Daily Articles

Conservatives, Libertarians, and Family Leave

by Laurence M. Vance April 5, 2019

Former president and conservative icon Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) famously said about conservatism and libertarianism in 1975, If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals — if we were back in the days of ...

Equal Employment Opportunity Is Bad Law

by Laurence M. Vance April 4, 2019

Everyone who works a job has seen the same poster on a wall or a bulletin board at his place of employment: Equal Employment Opportunity Is THE LAW. (The last two words are usually in all caps and in a much larger font and in a different color than the first four words.) The poster The poster says that applicants to ...

The Dangers of the New Democratic Socialism

by Richard M. Ebeling April 3, 2019

In the ancient world, there was often a philosophy of life that the events surrounding man and the world he lived in went in circles and cycles. It certainly seems that way with the recent revival of the case for democratic socialism. After seeming to have been relegated to the dustbin of history following the collapse of Soviet-style socialism ...

The Making of a Monster

by John W. Whitehead April 2, 2019

“But these weren’t the kind of monsters that had tentacles and rotting skin, the kind a seven-year-old might be able to wrap his mind around—they were monsters with human faces, in crisp uniforms, marching in lockstep, so banal you don't recognize them for what they are until it's too late.” — Ransom Riggs, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children The ...

The Little House on the Prairie of Laura Ingalls Wilder

by Wendy McElroy April 1, 2019

Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser (Metropolitan Books, 2017); 625 pages. Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder, by Caroline Fraser, is one of the finest biographies I have read, and a fully deserving winner of the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Biography. Prairie Fires is the definitive depiction ...

Truth Is an Outlaw in Washington

by James Bovard March 29, 2019

“Truth isn’t truth,” declared Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump’s personal attorney, on Meet the Press last August. Giuliani’s comment was the “Trump era’s epitaph,” according to a Washington Post columnist. But truth really is defined differently inside the Beltway — when it is not in total hiding. Trump could face a “perjury trap” from Special Counsel Robert Mueller because of the ...

A Gross Violation of the Constitution

by Laurence M. Vance March 28, 2019

Although Donald Trump had a Republican majority in Congress for the first two years of his presidency, he failed to obtain funding to build his signature wall between the United States and Mexico. Yet now that the Democrats control the House, he is more determined than ever to build his wall. But never mind the Congress, just declare a national ...

Your Tax Dollars at Work

by Laurence M. Vance March 27, 2019

We have all seen the signs. They might be referring to a road-widening project, a new city or county park, sidewalks being repaired, new airport terminals being constructed, potholes being filled in, additional trees being planted, or some sort of downtown development. But regardless of the project, the signs are usually the same: Your Tax Dollars at Work. Now, it ...

No Sanitized Pages in History, Please!

by Richard M. Ebeling March 26, 2019

Imagine that in 1946 the general-secretary of the United Nations had submitted a resolution to the General Assembly stating that Nazi crimes were so horrendous and despicable that the countries of the world needed to impose a blanket censorship on any public reference to or discussion of Hitler or his henchmen. Only the names of victims were to be ...

Liberal Internationalism: True and False, Part 2

by Richard M. Ebeling March 25, 2019

Part 1 | Part 2 The classical liberal international order of the nineteenth century was not planned or designed by anyone. It was, for the most part, the natural outgrowth of the expanding influence of a new political philosophy of freedom, free markets, and free trade. It began to emerge in the wake of the twenty-five years of war ...

Don’t Shoot the Dogs

by John W. Whitehead March 22, 2019

“In too much of policing today, officer safety has become the highest priority. It trumps the rights and safety of suspects. It trumps the rights and safety of bystanders. It’s so important, in fact, that an officer’s subjective fear of a minor wound from a dog bite is enough to justify using potentially lethal force, ...

Clarity on Diversity and Pluralism

by Richard M. Ebeling March 21, 2019

Freedom and the free society are once again under direct attack by those who espouse far-greater degrees of government control over people’s lives. Wrapping themselves in the cloak of progressivism, “social justice,” and liberation from oppression and discrimination, they use a lexicon of words that are designed to reflect their view of and desires for the world: diversity, inclusiveness, ...