Daily Articles

The Gold Clause: A Free-Market Gold Standard

by Wendy McElroy January 21, 2021

President Franklin Roosevelt destroyed one of the most valuable uses of gold when he nationalized ownership of the metal in 1933: the gold clause. This value did not return when private ownership of gold was legalized once more in 1974, partly because its use is still discouraged by anti-usury laws. The impact of its sudden absence was dramatized by a ...

Trump’s Fall and the Rise of the Tribal Collectivists

by Richard M. Ebeling January 20, 2021

It has often been said that religious wars are the most unforgiving because one or both protagonists are absolutely, if not fanatically, certain that “the” truth is on their side. This is threatening to become the situation in America today with the ideological dogmatism seen in the mindset and extremism of the identity politics warriors and cancel culture crusaders, ...

Should We?

by Laurence M. Vance January 19, 2021

Every president since George Washington has delivered an inaugural address. Beginning with William McKinley, the address has taken place after the swearing in of the new president instead of before. There have been some notable inaugural addresses. William Henry Harrison’s inaugural address in 1841 was almost two hours long. He delivered the address in freezing weather without a ...

Collectivism Breeds Indifference to the Loss of Liberty

by Richard M. Ebeling January 18, 2021

Who does not want to make the world a better place? With so much sorrow and suffering, poverty and plunder, cynicism and corruption in far too many places, nearly everyone, if asked, will usually say that if he could he would try to make this shared planet of ours a safer, prettier, more prosperous, and less unjust shared domicile ...

Conservative Principles

by Laurence M. Vance January 14, 2021

Back at the beginning of the coronavirus crisis in the United States in March of this year, two Democratic representatives (Tim Ryan of Ohio and Ro Khanna of California) proposed that the federal government give at least $1,000 to every American making less than $65,000 a year. Three Democratic senators (Michael F. Bennet of Colorado, Cory Booker of New ...

Witnessing Lithuania’s 1991 Fight for Freedom from Soviet Power

by Richard M. Ebeling January 13, 2021

Individual liberty and representative democracy as complementary forms of personal and political self-government are precious aspects of shared social life. Given the political and economic events surrounding the recent presidential election and the restrictions on personal freedom due to the government-imposed lockdowns in the face of the coronavirus, it seems appropriate to recall a real fight for a free ...

Black Lives Matter, But Not to Everyone, Part 1

by Jacob G. Hornberger January 12, 2021

Part 1 | Part 2 I recently watched the Netflix series Seberg, which profiles the Hollywood actress Jean Seberg and the U.S. government’s intentional and secret destruction of her. Why did the federal government, specifically the federal government’s national police force, the FBI, decide to destroy Seberg? Among other reasons, it was because back in the late 1960s ...

End Police Tyranny by Repealing Laws

by James Bovard January 11, 2021

“I can’t breathe,” George Floyd protested as a Minneapolis cop pressed his knee onto Floyd’s neck for eight minutes while Floyd was lying face down. Floyd’s death sparked violent protests, looting, and arson attacks in Minneapolis and St. Paul. It is just the latest reminder that politicians and judges — through federal law and judicial interpretation — have turned ...

The Real Constitutional Crisis

by Laurence M. Vance January 7, 2021

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, a crisis (plural: crises) is: 1a: the turning point for better or worse in an acute disease or fever b: a paroxysmal attack of pain, distress, or disordered function c: an emotionally significant event or radical change of status in a person’s life; a midlife crisis 2: the decisive moment (as in a literary plot); The crisis of ...

Will People Now Ask the Fundamental Question?

by Michael Swanson January 6, 2021

The Age of Illusions: How America Squandered Its Cold War Victory by Andrew Bacevich (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2020), 236 pages. Andrew Bacevich’s new book, The Age of Illusions: How America Squandered Its Cold War Victory, examines the period of time between the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the election of Donald Trump in 2016. ...

Conservative Hypocrisy on Foreign Aid

by Laurence M. Vance January 5, 2021

After initially threatening to veto it, Donald Trump signed into law a $2.3 trillion, 5,593-page spending bill that no member of Congress had read. The “Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021” (H.R.133), which is a combination of twelve annual funding bills, COVID-19 relief, and pounds and pounds of pork, passed the House in two separate votes ...

Freedom versus Paternalism in the Coming Decade

by Richard M. Ebeling January 4, 2021

We are not only standing at the beginning of a new year in 2021, but at the entrance of the third decade of the 21st century. With a fifth of this latest century now behind us, what have we learned so far? I, personally, fear that the answer to that is little that is right and true, as I ...