Freedom Daily Archive

Obama’s Forgotten Victims

by James Bovard April 1, 2016

The White House kept one seat vacant in the gallery during Obama’s State of the Union Address in January “for the victims of gun violence who no longer have a voice.” This was part of Obama’s crusade for new federal restrictions on firearms ownership. But shouldn’t there have also been chairs left empty to memorialize other casualties — including those ...

Can a Business Overcharge Its Customers?

by Laurence M. Vance April 1, 2016

How many times have we heard someone say that he was overcharged for something? The answer to the question of whether a business can overcharge its customers seems, on the surface, to be quite obvious. Yet, it is a question that has more than one answer. At the end of last year, Whole Foods Market, a supermarket chain specializing in ...

A Few Thoughts on Machiavelli

by Joseph R. Stromberg April 1, 2016

The Italian Renaissance politician and writer Nicolò Machiavelli (1469–1527) remains controversial. His defenders see him as a tough-minded “realist” and the founder of proper political science. Some writers find two Machiavellis: an advisor to aspiring despots, or (alternatively) a sincere republican theorist bent on freeing Italy from foreign rule. Either way, Machiavelli’s analysis of such categories as fortune, necessity, ...

Welcome to Base Nation

by Matthew Harwood April 1, 2016

Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2015), 432 pages. There is much in U.S. history that Americans should not be proud of. Chattel slavery. The genocide of indigenous populations. Jim Crow. The U.S. war on terror currently under way and still with no end in sight. But few ...

The Battle for the Supreme Court

by George Leef April 1, 2016

Overruled: The Long War for Control of the U.S. Supreme Court by Damon Root (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 274 pages. Every case that comes before the U.S. Supreme Court has its unique factual setting and contentious legal issues, but in a large percentage of them, the decision ultimately comes down to this: Should the Court defer to the legislative ...

Why I Favor Limited Government, Part 1

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 1, 2016

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5| Part 6 Ever since I became a libertarian in the late 1970s, there has been an ongoing debate within the libertarian movement between libertarians who advocate limited government and those who advocate anarchy, meaning a society based on the absence ...

Presidential Fear-Mongering versus Freedom

by James Bovard March 1, 2016

After the San Bernardino massacre late last year, Barrack Obama made a rare speech from the Oval Office. His most memorable line was his declaration that “freedom is more powerful than fear.” That epigram might have made John F. Kennedy’s speechwriters beam. But it is ludicrous to hear such a comment from a president who has spent almost seven ...

The Libertarian Sticking Point

by Laurence M. Vance March 1, 2016

Why aren’t more Americans libertarians? Why aren’t more liberals becoming libertarians? They generally share the libertarian commitment to freedom of speech, civil liberties, personal freedom, privacy, and the Fourth Amendment, or at least they claim to do so. Why aren’t more conservatives becoming libertarians? They generally share the libertarian commitment to the free market, limited government, free trade, property ...

The Landmark Case That Destroyed Economic Liberty

by David S. D'Amato March 1, 2016

If the Supreme Court’s 1905 holding in Lochner v. New York is the widely reviled embodiment of the constitutional right to freedom of contract, then West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish is its celebrated antithesis. The New Deal era case has been identified with the beginning of a “Constitutional Revolution” that freed progressive social policy to march triumphantly onward. ...

Abolish the Department of Education

by Wendy McElroy March 1, 2016

The Department of Education (DOE) is one of the most destructive federal agencies because it attempts to control the flow of ideas and information by controlling public schools, including higher education. If a school does not comply, then it gets no federal money. Educators who rebel outright, such as home-schooling parents, are reined in by an ever-tightening net of ...

The Economist Who Saw the Future

by James Cook March 1, 2016

Hans Sennholz (1922–2007) was a professor of economics and a student of Ludwig von Mises while at NYU. He was an intrepid critic of government deficits: If we cannot return to fiscal integrity because the public prefers prodigality over balanced budgets, we cannot escape paying the price, which is ever lower incomes and standards of living for all. The pains ...

Allen Dulles: Architect of America’s Secret Government

by Michael Swanson March 1, 2016

David Talbot has written an important book that is destined to become a classic, because it helps us confront the darker aspects of our nation’s history. As American citizens we vote in elections and our television news keeps us up to speed with what is happening in politics. But much of what is decided for us is done so ...