Daily Articles

The Libertarian Angle: Independence Day

by Future of Freedom Foundation July 6, 2016

FFF president Jacob Hornberger and Richard Ebeling talk about Independence Day! Go to the podcast.

A Declaration of Independence from Big Government

by Richard M. Ebeling July 5, 2016

The Declaration of Independence, proclaimed by members of the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, is the founding document of the American experiment in free government. What is too often forgotten is that what the Founding Fathers argued against in the Declaration was the heavy and intrusive hand of big government. Most Americans easily recall those eloquent words with which ...

Trump and Libertarians in the Political Arena

by David S. D'Amato July 1, 2016

For perhaps most self-described libertarians, supporting any politician is an uneasy exercise in bullet-biting pragmatism, premised on the idea that we ought to support the most libertarian individual in the race—even if that person is really not very libertarian. The author has, as it happens, spent years arguing against this view, suggesting that abstaining from the voting booth is ...

Debunking Utopia

by Nima Sanandaji July 1, 2016

My new book Debunking Utopia - Exposing the Myth of Nordic Socialism will shortly be released. The Nordic countries are used by Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and many others as the shining examples of the benefits of democratic socialism. As I consistently show in the new book however, it is Nordic culture rather than Nordic politics that undergirds the success ...

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 ...

‘We the Prisoners’: The Demise of the Fourth Amendment

by John W. Whitehead June 29, 2016

“Our carceral state banishes American citizens to a gray wasteland far beyond the promises and protections the government grants its other citizens… When the doors finally close and one finds oneself facing banishment to the carceral state—the years, the walls, the rules, the guards, the inmates—reactions vary. Some experience an intense sickening feeling. Others, a strong desire ...

The Libertarian Angle: The Brexit Vote

by Future of Freedom Foundation June 28, 2016

FFF president Jacob Hornberger and Richard Ebeling talk about Britain's vote to exit from the European Union.