Free Society

How Would the Baby in a Manger Fare in the American Police State?

by John W. Whitehead December 22, 2016

“Jesus is too much for us. The church’s later treatment of the gospels is one long effort to rescue Jesus from ‘extremism.’” —author Gary Wills, What Jesus Meant Jesus was good. He was caring. He had powerful, profound things to say—things that would change how we view people, alter government policies and change the world. He went around ...

How to Beat the Post-Election Blues

by John W. Whitehead December 16, 2016

“I think there must be something wrong with me, Linus. Christmas is coming, but I’m not happy. I don’t feel the way I’m supposed to feel.” ―  Charlie Brown, A Charlie Brown Christmas I keep waiting to encounter the “kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant” Christmastime environment that Charles Dickens describes in A Christmas Carol: “when men and women seem by one consent ...

The Tyranny at Standing Rock

by John W. Whitehead December 2, 2016

“We must, indeed, all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”— Benjamin Franklin, as quoted in The Works of Benjamin Franklin Divide and conquer. It’s one of the oldest military strategies in the books, and it’s proven to be the police state’s most effective weapon for maintaining the status quo. How do you conquer a nation? Distract them with football games, political ...

Workplace Smoking

by Laurence M. Vance December 1, 2016

While making a brief trip recently to a place of business in a local outdoor mall in central Florida, I noticed that a new sign had been posted on the information board in the middle of one of the sidewalks: “Smoking in Workplaces Is Prohibited by Law.” The sign was gone the next week, replaced by an ad for ...

Dysfunctionality, Violence, and Race in American Society

by Jacob G. Hornberger October 1, 2016

The following are five libertarian proposals that would help to resolve the conflict and violence between blacks and the police across America and, to a large extent, alleviate much of the dysfunctionality that afflicts American society: End the drug war. A free society necessarily entails the fundamental right to ingest anything an adult wants, no matter how destructive or dangerous. ...

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 ...