Daily Articles

Should There Be Laws against Adultery?

by Laurence M. Vance June 19, 2024

The Supreme Court of India a few years ago struck down a colonial-era adultery law that made it illegal for a man to have sex with a married woman without the permission of her husband. Laws that criminalized adultery in Taiwan and South Korea have likewise recently been overturned by their constitutional courts. It is too bad that laws ...

The Global Economy: Free Trade versus Managed Trade

by Richard M. Ebeling June 18, 2024

In 1831, Sir Henry Parnell (1776–1842), a long-time chairman of the Financial Committee of the House of Commons, published On Financial Reform, in which he made the case for freedom of trade at a time when trade protectionism was mostly the order of the day in Great Britain, especially in agriculture: If once men were allowed to take their own ...

What’s Next for Battlefield America?

by John W. Whitehead June 14, 2024

“I did not know Israel was capturing or recording my face. been watching us for years from the sky with their drones. They have been watching us gardening and going to schools and kissing our wives. I feel like I have been watched for so long.”—Mosab Abu Toha, Palestinian poet If you want a ...

“Who Will Build the Roads?” Part 1

by Wendy McElroy June 11, 2024

Everyone who argues for the free market over government involvement in the economy has heard this common comeback: “Who will build the roads?” Sometimes, the question is sincere and deserves to be answered with patience. Much of the time, however, it is the dismissal of a complex argument and is intended to close off discussion with a glib victory. It is ...

Know Your Rights or You Will Lose Them

by John W. Whitehead June 7, 2024

“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”—Thomas Jefferson If America’s schools are to impart principles of freedom and democracy to future generations, they must start by respecting the constitutional rights of their students Take the case of Lucas Hudson. With all the negative ...

Two Payments, More Payments, Higher Payments, or No Payments?

by Laurence M. Vance June 5, 2024

Supplemental Security Income (SSI) is often confused with Social Security. Although both programs are administered by the Social Security Administration (SSA), and both programs provide Americans with cash from the federal government, that is where their similarity ends. According to the SSA, the main differences between SSI and Social Security are: Social Security benefits may be ...

Border Tyranny

by Jacob G. Hornberger June 3, 2024

Libertarian advocates of immigration controls always focus solely on the issue of immigration controls and never on the police state that comes with them. That’s because the police-state aspects of an immigration-control system make them extremely uncomfortable given the fact that a police state is the opposite of a libertarian society. I believe that it’s important to constantly remind people ...

How the Police State Muzzles Free Speech

by John W. Whitehead May 31, 2024

“Politicians of both parties want to use the power of government to silence their foes. Some in the university community seek to drive it from their campuses. And an entire generation of Americans is being taught that free speech should be curtailed as soon as it makes someone else feel uncomfortable.”—William Ruger, “Free Speech Is Central ...

Time to Separate Piety and Politics

by James Bovard May 29, 2024

The First Amendment of the Constitution specifies, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” In Washington, the “free exercise thereof” perennially includes politicians exploiting religion to sanctify themselves and all their power grabs. Piety with a side of eggs One of the most brazen if not most shameless “free exercise thereof” examples ...

Why Libertarians Loathe Tariffs

by Laurence M. Vance May 28, 2024

Former president and current Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump loves tariffs. In his 2011 book Time to Get Tough: Making America #1 Again, Trump included as part of his five-part tax policy “a 20 percent tax for importing goods.” During his first campaign for president, he called for a 35 percent tariff on cars and trucks imported from a ...

A Nanny State Idiocracy

by John W. Whitehead May 24, 2024

“Whether the mask is labeled fascism, democracy, or dictatorship of the proletariat, our great adversary remains the apparatus—the bureaucracy, the police, the military.”—Simone Weil, French philosopher We are caught in a vicious cycle of too many laws, too many cops, and too little freedom. It’s hard to say whether we’re dealing with a kleptocracy (a government ruled by ...

What President Biden’s Tax Return Tells Us about Social Security

by Laurence M. Vance May 22, 2024

President Biden has released his latest federal tax return, the one for tax year 2023. He has released the most tax returns of any president in U.S. history. What we are concerned about here, however, is not how much money the president and first lady made or how much they gave to charity but rather how ...