Daily Articles

The Prospects for Sound Money

by Tim Kelly January 9, 2012

A silver lining of the global economic crisis is that millions of people have been awakened to the importance of sound money to a modern economy. The housing bubble and subsequent bust, excessive leveraging, reckless speculation, and the sovereign-debt crisis afflicting Europe and the United States would all have been averted had money been commodity-based (e.g., gold and silver) ...

A Tired Obsession with Military Detention Plagues American Politics

by Andy Worthington January 7, 2012

Before the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, there were only two ways of holding prisoners — either they were prisoners of war, protected by the Geneva Conventions, or they were criminal suspects, to be charged and subjected to federal court trials. That all changed when the administration of George W. Bush threw out the Geneva Conventions, equated the Taliban with ...

A Moral Distinction

by Rich Schwartzman January 6, 2012

A new acquaintance recently asked whether she and I could get along, considering that she’s a liberal while I’m libertarian. Her second question focused on Ron Paul, likely the only person she ever heard of associated with libertarian philosophy: “Are all libertarians as conservative as Ron Paul on topics like abortion and gays?” This is where things can get complicated ...

In Defense of Affirmative Action

by Laurence M. Vance January 4, 2012

In order to put together a “diverse” student body, it is standard practice for many colleges and universities to use race as a factor in admissions. An unintended consequence of this policy is that some students who otherwise qualify for admission are denied because of their race. These race-factor admissions programs are invariably Affirmative Action programs like those that give ...

Exiting Iraq

by Sheldon Richman January 4, 2012

In his official remarks about the end of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, President Obama told an assembly of troops, The war in Iraq will soon belong to history. Your service belongs to the ages. Never forget that you are part of an unbroken line of heroes spanning two centuries — from the colonists who overthrew an empire, to your ...

What Are You Afraid Of if You Have Nothing to Hide?

by Matthew Harwood January 1, 2012

The Rights of the People: How Our Search for Safety Invades our Liberties by David K. shipler (New York: Knopf 2011), 384 pages. Late this past spring, two U.S. senators finally had the courage to look Big Brother in its inhuman, electronic eye and try to come clean on the USA PATRIOT Act. According to Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Org.) ...

Libertarianism Defined

by Future of Freedom Foundation January 1, 2012

Libertarianism is a political philosophy that holds that a person should be free to do whatever he wants in life, as long as his conduct is peaceful. Thus, as long a person doesn’t murder, rape, burglarize, defraud, trespass, steal, or inflict any other act of violence against another person’s life, liberty, or property, libertarians hold that the government should ...

Economic Liberty and Its Abandonment, Part 2

by Jacob G. Hornberger December 31, 2011

Part 1 | Part 2 While the movement towards socialism and interventionism in America had been slowly gathering steam in the late 1800s and early 1900s, it was during the Franklin Roosevelt administration in the 1930s that the statist revolution was won in the United States. It was Roosevelt, more than anyone else, who brought an end to one ...

Formalizing Tyranny

by Tim Kelly December 30, 2011

The National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 (NDAA) contains provisions that give the president power to use the military to arrest anyone including U.S. citizens and hold them indefinitely without charges or trial, anywhere in the world. The provisions shred due process of law and habeas corpus, and they effectively repeal the Posse Comitatus Act, which forbids the use ...

Government Can’t Stimulate an Economy

by Sheldon Richman December 29, 2011

Barack Obama won’t use the “stimulus” label to describe the nearly half-trillion-dollar jobs bill he sent to Congress in September, but that refusal can’t hide the fact that he has no idea how economies recover from recessions. “Stimulus” is a tainted label because his $800 billion bill in 2009 was a failure. Somehow a package about half that size ...

Federal Training Flops

by James Bovard December 28, 2011

Barack Obama recently proposed new programs to provide job training for youth and the long-term unemployed. For half a century, federal programs have provided trainees with little more than false hope. There is no reason to permit the feds to inflict new damage after all their previous failures. Between 1962 and 1980, the feds spent more for federal job training ...

The Road to the Permanent Warfare State, Part 8

by Gregory Bresiger December 27, 2011

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 |Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 |Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 |Part 12 |Part 13 George Kennan, the author of the containment doctrine, the doctrine that had set the ...