Free Society

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 ...

What If Jesus Had Been Born 2,000 Years Later in the American Police State?

by John W. Whitehead December 23, 2015

“Two thousand years later … the memory of the revolutionary zealot who walked across Galilee gathering an army of disciples with the goal of establishing the Kingdom of God on earth, the magnetic preacher who defied the authority of the Temple priesthood in Jerusalem, the radical Jewish nationalist who challenged the Roman occupation and lost, has been almost completely ...

Compulsory Unions Equals Less Worker Freedom

by Richard M. Ebeling December 14, 2015

Personal choice and freedom of association are two fundamental and essential principles of any truly free society, and this includes a free market workplace. Unfortunately, the Obama Administration is spending taxpayer dollars to undermine those principles in other countries around the world. The Washington Times reported on December 11, 2015 that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has organized ...

Unions and Strikes in a Free Society

by Laurence M. Vance December 1, 2015

The labor-union membership rate of American workers has been declining for years. Labor-union strikes have concomitantly decreased as well. Unions have historically been associated with violence, corruption, anti-capitalistic propaganda, Democratic politics — and strikes. Unions According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2014, union membership fell to 11.1 percent, down 0.2 percent from 2013, although the number of workers belonging ...

Patrick Henry’s Choice

by Ben Moreel December 1, 2015

In 1775, an American patriot stood before his neighbors in a small church in Virginia and challenged the tyranny of government — his own government — in a ringing statement on liberty and death. While I subscribe wholeheartedly to Patrick Henry’s choice of death in lieu of slavery to government, I would like to call your attention to another thought ...

Don’t Expect 2016 Candidates To Restore Real Liberty

by Richard M. Ebeling November 16, 2015

Many in the media and some among the voting public are focused, now, on the field of candidates who are offering themselves as the presidential nominees of the Republican and Democratic Parties. Every few weeks those on the Republican side have been confronting each other in television news-bite talking sessions that are loosely called “debates.” The candidates lash out at ...

Beards and a Free Society

by Laurence M. Vance November 5, 2015

Although baseball season is over, one thing still remains: the New York Yankees’ ban on players wearing beards. The beard ban was instituted by the Yankees’ principal owner. George Steinbrenner, in 1973. Long hair is not allowed either, but mustaches are permitted. Although Steinbrenner died in 2010, the policy remains in effect. The Yankees’ manager, Joe Girardi, said ...

Fear of the Walking Dead: The American Police State Takes Aim

by John W. Whitehead October 29, 2015

“Fear is a primitive impulse, brainless as hunger, and because the aim of horror fiction is the production of the deepest kinds of fears, the genre tends to reinforce some remarkably uncivilized ideas about self-protection. In the current crop of zombie stories, the prevailing value for the beleaguered survivors is a sort of siege mentality, a vigilance so ...