirth

by Richard M. Ebeling June 24, 2019

This June marks the 45th anniversary of the revival of the Austrian School of Economics. During the week of June 15-22, 1974, the Institute for Humane Studies brought together about 50 people in South Royalton, Vermont to listen to a series of lectures by three of the leading figures of the, then, existing remnant of the Austrian School. The ...

The Jackboots Are Coming

by John W. Whitehead June 21, 2019

“Never has our future been more unpredictable, never have we depended so much on political forces that cannot be trusted to follow the rules of common sense and self-interest—forces that look like sheer insanity, if judged by the standards of other centuries.” ― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism How do you persuade a populace to embrace ...

What Robert Reich Failed to Say about Marijuana Legalization

by Laurence M. Vance June 20, 2019

Professor, economist, author, and political commentator Robert Reich is best known for being President Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Labor from 1993 to 1997. Before that he held positions in the administrations of Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter and was a professor at Harvard. After leaving the Labor Department he taught at Brandeis University, ran for ...

Debt, Deficits and the Cost of Free Lunches

by Richard M. Ebeling June 19, 2019

It seems that every generation or two, fundamental economic ideas are questioned and challenged. The reasonable and important idea that governments should balance their budgets on an annual basis was challenged in the 1930s by the rise of Keynesian Economics and the counter-argument that deficit spending was desirable, if it was used to maintain full employment. Now it seems ...

Background Checks Violate Property Rights

by Benedict D. LaRosa June 18, 2019

In the early 1990s, I accompanied a friend and his 12-year-old son to a local gun show. My friend wished to purchase a .22 caliber rifle with which to teach his son to shoot safely and effectively. After much browsing, he found one at a reasonable price, one that suited both his needs and those of his son. The ...

Charter Schools Are Still Public Schools

by Laurence M. Vance June 17, 2019

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has issued his “Thurgood Marshall Plan for Public Education.” His ten-point plan addresses the serious crisis in our education system by reducing racial and economic segregation in our public school system, attracting the best and the brightest educational professionals to teach in our classrooms, and reestablishing a positive learning environment for ...

America’s Economic Commissar of Trade

by Richard M. Ebeling June 14, 2019

Since taking office in January 2017, President Donald Trump seems to have declared or threatened economic war on many of America’s leading economic trading partners, including China, the European Union, and most recently Mexico. Two things stand out in all this: first, he presumes that international trade is a zero-sum game in which if the U.S. wins, some other ...

The Libertarian Angle: Tariff-Wall Man’s Extortion of Mexico (video)

by Future of Freedom Foundation June 13, 2019

Are barriers to both immigration and trade the hallmarks of a free society? Do they make the citizens of The United States better off? FFF president Jacob G. Hornberger and Citadel professor Richard M. Ebeling discuss. Go to the podcast.