Freedom Daily Archive

A Military Coup in America?

by Jacob G. Hornberger November 1, 2016

Ever since I started writing about the assassination of John F. Kennedy several years ago, people have been asking me why I do it. Since the event happened 53 years ago this month, what possible relevance could the assassination have to Americans living today? Even if Kennedy had been the victim of a conspiracy, wouldn’t the malefactors probably be ...

The Great Goober Train Wreck of 2016

by James Bovard November 1, 2016

The history of federal peanut policy is the perfect antidote to anyone who still believes that Congress could competently manage a lemonade stand. Federal spending for peanut subsidies will have risen eightfold between last year and next year — reaching almost a billion dollars and approaching the total value of the peanut harvest. This debacle is only the latest ...

The Change America Needs Is Libertarianism

by Laurence M. Vance November 1, 2016

The French writer Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr (1808–1890) famously said that “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” This epigram is a perfect description of the American electoral process. Americans elect a new president every four years. Members of the U.S. House of Representatives have a two-year term. U.S. senators are elected for six years. That means that ...

The New Deal, Part 1: Domestic Policy

by Joseph R. Stromberg November 1, 2016

Part 1 | Part 2 Today, few Americans are left from the Greatest Generation (a phrase which my father, born in 1912, would have seen as obvious propaganda). There are more, perhaps, who experienced the New Deal directly as very small children. Most of us know it only from history, family lore, popular culture, film, and (yes) ...

The Right to Try to Live

by George Leef November 1, 2016

The Right to Try: How the Federal Government Prevents Americans from Getting the Lifesaving Treatments They Need by Darcy Olsen (HarperCollins, 2015); 311 pages. The highly acclaimed 2013 movie Dallas Buyers Club told the story of Ron Woodroof, who tried desperately to get drugs that might help arrest Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome back in the mid 1980s. ...

Dysfunctionality, Violence, and Race in American Society

by Jacob G. Hornberger October 1, 2016

The following are five libertarian proposals that would help to resolve the conflict and violence between blacks and the police across America and, to a large extent, alleviate much of the dysfunctionality that afflicts American society: End the drug war. A free society necessarily entails the fundamental right to ingest anything an adult wants, no matter how destructive or dangerous. ...

My Blowup at the Enviro Checkpoint

by James Bovard October 1, 2016

As I sat in a seemingly endless line of cars at the Maryland vehicle-emissions check-point, the engine in my 1999 Ford suddenly growled, shuddered, and conked out cold. Maybe it was karma for my decades of scoffing at harebrained government regulations? As I waited 90 minutes for a tow truck, I watched a stream of vehicles tarry up to half ...

Does the Second Amendment Even Exist?

by Laurence M. Vance October 1, 2016

Gun control was going to be a campaign issue even before the Orlando Pulse nightclub shooting back on June 12. Donald Trump was endorsed by the National Rifle Association (NRA) after he spoke at the group’s convention in May and remarked that “the Second Amendment is under threat like never before” and that “crooked Hillary Clinton is the most anti-gun, ...

Lessons of the Orlando Massacre

by Benedict D. LaRosa October 1, 2016

In the early morning hours of June 12, 2016, a 29-year-old, American-born Muslim of Afghan descent, Omar Mateen, with allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), entered a nightclub in Orlando, Florida, armed with a semi-automatic, high-capacity rifle and handgun, and began shooting and taking hostages. Although an Orlando police officer serving as an armed guard ...

Adam Smith’s Moral Path through Quagmire

by Wendy McElroy October 1, 2016

Adam Smith’s book The Theory of Moral Sentiments offers a path through a dangerous social quagmire. Namely, the law increasingly demands that peaceful acts conform to a specific state-approved morality. The process turns morality into a matter of state and law rather than one of individual conscience. The politically correct justify mandatory morality in the name of social justice or ...

The Inequality of Wealth and Income

by Ludwig von Mises October 1, 2016

What is most criticized in our social order is the inequality in the distribution of wealth and income, There are rich and poor; there are very rich and very poor. The way out is not far to seek: the equal distribution of all wealth. The first objection to this proposal is that it will not help the situation much because ...

The Libertarian Mind

by George Leef October 1, 2016

The Libertarian Mind: A Manifesto for Freedom by David Boaz (Simon & Schuster, 2015); 417 pages. Since the beginning of the so-called Progressive Era, advocates of big government have been on the offensive. They promised Americans more prosperity, better education, increased security, a cleaner environment, a society that’s more fair, and so on — provided they would ...