Daily Articles

Announcement from FreedomFest

by Future of Freedom Foundation September 22, 2023

This announcement was sent out by the organizers of FreedomFest, an annual event "where free minds meet to celebrate freedom in an open-minded environment." Last week we announced that we are uploading all of our FreedomFest content, starting with this summer's main stage speeches, to our YouTube channel, @TheFreedomFest. We will add new videos ...

FFF Conference: How Austrian Economics Impacted My Life

by Future of Freedom Foundation September 20, 2023

Join us every Thursday evening at 7 p.m. Eastern time for our upcoming live Zoom conference entitled “How I Discovered Austrian Economics.” Each week will feature one of the premier Austrian economists in the world telling his personal story of how he discovered Austrian economics, the impact that it has ...

The Next Crisis Is Anyone’s Guess, But the Government Is Ready to Lockdown the Nation

by John W. Whitehead September 19, 2023

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”—H.L. Mencken First came 9/11, which the government used to transform itself into a police state. Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit, which the police state used to test out its lockdown powers. In ...

Thomas Nixon Carver on the Economics of Conflict versus Cooperation

by Richard M. Ebeling September 18, 2023

Human beings have had two fundamental ways of associating with each other: conflict or cooperation. Both methods have run through all recorded human history, as well as long before human beings left intelligible residues of their actions to be deciphered by those who came after them. Group conflicts have seemed to have a variety of causes: religious, political, linguistic, ...

Movie Review: The Mauritanian

by Lance Lamberton September 14, 2023

If ever one were to doubt or question that the United States has become a national-security state, all he or she would need to do is see the movie The Mauritanian to dispel such doubts. Titled after the name of the obscure Arab country in Africa from which the protagonist is from, it is an inspiring true story of ...

The Bipartisan Assault on the Right to Travel

by Ted Galen Carpenter September 13, 2023

Americans used to boast proudly that unlike most countries in the world, domestic travel in the United States was unfettered by legal obstacles. Unfortunately, an array of restrictions on airline travel reduced that freedom, but one could still drive from Massachusetts to California without once having to “show your papers” at a checkpoint. Increasingly, though, that freedom to travel ...

Dump Trump’s Trade Policy

by Laurence M. Vance September 12, 2023

After “a thorough, transparent, and data-driven investigation,” the U.S. Commerce Department has determined that American companies should pay higher prices for imported tin mill products, which, of course, will be passed on to consumers. Although the Constitution authorizes the federal government (Art. I, Sec. 8, Par. 18) “To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with ...

A Pox on Many Houses in Ukraine

by Jacob G. Hornberger September 8, 2023

When Russia invaded Ukraine, it immediately became an easy decision for today’s interventionists. Their position was both simple and simplistic: Ukraine is a sovereign and independent country. Russia initiated a war against Ukraine by invading the country. Therefore, Russia is bad and should be condemned. Moreover, the U.S. government, as well as NATO, should come to Ukraine’s defense by ...

How the Government Weaponizes Surveillance to Silence Its Critics

by John W. Whitehead September 6, 2023

“Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.” — President Harry S. Truman Ever ...

Disaster Relief, Foreign Aid, and Ukraine

by Laurence M. Vance September 5, 2023

The deadly fire in Lahaina on the Hawaiian island of Maui is the fire seen round the world. The death toll is in the hundreds, with hundreds more still missing and thousands of people evacuated. There is a lot of blame to go around. Progressives are blaming the severity of the fire on climate change. Some people are questioning why ...

The Myth of NATO as a Defensive Alliance

by Ted Galen Carpenter August 31, 2023

Western leaders have long fostered the self-serving myth that NATO is an organization solely for the mutual defense of its members. The corollary is that other nations therefore have no legitimate reason to fear the most powerful military alliance in history. After all, it is an association of peace-loving democracies. The operational expression of the myth is ...

Macaulay and My 75-Cent Epiphanies, Part 1

by James Bovard August 30, 2023

Fearing that my writing style was becoming anemic, I recently sought a literary booster shot from my bookshelves. Happily, a dozen volumes of Thomas Macaulay awaited me. Macaulay made history mesmerizing, and I have been captivated by his speed, grace, and wit for 40 years. Nobody would mistake my shelf of Macaulay books for leather-bound collector items. In 1981, I ...