Daily Articles

Trump’s Protectionist Follies Threaten a Trade War

by Richard M. Ebeling March 5, 2018

President Donald Trump has announced the planned imposition of a new, 25 percent tariff on imported steel and a 10 percent tariff on foreign made aluminum entering the United States. This has brought about threats of trade retaliation by a number of America’s trading partners. The menacing clouds of a possible trade war are showing themselves on the global ...

Dismantling Roosevelt’s New Deal

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 1, 2018

In the midst of the congressional debate over Donald Trump’s tax bill, leftists accused Republicans of planning to dismantle Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. While the fear-mongering was baseless, given that Republicans favor the New Deal programs and philosophy as much as liberals do, the question naturally arises: Why shouldn’t Americans dismantle this almost- century-old socialist and interventionist experiment?   It is ...

Trump and the Right to #Resist

by James Bovard March 1, 2018

Since Donald Trump’s election, it has become fashionable for his opponents to use a #Resist hashtag on their social media postings. Public demonstrations have become more fashionable than at any time since the Vietnam War. Federal agencies are actively working to thwart the Trump administration; the Obama holdover chief of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau even refused to vacate ...

What Ken Burns Left Out of the Vietnam Story

by Gareth Porter March 1, 2018

The Vietnam War: An Intimate History by Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns (Knopf, 2017; 640 pages) The companion coffee-table book to the 10-part PBS series by Ken Burns, The Vietnam War, is so closely tied to the series that it’s left ambiguous whether Ken Burns himself is the co-author or not. Burns is shown as the ...

A Complete and Utter Failure

by Laurence M. Vance March 1, 2018

President Trump has now completed his first year in office. The Republican majorities in the U.S. House and Senate have now had a year to work with a Republican president. What is so significant about that is that it is only the fourth time since the end of World War II and the end of absolute Democratic control of ...

A Safe Space to Watch a War

by Michael Swanson March 1, 2018

The Vietnam War by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick (PBS, 2017) DVD. The documentary television event of 2017 was the 10-part PBS series titled The Vietnam War, directed by both Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. The series took 10 years and more than $30 million to make. Released last September, it garnered rave reviews all over the ...

If Police Don’t Have to Protect the Public, What Good Are They?

by John W. Whitehead February 27, 2018

“After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn’t do it. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military.”—Author William S. Burroughs In the American police state, police have a tendency to shoot first and ask questions ...

Public Goods, National Defense, and Central Planning

by Richard M. Ebeling February 26, 2018

The competitive market economy is a powerful institutional mechanism for bringing human ingenuity, energy and creativity to bear to improve both the material and cultural circumstances of multitudes of people around the world. Wherever relatively free market capitalism is operating, it succeeds in ending human poverty and brings about rising standards of living for hundreds of millions, indeed, now ...

What You Can Do to Advance Liberty

by Jacob G. Hornberger February 22, 2018

Please watch this 6-minute video by Jacob Hornberger. Ideas on liberty matter. They are the way to achieve a free society. If you like a particular perspective published by FFF, please share it with others, especially from: 1. FFF Daily: our daily libertarian commentary page. 2. Future of Freedom: our ...

The Libertarian Angle: The Case against Education (video)

by Future of Freedom Foundation February 22, 2018

How much value should be placed on a bachelor's degree? Special guest Bryan Caplan, Professor of Economics at George Mason University, joins Jacob Hornberger and Richard Ebeling to discuss his new book The Case against Education. Due to a technical glitch, the video quality of this episode is poor, but we ...

It Is Our Right to Have “Weapons of War”

by Scott McPherson February 21, 2018

The recent tragic mass shooting at a Florida high school has the usual suspects coming out in favor of gun control. Once more it is the AR-15 rifle – used by the killer to take 17 lives – that has come under fire. What kind of society, we're lectured, allows such weapons in civilian hands? Speaking on CNN on ...

America’s Toxic Cult of Violence Turns Deadly

by John W. Whitehead February 20, 2018

Mass shootings have become routine in the United States and speak to a society that relies on violence to feed the coffers of the merchants of death. Given the profits made by arms manufacturers, the defense industry, gun dealers and the lobbyists who represent them in Congress, it comes as no surprise that the culture of ...