Daily Articles

Authoritarians Drunk on Power

by John W. Whitehead July 28, 2021

The executive power in our government is not the only, perhaps not even the principal, object of my solicitude. The tyranny of the legislature is really the danger most to be feared, and will continue to be so for many years to come. The tyranny of the executive power will come in its turn, but at a more distant ...

Biden’s Rescue Act Targets Americans’ Freedoms

by James Bovard July 27, 2021

Since the 1800s, surly Americans have derided politicians for spending tax dollars “like drunken sailors.” Until recently, that was considered a grave character fault. But Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan Act shows that inebriated spending is now the path to national salvation. It was a common saying in America in the 1930s that “we cannot squander our way to prosperity.” ...

The Seven Deadly Sins of Government

by Laurence M. Vance July 26, 2021

What do King Solomon, Pope Gregory I (Gregory the Great), Dante Alighieri, and Mohandas Gandhi have to do with modern governments? Nothing, really, except that their emphasis on seven deadly evils provides us with the perfect pattern to categorize the deadly sins of government. “These six things doth the LORD hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him,” said King ...

Still Divided, Enslaved & Locked Down

by John W. Whitehead July 22, 2021

A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved—I do not expect the house to fall—but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. — Abraham ...

Under Biden Free Enterprise Means Government Control

by Richard M. Ebeling July 21, 2021

George Orwell famously coined the term “newspeak” in his 1949 anti-utopian futuristic novel, 1984, in which commonsense words were reversed in their meaning. Thus, “peace” meant “war,” and “love” meant “hate.” In our current world of political correctness, “equal rights” means “privilege,” and “freedom” means “oppression.” Now, with President Biden’s recent executive order on “active” enforcement of antitrust laws, ...

Frank Chodorov’s Peaceful, Persistent Revolution, Part 1

by Wendy McElroy July 20, 2021

Part 1 | Part 2 It is easy to imagine the libertarian icon Murray Rothbard (1926–1995) modeling himself on his mentor, the Old Right icon Frank A. Chodorov (1887–1966), in the same manner as Chodorov undoubtedly looked to his mentor, Albert Jay Nock (1870–1945). As a young grad student Rothbard stumbled across Chodorov’s pamphlet Taxation Is Robbery. ...

James Woolsey’s JFK Conspiracy Theory, Part 1

by Jacob G. Hornberger July 19, 2021

Part 1 | Part 2 Former CIA Director R. James Woolsey has written a newly published book entitled Operation Dragon, which poses one of the silliest conspiracy theories ever in the Kennedy assassination. Woolsey says that Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and Lee Harvey Oswald conspired to assassinate John Kennedy. He says that Khrushchev later changed his mind ...

Neither Necessary nor Proper

by Laurence M. Vance July 16, 2021

It was sixteen years ago last month that the U.S. Supreme Court, in the case of Gonzales v. Raich (2005), ruled that the Controlled Substances Act (21 U.S.C. 801) did not exceed the power of Congress under the Commerce Clause as applied to the intrastate cultivation and possession of marijuana for medical use. In this case, Angel ...

Appreciating F. A. Hayek’s Insights on Money and the Business Cycle

by Richard M. Ebeling July 14, 2021

Over the last few months, fears over rising price inflation have, again, become the focus of political policy makers and media pundits. While generally rising prices have a variety of deleterious effects, attention is often not given to how inflationary processes work, their negative effects beneath the surface of measured movements in the “price level.” Ninety years ago, the ...

The Second Amendment’s Right to Bear Arms: What It Means

by John W. Whitehead July 13, 2021

“A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” — The Second Amendment to the US Constitution You can largely determine where a person will fall in the debate over gun control and the Second Amendment based on their view of government ...

Help Us Defend Our Civil Liberties

by Jacob G. Hornberger July 13, 2021

On the heels of our very successful online Zoom conference in April and May on “The National Security State and the Kennedy Assassination,” we now wish to do another online Zoom conference this fall on the critical importance of “Restoring Civil Liberties in America.” I am writing to see ...

What Is Missing in the Arguments against a Minimum-Wage Hike?

by Laurence M. Vance July 12, 2021

For several years now, Democrats, liberals, progressives, Democratic socialists, and socialists not afraid to proudly wear the name have been agitating for an increase in the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour. Organized labor groups, many large corporations, and organizations such as Fight for $15 have joined them. A standard 40-hour workweek at $15 an hour results in ...