Free Society

George S. Schuyler, Anti-Racist Champion of Liberty

by Richard M. Ebeling August 20, 2019

One of the most difficult subjects to discuss in America today is race. It is the proverbial “third rail,” which, if talked about outside of the politically correct corridor of “identity politics,” is almost instant death. If you are “white,” anything you say not consistent with the paradigm of identity politics is condemned as explicit or hidden racist attitudes, beliefs, ...

Indoor Vaping, Like Smoking, Now Up In Smoke

by Christine Smith August 12, 2019

Colorado, as with many other states and various municipalities nationwide, has added more regulation to prohibit vaping. This one is an update (signed by the governor May 29, 2019) to amend the Clean Indoor Air Act we've had here since 2006. The Colorado ban now makes vaping illegal in all places smoking is currently banned, essentially most indoor work or ...

We’re All Enemies of the State

by John W. Whitehead August 8, 2019

“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 We’ve been down this road many times before. If the government is consistent about any one thing, it is this: it has an unnerving tendency to exploit crises and use ...

Fat Chance

by Laurence M. Vance August 5, 2019

Should employers have the right to discriminate in hiring on the basis of obesity? The Washington State Supreme Court recently ruled that “it is illegal for employers in Washington to refuse to hire qualified potential employees because the employer perceives them to be obese.” That follows guidelines released by the New York City Commission on Human Rights stating that discrimination ...

The Rise of the American Gestapo

by John W. Whitehead August 2, 2019

“Adolf Hitler is alive and well in the United States, and he is fast rising to power.”—Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, on the danger posed by the FBI to our civil liberties Despite the finger-pointing and outcries of dismay from those who are watching the government discard the rule of law at ...

2002 Landmarks on the Road to “1984” Orwellian Hell

by James Bovard August 1, 2019

Next month will be the 18th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Politicians and bureaucrats wasted no time after that carnage to unleash the Surveillance State on average Americans, treating every person like a terrorist suspect. Since the government failed to protect the public, Americans somehow forfeited their constitutional right to privacy. Despite heroic efforts by former NSA staffer Edward Snowden and a host of activists ...

Hazony’s Tradition-Based Society Is a Form of Social Engineering

by Richard M. Ebeling July 31, 2019

At any moment in time, the world seems to be going to hell in a handbasket. Manners are missing; ethics are being eliminated; culture is corrupted; social attitudes are supercilious; virtues are vanishing; literature is mostly licentious; industry and commerce are materialistically crude and callous; and humaneness is hamstrung by greed and selfishness. It’s the end of civilization. And ...

The Tyranny of the Police State Disguised as Law-and-Order

by John W. Whitehead July 25, 2019

“But these weren’t the kind of monsters that had tentacles and rotting skin, the kind a seven-year-old might be able to wrap his mind around—they were monsters with human faces, in crisp uniforms, marching in lockstep, so banal you don’t recognize them for what they are until it’s too late.” ― Ransom Riggs, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children ...

Conservative Nationalism Is Not About Liberty

by Richard M. Ebeling July 23, 2019

For almost 200 years there have been two political movements in opposition to the liberal political philosophy of individual liberty, free markets, and constitutionally limited government: socialism and nationalism. They both have called for reducing the individual to a cog in the machine serving a wider collectivist good. Given that socialism has been making a political comeback, it is ...

Simon Newcomb and the Let-Alone Principle

by Richard M. Ebeling July 19, 2019

Wherever we turn, there are some people who are busy telling the rest of us how we should live; with whom we should interact, and under what circumstances; how much we should be paid, and where and how we may work and produce; what we should pay for something we want to buy, and how it can ...

Progressive Promises and the Cost To Liberty

by Richard M. Ebeling July 9, 2019

Promises, promises, promises. It is the season for political promises. The candidates competing to be the Democratic Party candidate for president in 2020 are out in force trying to outbid each other with promised horns-of-plenty to any and all who might be voting in that party’s primaries beginning in a mere matter of months.  There are a handful of ...

Learning Liberty and the Power of Principles

by Richard M. Ebeling July 1, 2019

In The Constitution of Liberty, free-market economist and social philosopher F.A. Hayek, quotes in a footnote the famous nineteenth-century scientist Louis Pasteur: “In research, chance only helps those whose minds are well prepared for it.” What Pasteur was, no doubt, getting at is that unless the researcher already has been trained in the principles and methods of his own ...