Daily Articles

This Is Not Freedom, America: The Profit Incentives Driving the American Police State

by John W. Whitehead October 4, 2023

“When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.” ― Frédéric Bastiat, French economist Pay no heed to the circus politics coming out of Washington DC. It’s just more of the ...

You’re Not Fired

by Laurence M. Vance October 3, 2023

At the end of every episode of “The Apprentice,” Donald Trump’s reality TV show, he would utter his signature catchphrase “You’re Fired!” Yet, it came as no surprise that Trump, when speaking recently in Michigan, where the United Auto Workers (UAW) recently went on strike, didn’t dare mention anyone being fired for refusing to work. UAW members voted about 97 ...

The Story of Sam Bird

by Jacob G. Hornberger October 1, 2023

In December 1966, Army Captain Sam Bird’s one-year tour of duty in Vietnam was coming to an end. He was set to be transferred from a combat zone in which he had been operating to a safe zone in the rear and then sent home. However, according to a written account entitled “The Courage of Sam Bird” by B. ...

Congress’s Unconstitutional Pay Raise Scandal

by James Bovard October 1, 2023

“A good politician is almost as rare as an honest burglar,” once quipped H. L. Mencken. After the shenanigans around the latest congressional pay increase, America’s burglars should file a posthumous libel suit against Mencken for that disparaging comparison. There is a pity party in Washington: You weren’t invited, but you’ll pay the bill. The Constitution’s 27th Amendment, ratified in 1992, ...

Why I Will Never Change My Mind about Marijuana

by Laurence M. Vance October 1, 2023

Charles Fain Lehman has changed his mind about marijuana. I haven’t, and never will, change my mind about marijuana. Lehman, a self-described “conservative,” is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and contributing editor of City Journal whose work has “appeared in outlets including the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, National Review, the New York Post, and elsewhere.” He is “a ...

Albert Jay Nock on “Doing the Right Thing” versus Government

by Richard M. Ebeling October 1, 2023

It is almost 100 years since the libertarian essayist and social critic Albert Jay Nock (1870–1945) published his essay “On Doing the Right Thing” in the pages of the American Mercury (November 1924). Nowadays, the very title of the essay may seem strange to many modern American readers. The “right thing?” Surely, the right thing is just “doing your ...

Congressional and Media Hypocrisy on Cluster Bombs

by Ted Galen Carpenter September 29, 2023

The U.S. elite’s alleged commitment to human rights and opposition to war crimes was just put to the test in an especially clear fashion. Not surprisingly, both Congress and the American news media failed that test. On September 27, 2023, the U.S. House of Representatives voted down an amendment to the appropriations bill funding the Pentagon that Rep. Matt ...

The Many Ways Our Rights Have Been Usurped Since 9/11

by John W. Whitehead September 27, 2023

“We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.” — Abraham Lincoln Those who gave us the Constitution and the Bill of Rights believed that the government exists at the behest of its citizens. It is there to protect, ...

Announcement from FreedomFest

by Future of Freedom Foundation September 22, 2023

This announcement was sent out by the organizers of FreedomFest, an annual event "where free minds meet to celebrate freedom in an open-minded environment." Last week we announced that we are uploading all of our FreedomFest content, starting with this summer's main stage speeches, to our YouTube channel, @TheFreedomFest. We will add new videos ...

The Next Crisis Is Anyone’s Guess, But the Government Is Ready to Lockdown the Nation

by John W. Whitehead September 19, 2023

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”—H.L. Mencken First came 9/11, which the government used to transform itself into a police state. Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit, which the police state used to test out its lockdown powers. In ...

Movie Review: The Mauritanian

by Lance Lamberton September 14, 2023

If ever one were to doubt or question that the United States has become a national-security state, all he or she would need to do is see the movie The Mauritanian to dispel such doubts. Titled after the name of the obscure Arab country in Africa from which the protagonist is from, it is an inspiring true story of ...

The Bipartisan Assault on the Right to Travel

by Ted Galen Carpenter September 13, 2023

Americans used to boast proudly that unlike most countries in the world, domestic travel in the United States was unfettered by legal obstacles. Unfortunately, an array of restrictions on airline travel reduced that freedom, but one could still drive from Massachusetts to California without once having to “show your papers” at a checkpoint. Increasingly, though, that freedom to travel ...