Hurting Wal-Mart’s Employees by Sheldon Richman January 20, 2006 Government is little more than a coercive transfer machine. If you can’t acquire something through consent and exchange, you ask politicians to compel others to provide it. This goes on every day. Never was it more blatant than when the Maryland legislature passed a law to compel Wal-Mart to spend at ...
It Takes Government to Create a Reading Crisis by Sheldon Richman January 11, 2006 When Horace Mann and his colleagues launched the public-school movement some 175 years ago, they made extravagant promises. Turn the education of children over to enlightened altruistic experts working under government auspices, they said, and illiteracy, vice, and crime will become things of the past. I’m not kidding. Most people don’t know ...
Selective Posturing on Guns by Scott McPherson January 9, 2006 I was recently in the Passport Agency in Washington, D.C., and while standing in line I noticed a number of fliers published by the State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs providing travel tips for those going to the Middle East, China, Mexico, and Canada. Tips for travelers in China or the Middle ...
The FISA Farce by James Bovard January 9, 2006 President Bush proudly announced last month that he is violating federal law. He declared that in 2002 he ordered the National Security Agency to begin conducting warrantless wiretaps and email intercepts on Americans. He asserted that the wiretaps would continue, regardless of the law. Bush claims that he must ignore the law because the secret federal court created to authorize ...
School-Choice Flaws by Sheldon Richman January 6, 2006 Some advocates of what is euphemistically called “school choice” argue that their reform would be a crucial step along the road to the separation of school and state. Some of us have dissented. Knowing how government works, we’ve had a hunch that vouchers and tuition tax credits would most likely ...
Leaving It All on the Field (Not in the Halls of Congress) by Adam B. Summers January 4, 2006 Congress certainly has had its plate full lately. Important things are going on in the nation and around the world. A New York Times report that President Bush signed a secret order authorizing the National Security Agency to spy on Americans without obtaining warrants has sparked controversy, Iraqis have ...
Book Review: Perilous Times by George Leef January 2, 2006 Perilous Times — Free Speech in Wartime by Geoffrey R. Stone (Norton, 2004); 730 pages; $35. If it is true to say, as Randolph Bourne did, that war is the health of the state, it is equally true to say that war is the sickness of individual liberty. The ...
The Separation of Education and State by Jacob G. Hornberger January 1, 2006 Americans, like most people around the world, have become so accustomed to the role that government plays in educating children that the idea of separating education from the state usually comes as a complete shock to them. While everyone is aware of the ever-growing problems associated with public schooling, the ...
Who Made the State the Ultimate Parent? by Sheldon Richman January 1, 2006 When an opponent declares, “I will not come over to your side,” I calmly say, “Your child belongs to us already.” — Adolf Hitler If you believe that parents have a fundamental, natural right (recognized in the Constitution) to raise ...
Free Speech on the Ropes by James Bovard January 1, 2006 The First Amendment states that “Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech.” The Founding Fathers could have done nothing to make it clearer that the government has no right to gag the American people. However, in recent years, the Constitution is proving little or no barrier ...
Crippling Competition, Part 2 by Scott McPherson January 1, 2006 Part 1 | Part 2 Independence is the only gauge of human virtue and value. What a man is and makes of himself; not what he has or hasn’t done for others. There is no substitute for personal dignity. There is no standard of personal dignity except independence. —Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead A truly free society ...
Democracy versus Freedom by Jarret B. Wollstein January 1, 2006 Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and conflict; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. James Madison, fourth president of the United States and primary Framer of the U.S. Constitution Politicians and ...