America’s Hypocritical, Counterproductive Foreign Aid by James Bovard May 1, 2002 THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION has been triumphantly shutting down and seizing the assets of one Muslim charity after another. In some cases, such as that of the Holy Land Foundation, the evidence appears based largely on accusations from informants who overheard speeches seven or eight years ago. In other cases, the Treasury Department is releasing ...
World War I and the Suppression of Dissent, Part 2 by Wendy McElroy May 1, 2002 Part 1 | Part 2 IN THE SUMMER OF 1905, labor radicals assembled in Chicago to found a new group the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). It operated in competition with the more conservative American Federation of Labor (AFL), then the most powerful labor group in the United States. As well as embodying socialism, the IWW embraced less-restrictive ...
Book Review: The Elusive Quest for Growth by Richard M. Ebeling May 1, 2002 The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists’ Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics by William Easterly (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2002); 342 pages; $29.95. POVERTY, UNFORTUNATELY, is the natural condition of man. And through most of his time on earth, as best as historians can determine, his standard of living has been meager and poor. But slowly over the centuries certain ...
Freedom and Campaign-Finance Reform by Jacob G. Hornberger April 1, 2002 Amidst not very much fanfare, President Bush has signed the new campaign-finance reform bill into law. This one closes the so-called soft-money loophole that permits large donations to be injected into federal campaigns through contributions to political parties. There are two big problems, however, with this most recent attempt to end corruption in the political process: First, it won’t work ...
Bush’s Contempt for Trial by Jury by Jacob G. Hornberger April 1, 2002 BOWING TO PUBLIC PRESSURE, the Bush administration has modified its rules for the trials of suspected terrorists captured abroad. Included among the new rules are: (1) the accused will be presumed innocent rather than guilty; (2) the government will be required to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt; (3) the defendant will have the right to have an attorney ...
Civil Liberty and the State: The Writ of Habeas Corpus by Richard M. Ebeling April 1, 2002 LIMITING THE POWERS OF GOVERNMENT has been one of the leading struggles in the history of mankind. Through most of man’s time on earth, governments have presumed to rule, command, order, and threaten multitudes of human beings — to make the mass of humanity bend to the will of their political masters. The political rulers have often considered themselves to ...
War and the State: The Legacy of Randolph Bourne by Sheldon Richman April 1, 2002 AS I POINTED OUT in last month’s Freedom Daily (“War Is the Health of the State,” March 2002), Randolph Bourne was an American intellectual during the Progressive era who found himself isolated as President Woodrow Wilson conspired to take the United States into World War I. He understood war to be illiberal by ...
Bush’s Opium Boom by James Bovard April 1, 2002 Last year saw what is probably the single biggest one-year increase in opium production in world history. Since the Bush administration toppled the Taliban regime, opium production in Afghanistan has increased from 185 tons in 2001 to 3,700 tons in 2002 — an increase of twentyfold. Afghanistan has historically produced more than two-thirds of the world opium supply and ...
Anthrax Antics from Uncle Sam by James Bovard April 1, 2002 SINCE THE TERRORIST ATTACKS last September 11, public opinion polls show a sharp decrease in cynicism about government and politicians. Yet, if one has been paying attention since then, it is difficult not to conclude that there is still, occasionally at least, a sliver of evidence that could foment cynical tendencies. In his state of the Union address on January ...
World War I and the Suppression of Dissent, Part 1 by Wendy McElroy April 1, 2002 Part 1 | Part 2 THE YEARS SURROUNDING Americas involvement in World War I were a watershed for how the United States treated foreigners within its borders during wartime. Immigrants had flooded the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. When the United States declared war on Germany on April 6, 1917, almost a third of ...
Book Review: Against the Dead Hand by Richard M. Ebeling April 1, 2002 Against the Dead Hand: The Uncertain Struggle for Global Capitalism by Brink Lindsey (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2002); 336 pages; $29.95. THE WORLD IS BECOMING increasingly smaller. Commodities, capital, and people move around the world with far greater ease than at any time since before the First World War. Market-oriented reforms have been the watchword for economic policy for ...
Did the Framers Forget the Bill of Rights? by Jacob G. Hornberger March 1, 2002 AFTER THE CONSTITUTION WAS RATIFIED in 1788, the states adopted the first 10 amendments, which became known as the Bill of Rights. Given the importance of the provisions in those amendments, an obvious question arises: Why didn’t the Framers of the Constitution include those provisions in the original Constitution, thereby obviating the need to amend the document so soon ...