Daily Articles

America’s Legacy of Regime Change

by Stephen Kinzer June 10, 2019

Covert Regime Change: America’s Secret Cold War by Lindsey A. O’Rourke (Cornell University Press, 2018); 330 pages. For most of history, seizing another country or territory was a straightforward proposition. You assembled an army and ordered it to invade. Combat determined the victor. The toll in death and suffering was usually horrific, but it was all ...

Should People Be Paid for Not Working?

by Laurence M. Vance June 7, 2019

Donald Trump’s proposed fiscal year 2020 budget (Oct. 1, 2019–Sept. 30, 2020), “A Budget for a Better America: Promises Kept. Taxpayers First,” largely mirrors his two previous budgets for fiscal years 2018 and 2019. In spite of Democratic criticism of Trump’s “cruel,” “shortsighted,” “toxic,” “destructive” budget, it is just like the ...

Why Neo-liberalism Is Really Neo-socialism

by Richard M. Ebeling June 7, 2019

If there is one common enemy that all opponents of individual liberty, free markets, and limited government seemingly can agree upon it is the “evil” of neo-liberalism. Everything that is hated in an open, competitive market society is summed into that word and condemned. The problem is that actual free market liberalism has nothing to do with its “neo-liberal” ...

How the Police State Muzzles Our Right to Speak Truth to Power

by John W. Whitehead June 6, 2019

“History shows that governments sometimes seek to regulate our lives finely, acutely, thoroughly, and exhaustively. In our own time and place, criminal laws have grown so exuberantly and come to cover so much previously innocent conduct that almost anyone can be arrested for something. If the state could use these laws not for their intended purposes but to silence ...

Afghanistan Exit: Swift, Responsible Disengagement, Part 1

by Danny Sjursen June 5, 2019

Part 1 | Part 2 The United States has been at war in Afghanistan for more than seventeen years. Despite many years of effort and billions spent, the U.S. military is still suffering casualties in that remote land. In 2017, fourteen American soldiers died in Afghanistan — some, in fact, shot from behind by their supposed local allies. Already, ...

The Libertarian Angle: Free Assange and Repeal the Espionage Act

by Future of Freedom Foundation June 4, 2019

Does the first amendment protect journalists or people? Is the Espionage Act suitable for a free society? FFF president Jacob G. Horngberger and Citadel professor Richard M. Ebeling answer these questions and more. Go to the podcast.

Obama’s Forgotten Frauds and Debacles

by James Bovard June 3, 2019

Former President Barack Obama is again busy lecturing Americans on politics. His speeches have contained many snappy lines that would deserve attention if they came from an untainted source. But Obama as president was guilty of many of the things against which he now warns his fellow citizens. Last September, Obama received the Paul H. Douglas Award for Ethics in ...

The America That Was — The Good and the Bad

by Richard M. Ebeling May 31, 2019

We live in a time when an understanding and an appreciation of what a free society can or should be like is being slowly lost. Or so it seems, often, to a friend of human liberty. Political interventionism and a revived interest in “democratic socialism” dominate public discourse in almost every corner of life. Calls are constantly being made for ...

The Iron-Fisted Authoritarianism of the Surveillance State

by John W. Whitehead May 30, 2019

“There will come a time when it isn't ‘They’re spying on me through my phone’ anymore. Eventually, it will be ‘My phone is spying on me.’” ― Philip K. Dick Red pill or blue pill? You decide. Twenty years after the Wachowskis’ iconic 1999 film, The Matrix, introduced us to a futuristic world in which humans exist ...

The Plague of Meddling Political Busybodies

by Richard M. Ebeling May 29, 2019

Who knows what might be better or best for you? You or those in the government? We all make mistakes and misjudgments, but who is most likely to have a wider and deeper appreciation of your wants and desires, you or a bureaucrat in an often-faraway government agency? Who is more likely to have an insight into the options ...

Time to End the Postal Monopoly

by Laurence M. Vance May 28, 2019

After blaming the billions of dollars a year in losses by the United States Post Office (USPS) on its failure to charge Amazon enough to deliver its packages — “making Amazon richer and the Post Office dumber and poorer” — Donald Trump, on April 12, 2018, signed Executive Order 13829, which established the Task Force on the United States ...

Freedom Is Why Immigrants Come to America

by Richard M. Ebeling May 23, 2019

America! The word has meant hope, opportunity and freedom for tens of millions of people over the last two and half centuries. For a good part of those 250 years, the words on the Stature of Liberty in New York harbor have rang true: "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse ...