The Tyranny of the Covid-19 Eviction Moratorium by Jacob G. Hornberger July 2, 2021 The U.S. Supreme Court recently permitted the eviction moratorium established by the Centers for Disease Control to continue, at least until July 31, when the CDC plans to lift it. The Court wrongly decided the matter. It should have immediately lifted the moratorium. Historically, governments have held “inherent” police powers to protect the health of the citizenry. But the federal government is different. It was never intended to have inherent powers. Our American ancestors would never have accepted the Constitution if it was calling into existence a government with inherent powers. Instead, the powers of the federal government are limited to those enumerated in the Constitution. If a power isn’t enumerated, it cannot be legally exercised. The Constitution does not delegate any power to the federal government to enact laws to protect people’s health. Therefore, the CDC’s eviction moratorium is illegal under our form of government. The ...
Private Charity, Personal Choice by Laurence M. Vance July 2, 2021 Although Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.)—the son of former House member and Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul—would identify more as a conservative and a constitutionalist than a libertarian, he is certainly the most libertarian member of the U.S. Senate. Sen. Paul is usually the top scorer on The Freedom Index: A Congressional Scorecard Based on the U.S. Constitution, published in the New American magazine twice a year. The index “rates congressmen based on their adherence to constitutional principles of limited government, fiscal responsibility, national sovereignty, and a traditional foreign policy of avoiding foreign entanglements.” It looks at ten key pieces of legislation and scores members of Congress based on how they voted. Scores are derived by dividing a congressman’s constitutional votes by the total number of votes cast and multiplying by 100. So, the higher the score, the better. To give you an idea of just how much more libertarian Sen. Paul is than the Senate ...
Healthcare Whack-a-Mole by Jacob G. Hornberger July 1, 2021 Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, a number of libertarians and conservatives have played an extensive game of Whack-a-Mole. That’s the Japanese game in which plastic moles pop up at random on a board and a person whacks each mole as it appears. In Healthcare Whack-a-Mole, governmental assaults on liberty have continuously popped up during the course of the pandemic. As each one has popped up, some libertarians and conservatives have expended a large amount of time and effort whacking each assault as it has popped up. Mandatory mask mandates? Bam! Whack it! “Government has no legitimate authority to tell me whether I have to wear a mask! Anyway, masks don’t do any good. They can actually be quite harmful. I’ll decide whether to wear a mask.” Mandatory closure of businesses? Bam! Whack it! “Government can’t tell businesses whether to shut down or not, at least not in what purports to be a free society. Private businesses have the right to operate freely ...
Modern Collectivist Trends and How to Resist Them by Richard M. Ebeling July 1, 2021 The First World War and the Great Depression were, I would suggest, the major events that have shaped most of the political, social, and economic trends for more than a century. The Great War, as it used to be called, undermined the generally “classical” liberal world that prevailed, at least in much of Western and Central Europe and North ...
Why a Standing Army and a Welfare State? by Jacob G. Hornberger June 23, 2021 One of the major distinguishing characteristics, philosophically speaking, between our American ancestors and today’s Americans is with respect to the national-security establishment. Our ancestors fiercely opposed that type of governmental structure. Today’s Americans vociferously support it. That was why our ancestors chose to bring into existence a limited-government republic, one that only had a basic, relatively small military. ...
The FBI’s Mafia-Style Justice: To Fight Crime, the FBI Sponsors 15 Crimes a Day by John W. Whitehead June 21, 2021 “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.”— Friedrich Nietzsche Almost every tyranny being perpetrated by the U.S. government against the citizenry—purportedly to keep us safe and the nation secure—has come about as a result of some threat manufactured in one way or another by our own government. Think about it. Cyberwarfare. Terrorism. ...
If We Are Going to Achieve Freedom by Jacob G. Hornberger June 21, 2021 There is no doubt that when it comes to freedom, the situation in America is not good. Ever since I founded FFF some 31 years ago, our lives as welfare-warfare serfs has gotten progressively worse, year after year. One option, of course, is to give up. Just surrender and accept our serfdom as a permanent condition and ...
Can Employers Require Employees to Get Vaccinated? by Jacob G. Hornberger June 16, 2021 The issue of whether any government can force people to get the Covid-19 vaccine is a no-brainer for libertarians. For us, the answer is very simple: Of course not. In a genuinely free society, people have the right to decide for themselves whether to get vaccinated or not. But what if an employer requires his employees to get ...
The Labor Shortage Is a Government-Contrived Scarcity by Richard M. Ebeling June 15, 2021 Not long ago, my wife and I decided to go out to our favorite Thai restaurant not far from our home in the Charleston, South Carolina area, which we had not been to for well over a year. With so many retail businesses having returned to a no-mask, no-distancing “normality,” we were looking forward to a tasty inside, sit-down ...
Advancing Liberty in the Pandemic by Future of Freedom Foundation June 8, 2021 What has happened to freedom in the last year in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic? Join FFF president Jacob G. Hornberger as he examines that question. Go to the podcast. Please subscribe to our email newsletter FFF Daily here.
Make Way for the Snitch State by John W. Whitehead June 3, 2021 It is just when people are all engaged in snooping on themselves and one another that they become anesthetized to the whole process. As information itself becomes the largest business in the world, data banks know more about individual people than the people do themselves. The more the data banks record about each one of us, the less we ...
Inflation Is a Dangerous Way to Get Rid of Debt Burdens by Richard M. Ebeling June 2, 2021 Suppose you lent someone $100, and when they paid you back they only handed you, say, $99 or $80. Would you consider the borrower to have kept his promise and contractual obligation? Or would you think that he had cheated you out of a part of the money you had lent him in good faith? Well, there are those ...
