Free Society

Adam Smith’s Moral Path through Quagmire

by Wendy McElroy October 1, 2016

Adam Smith’s book The Theory of Moral Sentiments offers a path through a dangerous social quagmire. Namely, the law increasingly demands that peaceful acts conform to a specific state-approved morality. The process turns morality into a matter of state and law rather than one of individual conscience. The politically correct justify mandatory morality in the name of social justice or ...

Wards of the Nanny State: Protecting America’s Children from Police State Goons, Bureaucratic Idiots, and Mercenary Creeps

by John W. Whitehead September 21, 2016

When an opponent declares, ‘I will not come over to your side,’ said in a speech on November 6, 1933, “I calmly say, ‘Your child belongs to us already… What are you? You will pass on. Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time they will know nothing else but this new community.’”—As ...

Your Money or Your Life

by John W. Whitehead September 15, 2016

“The fact is that the government, like a highwayman, says to a man: Your money, or your life. And many, if not most, taxes are paid under the compulsion of that threat. The government does not, indeed, waylay a man in a lonely place, spring upon him from the road side, and, holding a pistol to his head, proceed ...

The Tyranny of 9/11

by John W. Whitehead September 8, 2016

“No one man can terrorize a whole nation unless we are all his accomplices.” ― Edward R. Murrow We’ve walked a strange and harrowing road since September 11, 2001, littered with the debris of our once-vaunted liberties. We have gone from a nation that took great pride in being a model of a representative democracy to being a model of how ...

John Locke and American Individualism

by Richard M. Ebeling August 29, 2016

Personal and economic freedom are under attack in the United States and in many other parts of the world. It is seen most clearly in this year’s contest for the White House in the U.S. presidential election. In all the rhetoric about America’s political, social and economic problems that is heard from the lips of the Democratic and Republican ...

Classical Liberalism: Its Proud Past and Positive Prospects

by Richard M. Ebeling August 23, 2016

Election years are depressing experiences for friends of freedom. The campaign stump, invariably, brings out even more of the worst in mainstream politicians who make their living by making promises they cannot keep through spending other people’s money. The 2016 presidential election cycle has only magnified this pattern. Both the Democrat and Republican Party presidential candidates represent variations on the ...

The Greatest Threat to Our Freedoms

by John W. Whitehead August 16, 2016

“There is nothing more dangerous than a government of the many controlled by the few.”—Lawrence Lessig, Harvard law professor The U.S. government remains the greatest threat to our freedoms. The systemic violence being perpetrated by agents of the government has done more collective harm to the American people and our liberties than any single act of terror. More than terrorism, more than ...

Clinton and Trump are Both the Face of Plunder and Paternalism

by Richard M. Ebeling July 20, 2016

Whether it is Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump who stands on the steps of the Capital Building in Washington, D.C in January 2017 to take the oath of office as president of the United States, all public opinion polls suggest that that person will have among the highest unfavorable ratings for anyone beginning their time in the White House. According to an Associated Press poll taken in early ...

Self-Determination and Individual Choice in a Post-Brexit World

by Richard M. Ebeling July 13, 2016

The recent vote within the United Kingdom to withdraw from the European Union has implicitly once again raised the issue of the right of self-determination through secession.  In other words, do individuals have a right to determine under which political authority they shall live and have representation? This is, of course, an almost taboo subject in the United States because ...

Not a Better Way

by Laurence M. Vance July 11, 2016

House Speaker Paul Ryan has come out with yet another one of his plans. As chairman of the House Budget Committee, he oversaw the release of numerous plans to reform the welfare state and strengthen the warfare state. His newest plan, A Better Way: Our Vision for a Competent America, is more of the same. ...

Boy Scouts and the Love of Freedom

by James Bovard July 1, 2016

Some of my anarcho-libertarian tendencies arose thanks to the years I spent as a Boy Scout. Joining the Scouts was an easy decision, since my father was a Scoutmaster. Even without the family obligation, I might have signed up because Troop 52, based in Front Royal, Virginia, took many exhilarating excursions. My father had a knack for convincing boys ...

Freedom of Art Is a Prerequisite of Morality

by Wendy McElroy June 22, 2016

To many, freedom of art is a synonym for freedom of speech, but the former is best understood as a distinct subset. Unlike normal speech or rational discourse, the purpose of art is not primarily to convince or to instruct. It is to make people experience a visceral reaction. Art, and particularly literature, allow people to sense the emotions, ...