Why I Favor Limited Government, Part 6 by Jacob G. Hornberger August 1, 2016 Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5| Part 6 Throughout history, people have accepted the notion that government officials have the legitimate moral and legal authority to do whatever they want. The mindset has always been that government is in charge and people are subordinate. The result was ...
The Fraudulent Obama War on Corruption by James Bovard August 1, 2016 The Obama administration wants Americans to believe that it is fiercely anti-corruption. “I have been shocked by the degree to which I find corruption pandemic in the world today,” declared Secretary of State John Kerry at an Anti-Corruption Summit in London last May. Kerry sounded like the French police chief in Casablanca who was “shocked” to discover gambling. Six ...
Government Licensing or Private Certification? by Laurence M. Vance August 1, 2016 Everyone understands the need for children to obtain permission from their parents before undertaking certain activities: sleeping over at a friend’s house, viewing a particular movie, going on a field trip, participating in some sport, attending a particular party, staying up late, playing a particular video game, making a major purchase at a store, surfing the Internet, or having ...
America’s Plunge from Republic to Empire by Wendy McElroy August 1, 2016 We have crossed the boundary that lies between Republic and Empire. If you ask when, the answer is that you cannot make a single stroke between day and night. The precise moment does not matter. There was no painted sign to say, “You now are entering Imperium.” Yet it was a very old road and the voice of history ...
America’s Misadventures in the Greater Middle East by Stephen Kinzer August 1, 2016 America’s War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History by Andrew J. Bacevich (Random House, 2016), 480 pages. America’s Continuing Misadventures in the Middle East by Chas W. Freeman Jr. (Just World Books, 2016), 256 pages. Few forces in American public life are as powerful as the one that pulls people in Washington into the foreign ...
Why I Favor Limited Government, Part 5 by Jacob G. Hornberger July 1, 2016 Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 Among the most popular examples of anarchy cited by anarchy proponents is what is known as the “law merchant,” a body of law and custom that developed during the Middle Ages. Anarchists point to the widespread commercial transactions ...
Boy Scouts and the Love of Freedom by James Bovard July 1, 2016 Some of my anarcho-libertarian tendencies arose thanks to the years I spent as a Boy Scout. Joining the Scouts was an easy decision, since my father was a Scoutmaster. Even without the family obligation, I might have signed up because Troop 52, based in Front Royal, Virginia, took many exhilarating excursions. My father had a knack for convincing boys ...
The Right to Hire and Fire by Laurence M. Vance July 1, 2016 Do businesses have the right to hire whomever they want for a particular job? Most Americans would agree that they certainly do. But when you ask the same people whether businesses have the right to not hire whomever they don’t want for a particular job, most of them will say that it depends on the reason someone is not ...
The Legal Tender Cases by David S. D'Amato July 1, 2016 In the December term of 1870, the Supreme Court considered the constitutionality of a statute authorizing the issuance of U.S. notes (or “greenbacks”) and making those notes “legal tender in payment of all debts, public and private.” That statute, the Legal Tender Act of 1862, was signed into law less than a year after the introduction of the nation’s ...
Immigration Controls Are Socialist by Jake Desyllas July 1, 2016 In the classical-liberal age of 19th-century Europe, there were no immigration controls. Here is how Gustav Stolper — a German economist, classical liberal, and an immigrant — described the world he had known: This economic and social system of Europe was predicated on a few axiomatic principles. These principles were considered safe and unshakable…. They were freedom of ...
Dallas, Texas: Nut Country, 1963 by Michael Swanson July 1, 2016 Dallas 1963, by Bill Minuteaglio and Steven Davis (Twelve, 2013), 384 pages. Nut Country: Right-Wing Dallas and the Birth of the Southern Strategy, by Edward H. Miller (University of Chicago Press, 2015), 256 pages. History doesn’t repeat, but sometimes it seems to rhyme and with the sudden and surprising rise of Donald Trump in the Republican primaries this year that may ...
Why I Favor Limited Government, Part 4 by Jacob G. Hornberger June 1, 2016 Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 On June 27, 1986, the International Court of Justice entered a money judgment in favor of the Republic of Nicaragua and against the United States of America. Nicaragua had sued the United States for having illegally mined Nicaraguan ...