The Libertarian Angle – Ron Paul and the Battle for Liberty by Jacob G. Hornberger June 16, 2015 Each week, FFF president Jacob Hornberger discusses the hot topics of the day. This week, Jacob and special co-host Daniel McAdams, Executive Director of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, discuss the importance of a non-interventionist foreign policy and the dismantling of the welfare state. The Libertarian Angle airs weekly. Go to the podcast.
Clinton or Bush? Liberal or Conservative? What’s the Difference? by Jacob G. Hornberger June 23, 2015 Last Sunday,longtime Washington Post journalist Dan Balz raised my hopes and then quickly dashed them. In an article in last Sunday’s Post comparing Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush, Balz immediately got my attention with the following sentence near the beginning of his article: “Though of different parties and different philosophies, Clinton and Bush share one thing in common: They are unabashed policy wonks.” Sure, Clinton is a Democrat and Bush is a Republican. Everybody knows that. But different philosophies? My immediate reaction was: This article should be interesting. Not surprisingly though, Balz then went on to do nothing more than explain the differences in Clinton’s and Bush’s respective policy wonkiness. By the time I reached the end of the article, I was practically falling asleep. Of course, this type of nonsense has been going on the mainstream press for as long as I can remember. I recall how the mainstream press went agog many years ago when Republican operative Mary Matalin married Democrat ...
F. A. Hayek and Why Government Can’t Manage Society, Part I by Richard M. Ebeling June 25, 2015 This year marks the seventieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War. On May 8th, Nazi Germany surrendered to the Allied Powers in Europe. On September 2nd, Imperial Japan surrendered to the Allies on the deck of the U.S.S. Missouri in Tokyo Bay, thus ending a global conflict that is estimated to have cost the lives of upwards of 50 million people. In autumn of 1945, everyone was looking forward, finally, to a world at peace that could recover from the destruction of a catastrophic war and move towards a bright new future. But what kind of world was it to be? Nazism and fascism had been militarily and ideologically pulverized in the conflict. No one wanted to goose-step to Hitler and Mussolini’s grandiose dreams of a world-ruling master race or a war-worshipping aggressive nationalism to which innocent human beings were to be sacrificed. The Postwar Hope for a Better World Through Soviet Socialism Instead, many looked East to the Soviet ...
The Libertarian Angle – Ron Paul and the Battle for Liberty by Future of Freedom Foundation June 16, 2015 Each week, FFF president Jacob Hornberger discusses the hot topics of the day. This week, Jacob and special co-host Daniel McAdams, Executive Director of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, discuss the importance of a non-interventionist foreign policy and the dismantling of the welfare state. The Libertarian Angle airs weekly. Go to the podcast.
Global Thug State by Matthew Harwood April 1, 2015 Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World by Tom Engelhardt (Haymarket Books 2014), 200 pages. “A shadow government has conquered twenty-first-century Washington. We have the makings of a thug state of the first order.” No two sentences more clearly and disturbingly summarize what Tom Engelhardt’s Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a ...
Immigration Socialism or the Free Market? by Jacob G. Hornberger July 30, 2015 If it’s presidential campaign season, then it’s time for the periodic furor over immigration. Many Americans are once again pacing the floors at night over the invasion by the illegals that is threatening to destroy America. I sometimes wonder how many people have gotten gray hair because of the immigration “crisis.” Among my favorite political bromides is, “The immigration system ...
Realism versus Nonintervention by Joseph R. Stromberg April 1, 2015 Foreign-policy realists have been around for time out of memory, but the unbearable follies of post–9/11 U.S. foreign policy have dramatically increased their prestige. A current short list of realists would include Andrew Bacevich, Steven Walt, Ivan Eland, and Ted Galen Carpenter (perhaps also Daniel Larison of American Conservative). These realists seem like sanity itself compared to our entrenched, ...
John Stuart Mill and the Dangers of Unrestrained Government by Richard M. Ebeling August 13, 2015 One of the great voices for personal liberty was that of the British economist and political philosopher, John Stuart Mill. His essay, “On Liberty,” though penned well over 150 years ago, is a classic statement that the individual should be respected in his right of freedom of thought, speech and action. But John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) was also one of ...
There Is Only One Libertarian Position on Immigration by Jacob G. Hornberger August 25, 2015 There is a common perception that there are two alternative libertarian positions on immigration: government-controlled borders and open borders. Nothing could be further from the truth. There is only one libertarian position on immigration, and that position is open immigration or open borders. After all, government-controlled borders and open borders are opposite positions. How could opposite positions on immigration both be ...
The Free Market versus the Bureaucratic State by Richard M. Ebeling August 26, 2015 The U.S. presidential election of 2016 may still be well over a year away, but those who dream of sitting at the desk in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C. are busy scrambling for campaign supporters, financial contributions, and potential voters in the party primaries that will influence who will run in the general election. As ...
Should Libertarians Support Socialism and Tyranny? by Jacob G. Hornberger August 28, 2015 With laws come enforcement. Whenever one supports a law, he necessarily supports the enforcement of the law. After all, it wouldn’t make any sense to support a law and oppose its enforcement. That would be like supporting lightning and opposing thunder. This point is an important one for libertarians in the context of the immigration debate. There are obviously lots of ...
The Simplicity of Libertarianism by Laurence M. Vance June 1, 2015 Libertarianism has been defined as an ethical system that seeks to preserve the liberty of individuals and as a political philosophy concerned with the permissible use of force or violence. These are two sides of the same coin. As libertarianism’s greatest theorist, Murray Rothbard, explained, Libertarianism is not and does not pretend to be a complete moral, or aesthetic theory; it ...