Free Society

Government of the Politicians, by the Military, for the Corporations

by John W. Whitehead February 26, 2016

“I was astonished, bewildered. This was America, a country where, whatever its faults, people could speak, write, assemble, demonstrate without fear. It was in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights. We were a democracy... But I knew it wasn't a dream; there was a painful lump on the side of my head... The state and its police were not ...

What Road For America — Liberty Or Political Plunder?

by Richard M. Ebeling February 25, 2016

Presidential election years, more than many others, focuses our attention on politics, those running for political office, and the promises the competing candidates make to sway our allegiance and votes toward one or some of them in comparison to others. They want us to give them political power by promising to use that power to benefit some of ...

Television, Football and Politics: Gaming Spectacles Designed to Keep the Police State in Power

by John W. Whitehead February 3, 2016

Big Brother does not watch us, by his choice. We watch him, by ours. There is no need for wardens or gates or Ministries of Truth. When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become ...

What If Obama Believed in Individual Liberty and Free Markets?

by Richard M. Ebeling January 25, 2016

President Barack Obama delivered his final State of the Union address on January 12, 2016, and devoted most of the time to defending his “legacy” of bigger and more intrusive government, with an emphasis on the other aspects of personal and social life he wished could come under the blanket of more political paternalism, if only there was ...

Common Misconceptions about Rights

by Benedict D. LaRosa January 21, 2016

The debate about gun rights sparked by President Obama’s recent executive actions and his town hall meeting of January 7, 2016, has brought to light several popular misconceptions, of which the following are some of the more egregious. Misconception #1:  Only United States citizens have the right to keep and bear arms, and then only within the borders of the ...

How Lithuania Helped Take Down the Soviet Union

by Richard M. Ebeling January 18, 2016

This year, 2016, will mark the twentieth-fifth anniversary of the end of the Soviet Union from the political map of the world. A quarter of a century ago, the menace of Soviet-led communism, which had haunted the globe since the time of the Russian Revolution in 1917, disintegrated from within and passed into the dustbin of history. The Soviet Empire ...

The State of the Nation: A Dictatorship Without Tears

by John W. Whitehead January 12, 2016

“There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted ...

Bibles, Hotels, Christians, and Atheists

by Laurence M. Vance January 7, 2016

The Gideons International wants to place copies of the Bible in all hotel rooms. Most hotels have complied with the request. Many Americans like the idea. Other Americans don’t care one way or the other. Some Americans want the Bibles removed. In a free society, the questions of whether the Gideons should or shouldn’t make such a request, whether hotels ...

Playing the Government’s Game

by John W. Whitehead January 6, 2016

“When it gets down to having to use violence, then you are playing the system’s game. The establishment will irritate you – pull your beard, flick your face – to make you fight. Because once they’ve got you violent, then they know how to handle you. The only thing they don’t know how to handle is non-violence ...

Welcome Back to Freedom

by Matthew Harwood January 1, 2016

The Dark Net: Inside the Digital Underworld by Jamie Bartlett (Brooklyn: Melville House Publishing, 2015), 320 pages. Do you really want someone to die? If you could help bring about someone’s demise by anonymously and securely placing a bet on when that particular someone might take a dirtnap, would you? That’s the premise of the Assassination Market, an ...

What’s in Store for Our Freedoms in 2016? More of Everything We Don’t Want

by John W. Whitehead December 30, 2015

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”—George Santayana, The Life of Reason, Vol. 1 In Harold Ramis’ classic 1993 comedy Groundhog Day, TV weatherman Phil Connors (played by Bill Murray) is forced to live the same day over and over again until he not only gains some insight into his life but changes his priorities. Similarly, as I ...

The Fear Of Terrorism Is Destroying Our Freedom

by Richard M. Ebeling December 28, 2015

The year that is just closing, 2015, has been full of events that continue to dominate the news, including renewed racial tensions on the streets of American cities, growing fears about terrorist attacks on the territory of the United States, and one of the most fear-focused presidential campaign seasons in living memory. Through it all there is one underlying thread ...