Free Society

John Lennon Was Right

by John W. Whitehead December 8, 2017

Militant nonviolent resistance works. Peaceful, prolonged protests work. Mass movements with huge numbers of participants work. Yes, America, it is possible to use occupations and civil disobedience to oppose government policies, counter injustice and bring about change outside the confines of the ballot box. It has been done before. It can be done again. For example, in May of 1932, more than 43,000 people, ...

Limited Government and a Free Society, Part 1

by Gregory Bresiger December 1, 2017

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 Presidential use of the executive order, along with its relative, the executive agreement, has become the “very definition of tyranny” and an affront to limited government. The use of executive orders has dramatically increased over time. George Washington issued about one executive order a year. However, by ...

America Breaks Down

by John W. Whitehead November 8, 2017

This country has been having a nationwide nervous breakdown since 9/11. A nation of people suddenly broke, the market economy goes to shit, and they’re threatened on every side by an unknown, sinister enemy. But I don't think fear is a very effective way of dealing with things—of responding to reality. Fear is just another word ...

Capitalism and the Free Society, Part 2

by Richard M. Ebeling November 6, 2017

Part 1 | Part 2 The free enterprise, or capitalist, system has done more to improve the material condition of humanity than any other economic arrangement of human cooperation in all of recorded history. Yet, “capitalism” constantly stands condemned and accused of being the cause of humanity’s wows, while in reality nothing is further from the truth. In ...

One Year Later, Is Trump a Blessing or a Curse to the Deep State?

by John W. Whitehead November 1, 2017

Jesus! Where will it end? How low do you have to stoop in this country to be President? … We’ve come to a point where every four years this national fever rises up — this hunger for the Saviour, the White Knight, the Man on Horseback — and whoever wins becomes so immensely powerful … that when you vote ...

Sarah Grimké and Angelina Grimké Weld: Abolitionists and Feminists

by Neera K. Badhwar November 1, 2017

The American women’s rights movement was born in the bosom of the abolitionist movement. The 19th-century abolitionists and feminists Sarah (1792–1873) and Angelina Grimké (1805–1879) were the first female agents of the American Anti-Slavery Society, as well as pioneers of the American women’s rights movement. Their arguments for women’s rights anticipated many of John Stuart Mill’s arguments in The ...

Capitalism and the Free Society, Part 1

by Richard M. Ebeling October 30, 2017

Part 1 | Part 2 One of the leading ideological punching bags for well over one hundred years has been the ideas, institutions, and impact of “capitalism” on society. Think of something someone does not like in the world and the guilty party causing it is almost always the same – “capitalism.” But what is capitalism, and ...

If Political Candidates Advocated Liberty

by Richard M. Ebeling October 23, 2017

In modern democracies, political cycles never end. As soon as one election is over, those in government office or aspiring to such an office are already running for the next election. Having recently attended a public forum of state-level candidates looking to the 2018 election, I wondered what a real friend of freedom might say if he was offering ...

This Is How Tyranny Rises and Freedom Falls

by John W. Whitehead October 19, 2017

“Every day I ask myself the same question: How can this be happening in America? How can people like these be in charge of our country? If I didn’t see it with my own eyes, I’d think I was having a hallucination.”—Philip Roth, novelist It is easy to be distracted right now by the circus politics that ...

A Culture of Compliance Breeds Despots and Predators

by John W. Whitehead October 11, 2017

“All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible.”― Frank Herbert Power corrupts. Worse, as 19th-century historian Lord Acton concluded, absolute power corrupts absolutely. It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about a politician, an entertainment mogul, a corporate CEO or a ...

Classical Liberalism and the Problem of “Race” in America

by Richard M. Ebeling October 2, 2017

The masterful words in the American Declaration of Independence that have inspired untold millions of people around the world hailed a transformative conception of man and the human condition by declaring that all men were created equal and endowed with certain unalienable rights, including the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. What stood out in these words ...

Slavery and Segregation Were Federal Programs

by David S. D'Amato October 1, 2017

Americans are afflicted with a “collective amnesia” that surrounds the subject of segregation, complacently assured that it was, if anything, a “minor factor” in the striking wealth gap that today divides white from black Americans. In his book The Color of Law, the Economic Policy Institute’s Richard Rothstein argues that not only have Americans forgotten the true legacy of ...