Free Society

The Government Wants to Play God

by John W. Whitehead April 11, 2024

The government wants to play god. It wants the power to decide who lives or dies and whose rights are worthy of protection. Abortion may still be front and center in the power struggle between the Left and the Right over who has the right to decide—the government or the individual—when it comes to bodily autonomy, the right to privacy, sexual ...

Understanding Freedom and Faith in Freedom

by Jacob G. Hornberger April 10, 2024

There are two major obstacles to achieving a genuinely free society in our lifetime: one, a lack of understanding of the genuine principles of freedom, and two, a lack of faith in freedom. The first obstacle involves principally nonlibertarians. The second obstacle involves everyone, including libertarians. If someone were to conduct a survey among the American people today in which people ...

When Dissidents Become Enemies of the State

by John W. Whitehead April 2, 2024

“In these days of worldwide confusion, there is a dire need for men and women who will courageously do battle for truth.”— Martin Luther King Jr. When exposing a crime is treated as committing a crime, you are being ruled by criminals. In the current governmental climate, obeying one’s conscience and speaking truth to the power of the ...

The Never-Ending Federal Surveillance Crime Spree

by James Bovard March 26, 2024

Last December, one of the most intrusive provisions in the federal statute book was set to expire. Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) authorizes the National Security Agency to vacuum up trillions of emails and other data. A bevy of bipartisan members of Congress called for radically curtailing those nullifications of Americans’ privacy. But the effort to ...

Tyranny Is Rising as Freedom Falls

by John W. Whitehead March 22, 2024

“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 Day by day, tyranny is rising as freedom falls. The U.S. military is being used ...

Unheralded Resisters in Nazi Germany: The Edelweiss Pirates, Part 3

by Wendy McElroy March 6, 2024

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 In his essay “Youthful Rebellion as Legitimate Resistance Against the Third Reich,” history professor John Charles Marsland II described the acceleration: By 1942, HJ leaders could not cross the street without incident and many stopped attending their meetings out of fear of molestation. The EP ...

COVID-19 Tested Our Commitment to Freedom

by John W. Whitehead February 28, 2024

“The remedy is worse than the disease.”—Francis Bacon The government never cedes power willingly. Neither should we. If the COVID-19 debacle taught us one thing it is that, as Justice Neil Gorsuch acknowledged, “Rule by indefinite emergency edict risks leaving all of us with a shell of a democracy and civil liberties just as hollow.” Unfortunately, we still haven’t learned. We’re ...

The Disaster of Libertarian Reform of Socialism

by Jacob G. Hornberger February 27, 2024

Prior to my discovery of libertarianism back in the late 1970s, when I was in my late 20s, I had no doubts that I lived in a free society. After all, I had attended 12 years of public (i.e., government) schools, four years of a state-supported college, and then three years of a state-supported law school. Given that indoctrination ...

Trampling on a Symbol of Liberty

by James Bovard February 21, 2024

Last August, 12-year-old Jaiden Rodriguez was kicked out of a public-school classroom in Colorado Springs after school officials decreed that the Gadsden flag patch on his backpack was “disruptive to the classroom environment.” Those Colorado officials didn’t know the meaning of “disruptive.” Thanks to savvy, thoughtful retorts by Jaiden’s mother in a video showdown at the school, the incident spurred ...

Unheralded Resisters in Nazi Germany: The Edelweiss Pirates, Part 2

by Wendy McElroy February 6, 2024

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 In the Hitler Youth, as in classrooms, the goal was to produce obedient, race-conscious Germans who were willing to die for Führer and Fatherland. Hitler explained, “After four years of the Young Folk, they go on to the Hitler Youth, where we have them for another four years.... And even ...

How Tyrannical Governments Stifle Political Dissent

by John W. Whitehead January 18, 2024

“No president from either party should have the sole power to shut down or take control of the internet or any other of our communication channels during an emergency.”—Senator Rand Paul What’s to stop the U.S. government from throwing the kill switch and shutting down phone and internet communications in a time of so-called crisis? After all,

Unheralded Resisters in Nazi Germany: The Edelweiss Pirates, Part 1

by Wendy McElroy January 9, 2024

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 Hitler’s power may lay us low, And keep us locked in chains, But we will smash the chains one day, We’ll be free again We’ve got fists and we can fight, We’ve got knives and we’ll get them out We want freedom, don’t we boys? We’re the fighting Navajos! — song of the Cologne Edelweiss Pirates Everyone ...