Free Society

Consolidate or Eliminate?

by Laurence M. Vance February 8, 2012

In his 2011 state of the union address, Barack Obama promised to create a leaner, more efficient federal bureaucracy. In his recent 2012 address, the president reiterated his grandiose plan to reorganize the federal government: In the coming months, my administration will develop a proposal to merge, consolidate, and reorganize the federal government in a way that best serves the ...

The Greatest Threat to Our Freedom, Part 1

by Jacob G. Hornberger January 29, 2012

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 Of all the dangers to the freedom of the American people, I would rank the enemy-combatant doctrine as the greatest. In my opinion, the federal government’s power to label a person a terrorist as part of its so-called war on terrorism — a power that came into ...

Hubris and Illegitimate Assumptions

by Rich Schwartzman January 27, 2012

Are libertarians pro-business or pro-labor? That’s one of the questions from the few moderates and centrists who are deciding to show some interest in libertarian philosophy. They know there’s something fundamentally wrong with what the big-government types say and do, and they want to see what else is out there. It’s a legitimate question, even if it stems from ...

In Defense of Affirmative Action

by Laurence M. Vance January 4, 2012

In order to put together a “diverse” student body, it is standard practice for many colleges and universities to use race as a factor in admissions. An unintended consequence of this policy is that some students who otherwise qualify for admission are denied because of their race. These race-factor admissions programs are invariably Affirmative Action programs like those that give ...

Industrializing Human Suffering

by Wendy McElroy November 16, 2011

Is Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain guilty of sexually harassing women? Only the people directly involved know for sure. But so many high-profile cases of alleged sexual abuse have crumbled under scrutiny for example, Dominique Strauss-Kahn's alleged rape of a New York City maid that some skepticism is called for. Indeed, the presumption of innocence offered to ...

Gambling, Freedom, and Federalism

by Laurence M. Vance November 8, 2011

The United States Congress Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, better known as the supercommittee, was created back in August by the Budget Control Act of 2011, which raised the debt limit. The committee consists of twelve members of Congress, evenly divided between the House and the Senate and between Democrats and Republicans. By the day before Thanksgiving, the committee ...

Anything That’s Peaceful Means Anything That’s Peaceful

by Laurence M. Vance October 31, 2011

Leonard Read (1898–1983), opponent of Roosevelt’s New Deal and founder of the Foundation for Economic Education, was one of the twentieth century’s great champions of individual liberty, private property, the free market, and limited government. He counted among his friends and advisors such luminaries as Ludwig von Mises and Henry Hazlitt. Although he authored numerous collections of essays, Read’s ...

Restoring Freedom, Peace, and Prosperity, Part 3

by Jacob G. Hornberger October 27, 2011

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 Declaring that Saddam Hussein had become a new Hitler who was bent on conquering the United States and the rest of the world, President George H.W. Bush went to war against Iraq, securing the permission of the United Nations but not securing the congressional declaration of war required by the ...

Prison-Yard America

by Wendy McElroy October 12, 2011

Since September, a public-school district in Florida has been taking fingerprint scans at the entrance to schools as a way to monitor attendance. The scans are compared against a database of students to detect truants. As in most highly intrusive school policies, parents are thrown a bone of control by allowing them to request an “opt out” for ...

Restoring Freedom, Peace, and Prosperity, Part 2

by Jacob G. Hornberger September 25, 2011

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 Today, many Americans have come to accept that Iran is an official enemy of the United States. Most people know about the animosity between the Iranian government and the U.S. government. Since many Americans often conflate the Iranian government and the Iranian citizenry, the entire country is usually viewed as ...

Stockholm and the Kidnapped Citizenry

by Rich Schwartzman September 8, 2011

Individual men and women don’t need enemies. Many want a challenge with an opponent, someone with whom to compete cooperatively, but not an enemy. Governments, however, do need enemies to get their citizenry to submit to coercion. Some of us accept that as almost axiomatic, a self-evident fact that’s so blatant we can’t understand why the rest of society doesn’t ...

Restoring Freedom, Peace, and Prosperity, Part 1

by Jacob G. Hornberger August 30, 2011

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 Now that the celebrations over the killing of Osama bin Laden have died down, reality is setting in for the American people. It is slowly dawning on them that the killing wont make any difference whatsoever and, in fact, might even make things worse for them. The occupations of Iraq ...