Slavery Reexamined, Part 2 by Charles Adams February 1, 2000 Part 1 | Part 2 But the tax slavery vs. chattel slavery story is not over. The one place medieval serfdom did not take root was in Russia. Unlike the farmers in Europe, the small farmer in Russia during the Middle Ages was free, and he could travel about the ...
Let’s Stick with Traditional American Values! by Jacob G. Hornberger February 1, 2000 Upon reading Hans-Herman Hoppe’s article “On Free Immigration and Forced Integration,” I couldn’t help but wonder whether he first reached the conclusion that he wanted to reach and then constructed a set of arguments to support that conclusion. Hoppe begins his article by correctly pointing out that from a ...
Liberty and Virtue: Invaluable and Inseparable: Part 2 by Doug Bandow January 1, 2000 Part 1 | Part 2 Attempting to forcibly make people virtuous would make society itself less virtuous in three important ways. First, individuals would lose the opportunity to exercise virtue. They would not face the same set of temptations and be forced to choose between good and evil. In some ...
Slavery Reexamined, Part 1 by Charles Adams January 1, 2000 Part 1 | Part 2 Slavery is a powerful word, evoking ugly and horrifying memories in our society during the past centuries. We assume that our kind of slavery was the world's worst, and that the abolition of slavery throughout the world was the most important social accomplishment of the last century. No doubt ...
Liberty and Virtue: Invaluable and Inseparable, Part 1 by Doug Bandow December 1, 1999 Part 1 | Part 2 There is no quicker means of raising a skeptical eye among many conservatives and libertarians alike than to endorse both liberty and virtue. Many people who consider freedom the preeminent political objective perceive support for virtue to be an implicit call for restrictive new laws. ...
The Virtue of Freedom by Jacob G. Hornberger December 1, 1999 Christmas is the perfect time of year to reflect on such things as freedom and virtue. People give presents to their friends and loved ones, donate food and clothing to the poor, and make contributions to their churches and other worthy causes. And they do it all voluntarily. No one forces them to do so. Do you ever wonder how ...
Child Labor and the British Industrial Revolution, Part 2 by Lawrence W. Reed October 1, 1999 Part 1 | Part 2 It has not been uncommon for historians, including many who lived and wrote in the 19th century, to report the travails of the apprentice children without ever realizing they were effectively indicting government, not the economic arrangement of free exchange we call capitalism. In 1857, Alfred Kydd published a two-volume work entitled ...
A Libertarian Visits Cuba, Part 3 (of 3) by Jacob G. Hornberger September 1, 1999 Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 When I arrived in Cuba, an El Salvadoran was being tried for terroristic bombing and four Cuban dissidents were being tried for criticizing the Cuban system, and the trials were being shown on national television. Tension was in the air. Nevertheless, even though it is a grave criminal offense to ...
A Libertarian Visits Cuba, Part 2 (of 3) by Jacob G. Hornberger September 1, 1999 Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 Although Castro had not been a member of the Communist Party during the revolution, he quickly began converting Cuba into a Marxist-Leninist economic "paradise," and secured assistance from the Soviet Union. As part of the socialization of Cuba, Castro ended up nationalizing just about everything, domestic and foreign, including American ...
A Libertarian Visits Cuba, Part 1 (of 3) by Jacob G. Hornberger September 1, 1999 Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 Last spring, I spent a most fascinating week in one of the world's last bastions of communism - Cuba. I had applied for a license from the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the U.S. Department of the Treasury to travel to Cuba to conduct an informal study of ...
Child Labor and the British Industrial Revolution, Part 1 by Lawrence W. Reed September 1, 1999 Part 1 | Part 2 Everyone agrees that in the 100 years between 1750 and 1850 there took place in Great Britain profound economic changes. It was the age of the Industrial Revolution, complete with a cascade of technical innovations, a vast increase in industrial production, a renaissance of world trade, and a rapid growth of urban populations. Where historians ...
The Power of Truth by Leo N. Tolstoy September 1, 1999 The power of the government is maintained by public opinion, and with this power the government, by means of its organs — its officials, law courts, schools, churches, even the press — can always maintain the public opinion which they need. Public opinion produces the power, and the power produces public opinion. And there appears ...