Freedom Daily Archive

Dalton Trumbo and the Hollywood Blacklist

by Jacob G. Hornberger February 1, 2016

I wish every American would see the movie Trumbo, starring Bryan Cranston, which was released last November. The movie is based on a true story. It depicts how the U.S. anti-communist crusade during the Cold War damaged or ruined the lives of many innocent people, including Hollywood screen-writer Dalton Trumbo and nine others, who became known as the Hollywood ...

The Census Bureau’s Latest Peril to Freedom

by James Bovard February 1, 2016

The Census Bureau is sending its hefty American Community Survey to more than three million households a year. I recently received this 28-page tsunami of questions about everything from my plumbing to my profession to my ethnicity and income. But as a former Census taker who has written about Census controversies for more than 25 years, I distrust this ...

The Fatal Flaw

by Laurence M. Vance February 1, 2016

The presidential primary season is in full swing. Current and former Democratic and Republican candidates alike have put forward various tax-reform proposals. Some of their proposals were officially unveiled at a press conference; others were unofficially presented in campaign speeches or during one of the debates. Some rehash old proposals, others recommend something entirely new. But whether Democratic, Republican, ...

The Right to Keep and Bear Arms as a Check on Tyrants

by Scott McPherson February 1, 2016

Whatever makes kings can unmake them. — Isabel Paterson, The God of the Machine Service in the militia, for purposes of national defense, suppression of rebellion, and answering the “hue and cry,” was widely understood as an ancient right and duty of the free citizen. By securing to individual citizens “their private arms,” the Framers of the Constitution were also ...

Securing the Blessings of Liberty

by David S. D'Amato February 1, 2016

The Conscience of the Constitution: The Declaration of Independence and the Right to Liberty by Timothy Sandefur (Cato Institute, 2014), 200 pages. In his book The Conscience of the Constitution: The Declaration of Independence and the Right to Liberty, Timothy Sandefur, an attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation and a Cato Institute adjunct scholar, argues that “the primacy ...

Gun Control and the Right to Resist Tyranny

by Jacob G. Hornberger January 1, 2016

If Jews in Nazi Germany had been free to own guns, would that have diminished the impact of the Holocaust? GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson candidate set off a political firestorm by proclaiming that it would have. Gun-rights critics went on the attack, saying that the right to bear arms would have had no effect on the number of Jews ...

Supreme Fashion Reject

by James Bovard January 1, 2016

“You should never wear your best trousers when you go out to fight for freedom and truth,” the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen declared in his famous play An Enemy of the People.  Unfortunately, the justices on the Supreme Court of the United States — the sacred burial ground of Americans’ rights and liberties — are not members of Ibsen’s ...

The Libertarian Solution

by Laurence M. Vance January 1, 2016

The United States of America is facing some major issues in the twenty-first century. The national debt is $18.5 trillion. The budget deficit is $500 billion. Homelessness is widespread in most major cities. Student-loan debt is more than a trillion dollars. Social Security and Medicare are insolvent. Government spending continues to skyrocket. There are more than 45 million Americans ...

Closed-Border Libertarians: It’s Time to End the War on Immigration

by Will Tippens January 1, 2016

Warrantless searches and seizures on a massive scale, bureaucratic logjams, arbitrary edicts that squelch freedom of association, unchecked waste and corruption — it is difficult to reconcile any of these symptoms of big government with liberty. And yet, many who strongly value freedom still support all of them in the name of border control. For these “closed-border libertarians”, the argument ...

Welcome Back to Freedom

by Matthew Harwood January 1, 2016

The Dark Net: Inside the Digital Underworld by Jamie Bartlett (Brooklyn: Melville House Publishing, 2015), 320 pages. Do you really want someone to die? If you could help bring about someone’s demise by anonymously and securely placing a bet on when that particular someone might take a dirtnap, would you? That’s the premise of the Assassination Market, an ...

The Tyranny of Eminent Domain

by David S. D'Amato January 1, 2016

The Grasping Hand: Kelo v. City of New London and the Limits of Eminent Domain by Ilya Somin (University of Chicago Press, 2015), 336 pages. The Supreme Court’s 2005 decision in Kelo v. City of New London has become infamous, singled out by defenders of liberty and property for special opprobrium. The Court’s opinion was a sobering reminder ...

The Inanity of the Cold War

by Jacob G. Hornberger December 1, 2015

There were many inanities that came with the Cold War, the 45-year period of tension between the United States and the Soviet Union. In fact, one might easily argue that the entire Cold War was an exercise in inanity. U.S. officials, of course, have always maintained that the Cold War was necessary to prevent the Soviet Union from imposing communism ...