Free Society

Financial Tyranny

by John W. Whitehead April 12, 2019

If you drive a car, I’ll tax the street, If you try to sit, I’ll tax your seat. If you get too cold I’ll tax the heat, If you take a walk, I’ll tax your feet. Don’t ask me what I want it for If you don’t want to pay some more ‘Cause I’m the taxman, yeah, I’m the taxman… And you’re working for no one ...

Has Modernity Made Us Indecent?

by Richard M. Ebeling April 11, 2019

He dressed decently and had a decent meal before going to work. He showed some common decency toward his next-door neighbor. He did the decent thing to do. From these examples, you might conclude that the word decent refers to following some rule or standard of conduct, or behaving in some proper and ethical way toward others; and you would ...

The America That Was — The Good and the Bad

by Richard M. Ebeling April 1, 2019

We live in a time when an understanding and an appreciation of what a free society can or should be like is being slowly lost. Or so it seems, often, to a friend of human liberty. Political interventionism and a revived interest in “democratic socialism” dominate public discourse in almost every corner of life. Calls are constantly being made for ...

No Sanitized Pages in History, Please!

by Richard M. Ebeling March 26, 2019

Imagine that in 1946 the general-secretary of the United Nations had submitted a resolution to the General Assembly stating that Nazi crimes were so horrendous and despicable that the countries of the world needed to impose a blanket censorship on any public reference to or discussion of Hitler or his henchmen. Only the names of victims were to be ...

Clarity on Diversity and Pluralism

by Richard M. Ebeling March 21, 2019

Freedom and the free society are once again under direct attack by those who espouse far-greater degrees of government control over people’s lives. Wrapping themselves in the cloak of progressivism, “social justice,” and liberation from oppression and discrimination, they use a lexicon of words that are designed to reflect their view of and desires for the world: diversity, inclusiveness, ...

Libertarians and Abortion

by Christine Smith March 20, 2019

As issues of life and death become more pronounced in our society, it is time for those who value freedom, liberty, and nonaggression to re-examine their political position on abortion. The United States is experiencing a resurgence of those who not only condone abortion (and its federal funding) but also seek to extend it to include born infants — now ...

The Student Debt Conundrum

by Laurence M. Vance March 18, 2019

Using data from the Federal Reserve, Student Loan Hero — an organization that provides “resources, tools and information” to help “student loan borrowers understand their student loans and make intelligent repayment decisions” — reports that Among the Class of 2018, 69% of college students took out student loans, and they graduated with an average debt of ...

Reparations Nonsense

by Christine Smith March 11, 2019

Once again we are hearing that reparations should be given to black Americans, this time as political campaign rhetoric from several Democratic presidential candidates. As this subject surfaces again, it’s interesting to observe how many people of differing political ideologies appear to be confused by it. But it’s really very simple: There is no legitimate property-rights claim to be ...

Blasphemy Laws and Other Victimless Crimes

by Laurence M. Vance March 1, 2019

Pakistan is a Muslim country with harsh blasphemy laws. In 1986, during the military rule of Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, it became a capital offence for anyone to insult the prophet Mohammed. Government officials who opposed the nation’s blasphemy laws have been assassinated. Late last year, a Christian woman in Pakistan, Aasiya Noreen, who had been convicted of blasphemy by a ...

The Fallacy of a Government Shutdown, the Reality of Freedom Lost

by Richard M. Ebeling March 1, 2019

Another partial federal government “shutdown” began on December 22, 2018. The impression from the media and other commentaries easily suggested that the political and economic sky was about to fall. Various government departments were closed and some government services were reduced. And the fear was fostered that soon masses of people would be dying in the streets or driven ...

The Age of Tyrannical Surveillance

by John W. Whitehead February 27, 2019

“We know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We can more or less know what you’re thinking about… Your digital identity will live forever... because there’s no delete button.”—Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt Uncle Sam wants you. Correction: Big Brother wants you. To be technically accurate, Big Brother—aided and abetted by his corporate partners in crime—wants ...

Rule by Fiat

by John W. Whitehead February 21, 2019

“When the President does it, that means that it is not illegal.”—Richard Nixon Who pays the price for the dissolution of the constitutional covenant that holds the government and its agents accountable to the will of the people? We all do. This ill-advised decision by President Trump to circumvent the Constitution’s system of checks and balances by declaring a national emergency in ...