Free Society

The Tyranny of Trigger Words and College Safe Spaces

by Richard M. Ebeling June 8, 2015

The media has been full of stories recently about the new sensitivity on college and university campuses concerning the avoidance in courses or assignments of the use of “trigger words” or phrases that may have a “hurtful” affect on students when thoughtlessly used in the teaching environment. Student and other groups on campuses have insisted that professors provide advanced warning ...

Employment and a Free Society

by Laurence M. Vance May 5, 2015

The city of SeaTac, Washington, is the home of the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. It is also home to the highest minimum wage in the country. SeaTac’s minimum wage of $15 an hour took effect on January 1, 2014, the result of a ballot initiative. The minimum wage in the cities of San Francisco and Seattle is scheduled to gradually ...

The Poison Called Nationalism

by Sheldon Richman May 1, 2015

  Forward, the Light Brigade! Was there a man dismay’d? Not tho’ the soldier knew Someone had blunder’d: Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die: Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred. — Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “The Charge of the Light Brigade” The reason for the venom directed at those of us who question American sniper Chris Kyle’s status ...

The Wrongs and Rights of Free Exercise and Free Association

by Laurence M. Vance April 15, 2015

The state of California has effectively banned its 2,000 state court judges from participating in the Boy Scouts. The California Supreme Court recently voted unanimously to eliminate an exception for nonprofit youth groups to a rule that prohibits California judges from belonging to groups that practice discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. The judges have until ...

Dress Codes, Employment, and Religion

by Laurence M. Vance March 27, 2015

The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments last month in a case relating to dress codes, employment, and religion. The case, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission v. Abercrombie & Fitch Stores Inc., is a good point of departure for how these things relate to each other in a free society. The High Court is expected to decide the case in ...

Sunday Shopping

by Laurence M. Vance January 22, 2015

Just before Christmas, the country of Hungary joined other European countries such as Germany, Austria, and Switzerland in banning Sunday shopping. Although the Hungarian Parliament passed the bill on December 16, it isn’t scheduled to take effect until March 15 of this year. The legislation, which was supported by the prime minister but opposed by the economy minister, ...

TGIF: The Open Society and Its Worst Enemies

by Sheldon Richman January 16, 2015

Last week’s bloody events in Paris demonstrate yet again that a noninterventionist foreign policy, far from being a luxury, is an urgent necessity -- literally a matter of life and death. A government that repeatedly wages wars of aggression — the most extreme form of extremism — endangers the society it ostensibly protects by gratuitously making enemies, some of whom will seek revenge against ...

Lessons for Winning Liberty in a World of Statism

by Richard M. Ebeling January 13, 2015

Friends of freedom often become despondent when it seems that every day brings another growth and intrusion of government over people’s lives. But there is no reason to be disheartened, because there are lessons for winning liberty – from the opponents of freedom. Beginning in the last decades of the nineteenth century, through most of the twentieth century and into ...

A New Year’s Resolution: Becoming a Light of Liberty

by Richard M. Ebeling January 8, 2015

With the beginning of 2015, what might be a “New Year’s resolution” for a friend of freedom? I would suggest that one answer is for each of us to do our best to become “lights of liberty” that will attract others to the cause of freedom and the free society. For five years, from 2003 to 2008, I had the ...

The Unpredictable Future and Winning Liberty

by Richard M. Ebeling December 31, 2014

As a new year begins, it is easy to consider that the prospects for freedom in America and in many other parts of the world to seem dim. After all, government continues to grow bigger and more intrusive, along with tax burdens that siphon off vast amounts of private wealth. Extrapolating these trends out for the foreseeable future, it would ...

State Heretics and State Infidels

by Wendy McElroy December 22, 2014

The term statolatry refers to worshiping the state as the source of goodness to which all else should be subordinated. In statolatry, instead of having a separation of church and state, the state replaces the church and becomes its own religion. In his book Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War, Ludwig von Mises ...

The Origins and Intentions of Copyright

by Joseph S. Diedrich December 1, 2014

In a victory for media Goliaths, the Supreme Court recently ruled that TV-streaming service Aereo “perform ... copyrighted works publicly” and therefore violated copyright law. The ghost of Grokster haunts us. Napster rolls in its grave. Copyright’s muscular hands have once again strangled innovation. What is the purpose of copyright law? Conventional wisdom asserts that it protects the rights of ...