Daily Articles

The Libertarian Angle: Our Libertarian Angle College Tour

by Future of Freedom Foundation April 14, 2014

FFF president Jacob Hornberger and FFF vice president Sheldon Richman talk about their just-completed tour where they took the Libertarian Angle live to college campuses in the Northeast. The Libertarian Angle airs weekly. Go to the podcast.

Abolish the ATF

by Laurence M. Vance April 10, 2014

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) is under fire by Republicans and conservatives yet again. And for good reason. First it was the “Fast and Furious” operation in Phoenix, where ATF agents allowed illegal gun sales that were believed to be ultimately for Mexican drug cartels in order to track the buyers and sellers. It resulted in ...

The Big Lie of a “Rape Culture”

by Wendy McElroy April 7, 2014

April is Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month, and it will be used to promote a big lie — namely, that we live in a “rape culture.” The term “rape culture” was coined by politically correct (PC) feminists in the 1970s. It refers to attitudes, beliefs, and values that allegedly normalize sexual violence against women and encourage the ...

TGIF: In Praise of “Thick” Libertarianism

by Sheldon Richman April 4, 2014

I continue to have trouble believing that the libertarian philosophy is concerned only with the proper and improper uses of force. According to this view, the philosophy sets out a prohibition on the initiation of force and otherwise has nothing to say about anything else. (Fraud is conceived as an indirect form of force because, say, a deceptive seller obtains ...

Socialism vs Capitalism (video)

by David Boaz April 2, 2014

On March 31, 2014 David Boaz presented the above speech as part of the ongoing Economic Liberty Lecture Series, a joint project of The Future of Freedom Foundation and the George Mason University Economics Society. David Boaz is the executive vice president of the Cato Institute and has played a key role in the development of ...

The Roots of Iran’s Nuclear Secrecy

by Sheldon Richman April 2, 2014

For years we’ve heard the steady drumbeat of news stories like this: Over 18 years, Iran secretly assembled uranium enrichment and conversion facilities that could be used for a nuclear energy program or to construct an atomic bomb. And this was among the least alarmist stories. The thrust of the sensational coverage, instigated by hawkish ...

Let’s Raise Our Vision

by Jacob G. Hornberger April 1, 2014

There was once a time when religious liberty had never before been considered. Throughout history, people lived under political systems in which government and religion were combined. Since it was the system under which they had been born and raised and which existed all over the world, people just didn’t give any thought to an alternative. Then one day, ...

Crime and Punishment in a Free Society

by Sheldon Richman April 1, 2014

Would a free society be a crime-free society? We have good reason to anticipate it. Don’t accuse me of utopianism. I don’t foresee a future of new human beings who consistently respect the rights of others. Alas, there will always be those who would invade the boundaries of their fellow human beings. Rather, I want to draw attention to the ...

Foreign Aid Clobbers the Third World

by James Bovard April 1, 2014

The U.S. government loves to preen about its generosity to the world’s downtrodden. However, a long series of presidents and their tools have scorned the evidence that their aid programs perennially clobber recipients. Nowhere is this clearer than in the sordid history of U.S. food aid. Food for Peace was devised in 1954 to help dump abroad embarrassingly huge crop ...

Tolerance: Joining the Best of Conservatism and Progressivism

by Alexander William Salter April 1, 2014

Many liberals (in the classical sense) are so reluctant to concede an inch to conservatism and progressivism that they insist the latter two political philosophies, and the worldviews that frequently accompany them, have no redeeming features. This is a mistake. There are elements of conservatism worth conserving, and elements of progressivism worth progressing towards. Furthermore, tolerance, the premier social ...

“Racist” Zip Codes

by Wendy McElroy April 1, 2014

A new type of social engineering is poised to descend on American communities: diversity mapping and the rectification of any racial inequities the mapping reveals. The campaign is meant to stamp out “geospatial discrimination.” The term refers to the fact that affluent neighborhoods tend to be dominated by whites and Asians. What government calls “protected minorities,” especially blacks, are relatively ...

The Death of Empires

by Martin Morse Wooster April 1, 2014

Balance: The Economics of Great Powers from Ancient Rome to Modern America by Glenn Hubbard and Tim Kane. (Simon and Schuster 2013), 296 pages. One of the perennial questions historians address is why empires fell. In his 1987 bestseller, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, Yale historian Paul Kennedy theorized that every empire reaches a tipping point ...