Freedom Daily Archive

The Assault-Weapons Scam, Part 1

by James Bovard March 1, 1996

Part 1 | Part 2 The 1994 federal assault-weapons ban could be the first step towards legislation leading to the confiscation of tens of millions of private rifles, shotguns, and pistols. Though the bill Clinton signed purportedly targets only "assault weapons," the loose definitions and expansive goals of the antigun lobby will almost certainly lead to a vast expansion ...

American Compassion

by George Pearson March 1, 1996

We have had destitute people since the early years of the country, and their numbers have grown as the population has grown. We have always had people whose lives were threatened or even ruined by drugs and alcohol abuse. We have always had the homeless. We have always had the prostitutes. ...

The Union: Worth a War?

by Doug Bandow March 1, 1996

What a difference a century makes. Secession is now much in vogue and U.S. officials regularly inveigh against other governments, like Ethiopia, Nigeria, Russia, and Yugoslavia, which attempt to forcibly hold their nations together. Yet most American history books admit of no doubt regarding what happened in the United States in 1861. The conventional wisdom is that the Civil War ...

Book Review: Forgotten Lessons

by Richard M. Ebeling March 1, 1996

Forgotten Lessons: Selected Essays of John T. Flynn edited by Gregory P. Pavlik (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, 1995); 199 pages; $14.95. Most histories about Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal administration leave the impression that except for the ignorant and the reactionary, practically no one opposed the growth of government in the 1930s and 1940s. Nothing could be further from the ...

The Failure of the Republican “Revolution,” Part 1

by Jacob G. Hornberger February 1, 1996

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 There have been four significant non-violent revolutions in American history: the Revolution in 1776, the Industrial Revolution in the 1800s, the constitutional amendments of 1913, and ...

If Liberty Mattered — Once More, a Presidential Candidate’s Press Conference, Part 1

by Richard M. Ebeling February 1, 1996

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 Once again, the race for the White House has begun, and once more, the candidates are offering themselves to the American public. Once again, the public and the press are ...

Public Schools and the Assault on the Family

by Sheldon Richman February 1, 1996

Imagine that you wanted to subvert the institution of the family. What would be the best way to go about it? Well, how about this?: You force parents to surrender to the state the power to make all the big decisions about their children's education. You would make the following announcement ...

Did the Supreme Court Flush the Fourth?

by James Bovard February 1, 1996

Two hundred and six years after the adoption of the Bill of Rights, the big issue for the U.S. Supreme Court is toilets. Specifically, has the invention of flush toilets nullified American's traditional right of privacy in their homes and enabled police to smash down their doors on the slightest pretext? Truly, these are glorious times in which we live. ...

A Free Market in Human Organs

by Ron Brown February 1, 1996

The liver transplant performed on former baseball great Mickey Mantle last year gives us an opportunity to review and challenge the statist notion that it is perfectly fine for an individual to donate a human organ to another person but sinister and evil, not to mention illegal, to sell it for profit. Recall that ...

Book Review: Austrian Economics for Investors

by Richard M. Ebeling February 1, 1996

Austrian Economics for Investors: Ludwig von Mises Goes to Wall Street by Mark Skousen (Potomac, Md.: Phillips Publishing, Inc., 1995); 46 pages; $10. Dr. Mark Skousen is that rarest of free-market economists. He cannot only write serious and original contributions to economic theory, he can also write popular works that ...

The White Rose: A Lesson in Dissent

by Jacob G. Hornberger January 1, 1996

The date was February 22, 1943. Hans Scholl and his sister Sophie, along with their best friend, Christoph Probst, were scheduled to be executed by Nazi officials that afternoon. The prison guards were so impressed with the calm and bravery of the prisoners in the face of impending death that ...

Optimism and Concern in Contemporary America

by Richard M. Ebeling January 1, 1996

I was about fifteen years old, in the mid-1960s, when I became interested in free-market, libertarian ideas. I was initially influenced by Henry Hazlitt, who at that time still had a weekly column in Newsweek . I found his book Economics in One Lesson in a used bookstore, and after reading it, I decided that I wanted ...