Daily Articles

The Life and Significance of F. A. Hayek

by Richard M. Ebeling February 1, 2023

Hayek: A Life, 1899–1950 by Bruce Caldwell and Hansjoerg Klausinger, (University of Chicago Press, 2022) People who knew Friedrich A. Hayek before he won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1974 sometimes said that he went through bouts of depression that interrupted his research and writing. Some also said that he could be aloof and distant when ...

Fiat Money and the French Revolution

by Phil Duffy February 1, 2023

Weimar Germany’s hyperinflation is well known, as are more recent hyperinflations in Argentina and, most recently, Venezuela. Perhaps fewer people have heard of John Law’s Mississippi Scheme in France and the issuance of paper money that underlay it. And perhaps even fewer still have heard that the issuance of paper money by the government contributed to the French Revolution ...

How Police Use Public-Private Partnerships to Spy on Americans

by John W. Whitehead January 20, 2023

“We live in a surveillance state founded on a partnership between government and the technology industry.”— Law Professor Avidan Y. Cover In this age of ubiquitous surveillance, there are no private lives: everything is public. Surveillance cameras mounted on utility poles, traffic lights, businesses, and homes. License plate readers. Ring doorbells. GPS devices. Dash cameras. Drones. Store security ...

The Conservative Cradle-to-Grave Welfare State

by Laurence M. Vance January 17, 2023

Although conservatives are commonly characterized as being against welfare and government intervention in the economy, nothing could be further from the truth. But don’t take my word for it: Just look at the latest plan put out by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a beltway conservative think tank. According to AEI’s Organization and Purposes: The American Enterprise Institute ...

Don’t Trust the Government with Your Privacy, Property or Your Freedoms

by John W. Whitehead January 13, 2023

How do you trust a government that continuously sidesteps the Constitution and undermines our rights? You can’t. When you consider all the ways “we the people” are being bullied, beaten, bamboozled, targeted, tracked, repressed, robbed, impoverished, imprisoned and killed by the government, one can only conclude that you shouldn’t trust the government with your privacy, your property, your life, or ...

No One Should Have His Tax Returns Released

by Laurence M. Vance January 9, 2023

House Democrats finally obtained former president Donald Trump’s tax returns and promptly released them to the public. No one should have his tax returns released: not presidents, not politicians, not celebrities, not sports figures, not cab drivers. Released was nearly 6,000 pages of six years of individual and business income tax returns for the years 2015 through 2020. The

How We Got a National-Security Police State, Part 3

by Jacob G. Hornberger January 1, 2023

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 On February 26, 1993, terrorists detonated a truck bomb in the World Trade Center (WTC) in New York City. While the bombing did not bring down the Twin Towers, as the terrorists intended, it did kill six people and injured over a thousand. That terrorist attack was no different in ...

The Federal Dietary Wrecking Ball

by James Bovard January 1, 2023

Politicians are hellbent on intruding further into Americans’ stomachs. In September, President Biden hosted a White House Summit on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health. A vast array of activists gathered, waiting for Biden to mobilize Washington to open the floodgates to far more food handouts. But their fond hopes did not survive the opening moments of Biden’s speech. “Jackie, are you ...

Freedom of Conscience

by Laurence M. Vance January 1, 2023

Libertarian philosopher and historian George H. Smith (1949–2022), in his collection of essays titled Freethought and Freedom, incisively remarked that “without freedom of conscience no other freedoms are possible.” It is my contention that freedom of conscience is under attack right now — in the third decade of the twenty-first century — more so than at any other time ...

Lionel Robbins on the Logic of Choice and a Liberal International Order

by Richard M. Ebeling January 1, 2023

It is probably not too much of an exaggeration to say that British economist Lionel Robbins (1898–1984) was one of the most influential economists of the last hundred years without most economists, nowadays, being aware of it. This is all because of a relatively short book that he published over 90 years ago, An Essay on the Nature and ...

The Historical Foundation of Civil Liberties, Part 3

by Tom G. Palmer January 1, 2023

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 This article is from a transcript of the opening presentation of FFF’s September 21, 2021, conference “Restoring Our Civil Liberties.” Let’s examine the contemporary use of the term civil liberties. The use of the term in the way that we’re now accustomed to dates to the repressive measures of World ...

From Totalitarian Paranoia to Authoritarian Madness

by John W. Whitehead December 29, 2022

The danger signs were everywhere in 2022. With every new law enacted by federal and state legislatures, every new ruling handed down by government courts, and every new military weapon, invasive tactic and egregious protocol employed by government agents, we were reminded that in the eyes of the government and its corporate accomplices, “we the people” possess no rights except ...