Free Society

The Great College-Hunger Hoax

by James Bovard March 1, 2020

“Nearly half our college students are going hungry,” presidential candidate Bernie Sanders proclaimed in late November. Sanders’s tweet went viral, spurring more than 20,000 re-tweets and “likes.” Starving college students are a new rallying cry for social-justice warriors, spurring demands for new federal handouts and maybe even a college student-meal program modeled after school lunches. Some colleges are hyping hungry students ...

Liberty versus Political Paternalism

by Richard M. Ebeling March 1, 2020

In 1951, German free-market economist Wilhelm Röpke (1899–1966), delivered a series of lectures in Cairo, Egypt, titled “The Problems of Economic Order.” Looking over the terrain of modern politics and policy thinking in the world at that time, he told his audience, If I were asked to say what appeared to me as one of the gravest features of our ...

Capitalism, Freedom, and Progress

by George Leef March 1, 2020

Capitalism in America: An Economic History of the United States by Alan Greenspan and Adrian Wooldridge (Penguin Press, 2018); 496 pages. Almost everyone knows Alan Greenspan as the long-serving chairman of the Federal Reserve System. What far fewer know is that in his younger days, Greenspan was a devotee of Ayn Rand and her anti-collectivist philosophy. ...

A Case for Not Giving Up on the American Dream

by John W. Whitehead February 14, 2020

“We must, indeed, all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”—Benjamin Franklin Listen: we don’t have to agree about everything. We don’t even have to agree about most things. We don’t have to love each other. We don’t even have to like each other. And we certainly don’t need to think alike or dress alike or worship alike or vote ...

The New Totalitarians

by Richard M. Ebeling February 12, 2020

This year marks the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. The defeat of Nazism in Europe was seen as not only a victory over tyranny, terror, and mass murder, but a triumph for the preservation of many of the most cherished human freedoms, including freedom of speech and the press, and free association. Such freedoms ...

FDR and Stalin Planned the Future of the World

by Richard M. Ebeling January 28, 2020

Seventy-five years ago, during the week of February 4-11, 1945, the most important Allied conference during the Second World War was held at Yalta on the Crimean Peninsula in the Soviet Union, between U.S. president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, British prime minister, Winston Churchill, and Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin. Their decisions determined the fate of tens of millions of people ...

Deadly Distractions

by John W. Whitehead January 23, 2020

And so it continues. This impeachment fiasco is merely the latest in a never-ending series of distractions, distortions, and political theater aimed at diverting the public’s attention from the sinister advances of the American Police State. Don’t allow yourselves to be distracted, diverted or mesmerized by the cheap theater tricks. This impeachment spectacle is Shakespearean in its scope: full of sound and ...

John Stuart Mill on Slavery and the American Civil War

by Richard M. Ebeling January 21, 2020

One of the most heated and controversial issues today concerns the place of slavery in the history of the United States, and attitudes toward the institution of human bondage in the Western world in general. Another theme in modern political debate is the nature and role of classical liberalism as a force for human freedom and dignity or as a ...

Nullify Government Tyranny

by John W. Whitehead January 6, 2020

“The people have the power, all we have to do is awaken that power in the people. The people are unaware. They’re not educated to realize that they have power. The system is so geared that everyone believes the government will fix everything. We are the government.”—John Lennon Twenty years into the 21st century, and what ...

Caution: Government May Be Hazardous to Your Liberty

by Laurence M. Vance December 30, 2019

The Federal Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act of 1965 required a health warning to be placed on packs of cigarettes sold in the United States. The original warning, which appeared on cigarette packs from January 1, 1966, through October 31, 1970, was Caution: Cigarette Smoking May Be Hazardous To Your Health There are more dangerous things that Americans should be on ...

How Would Jesus Fare in the American Police State?

by John W. Whitehead December 20, 2019

Once upon a midnight clear, there was a child’s cry, a blazing star hung over a stable, and wise men came with birthday gifts. We haven’t forgotten that night down the centuries. We celebrate it with stars on Christmas trees, with the sound of bells, and with gifts… We forget nobody, adult or child. All the stockings are filled, ...

Understanding the Freedom We Have Lost

by Richard M. Ebeling December 1, 2019

Few people can really understand what life is like in a totalitarian state unless they have lived there or have had the opportunity to visit such a society for an extended period of time. For most Americans it seems like an impenetrable world that is not easily comprehended. How can you imagine living in a society with virtually none ...