Daily Articles

Why Not Equalize Beauty, Talent, and Intelligence?

by Walter Block July 12, 2023

A basic premise of the “progressive” (actually, regressive) left is that the rich have too much money and the poor have too little. Therefore, they say, it is justified to take wealth away from the former and give it to the latter. The typical means leftists use to accomplish this is to adopt a steeply progressive tax ...

Discrimination, Affirmative Action, and College Admissions

by Laurence M. Vance July 10, 2023

Conservatives are cheering and progressives are crying about the recent Supreme Court decision in the case of Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, which was consolidated with Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina et al. The cases began in 2014 when Students for Fair Admission (SFFA) — a nonprofit ...

A State of Martial Law

by John W. Whitehead June 30, 2023

“What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance?”—Thomas Jefferson The government is goosestepping all over our freedoms. Case in point: America’s founders did not want a military government ruled by force. Rather, they opted for a republic bound by the rule of law: the U.S. ...

How Not to Abolish the Income Tax

by Laurence M. Vance June 28, 2023

Throughout this country’s history, Americans have always paid taxes of various kinds. But no matter what kind, all taxation is theft. Everyone but a criminal obtains his income voluntarily. He either sells some good or service or he receives some kind of  stipend or gift But as explained by the Austrian economist Murray Rothbard (1926–1995): Only the State ...

Help FFF Achieve the Free Society

by Jacob G. Hornberger June 28, 2023

Some 45 years ago, I discovered four little books in the public library of my hometown of Laredo, Texas. Essays on Liberty, volumes 1–4, consisted of a series of uncompromising, principled libertarian essays by such people as Leonard E. Read, Ludwig von Mises, Henry Hazlitt, Frédéric Bastiat, Bettina Bien Greaves, F.A. Harper, Frank Chodorov, and Clarence Manion. Those four ...

Only a Renewed Belief in Liberty Can End America’s Fiscal Follies

by Richard M. Ebeling June 27, 2023

The Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) February 2023 report, Budget and Economic Outlook, 2023-2033, documents just how serious the fiscal dilemma is facing the United States. In a nutshell, the federal government’s debt is on a dangerous trajectory, future annual budget deficits are huge as far as the eye can see, and the “entitlement programs” — Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid ...

The U.S. Government Is the Real Criminal

by John W. Whitehead June 22, 2023

“The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable.”—H.L. Mencken And so it continues. This entire fiasco—indicting Donald Trump for allegedly violating both the Espionage ...

Celebrating Adam Smith on His 300th Birthday

by Richard M. Ebeling June 20, 2023

Three hundred years ago, on June 5, 1723, one of the most important and influential thinkers in modern history, Adam Smith, was born in the small Scottish village of Kirkcaldy. There are few individuals who it can be said have left as lasting and as positive a legacy on humankind as Adam Smith. He authored only two books, The Theory ...

Washington’s Continuing Shame in Syria

by Ted Galen Carpenter June 19, 2023

Recent news reports indicate that the Biden administration is orchestrating an agreement between two insurgent groups in northeastern Syria to continue preventing the national government of Bashar al-Assad from regaining control of that region. If true, Washington’s conduct in Syria has reached a new low in terms of basic decency. Normally, there would be much to admire ...

Republicans Miss the Point on Mortgage Fee Hike

by Laurence M. Vance June 16, 2023

Back in January, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) announced that mortgage fees for some borrowers would increase beginning May 1, while other borrowers would see their fees decrease. The FHFA is an independent federal agency that “was established by the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 (HERA) and is responsible for the effective supervision, regulation, ...

The Emergency State’s Plot to Override the Constitution

by John W. Whitehead June 13, 2023

“Rule by indefinite emergency edict risks leaving all of us with a shell of a democracy and civil liberties just as hollow.”—Justice Neil Gorsuch We have become a nation in a permanent state of emergency. Power-hungry and lawless, the government has weaponized one national crisis after another in order to expand its powers and justify all manner of ...

How Evil Are Politicians? Part 1

by George Leef June 12, 2023

Part 1 | Part 2 How Evil Are Politicians?: Essays on Demagoguery by Bryan Caplan (Bet On It Books, 2022) If you are a libertarian, or just someone with a streak of skepticism about government, you will enjoy and profit from reading How Evil are Politicians? The author, Bryan Caplan, is a professor of economics at George Mason ...