EDITORIAL Showing 201 - 250 of 1951
What Exactly is Racism?
June 26, 2015
I want to look at two words that the State and its hangers-on have employed with much success on behalf of increases in government power. One is racism. The other is equality. What exactly is racism? We almost never hear a definition. I doubt anyone really know ...
Charleston and Gun Rights
June 25, 2015
Dylann Roof's racially motivated murders of nine black churchgoers have brought predictable calls for new restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms. How ironic this is we shall soon see. Advocates of gun rights argue that the best way to prevent such atro ...
The Trans-Pacific Partnership Violates Free-Trade Principles
June 24, 2015
The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) violates fundamental free-trade principles and should be rejected by those who advocate for honest free trade. Free Trade Principles: The essence of free trade is that trading partners should be able to trade lawful goods and ...
Keeping Government Bureaucrats Off the Backs of the Citizenry: The Supreme Court Responds
June 24, 2015
In one swoop, on June 22, 2015, a divided U.S. Supreme Court handed down three consecutive rulings affirming the right of raisin farmers, hotel owners and prison inmates. However, this push back against government abuse, government snooping and government theft ...
F.A. Hayek and Why Government Can't Manage Society, Part I
June 23, 2015
This year marks the seventieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War. On May 8th, Nazi Germany surrendered to the Allied Powers in Europe. On September 2nd, Imperial Japan surrendered to the Allies on the deck of the U.S.S. Missouri in Tokyo Bay, thus ...
The Catholic Church and the Market
June 23, 2015
The release of the encyclical Laudato Si by Pope Francis last week had the predictable result of winning the Pontiff plaudits and huzzahs in the world’s press, and another round of bewildered head-shaking among observant Catholics. Whether in his formal remar ...
Death Penalty: The Ultimate Corrupt, Big Government Program
June 22, 2015
Nebraska's legislature recently made headlines when it ended the state's death penalty. Many found it odd that a conservatives-dominated legislature would support ending capital punishment, since conservative politicians have traditionally supported the death p ...
'Production Versus Plunder' ~ Part 12
June 20, 2015
Power is always grandiose and self-glorifying. But it is also self-destructive. It is the great error of productive people that they blindly obey power and contribute to its stupidity. Nonetheless, power always seems to hit its limits, where it rots in place an ...
Another Silly Jab at Libertarianism
June 20, 2015
The problem with responding to Alan Wolfe’s feeble attempt to critique libertarianism is that one might appear to be defending the particular people he targets: namely, Rand Paul and Ayn Rand. (Rand Paul was not named after Ayn Rand. At least Wolfe avoided th ...
Prohibition Corrupts Character on Both Sides of the Law
June 19, 2015
If you want a recent, vivid example of the corrosive effect the Drug War has on the character of law enforcement, look to the actions of the officers who raided Sky High Holistic, a medical marijuana dispensary located in Santa Ana, California, on May 27th of t ...
The Washington Intellectual Gravy Train
June 18, 2015
Intellectuals have long been glorified as champions of truth and defenders of society's highest values. But in Washington, they serve as Leviathan's Praetorian Guard. Intellectuals are thriving in DC thanks in large part to the ruinous policy advice they proffe ...
Starvation Is the Price Greeks Will Pay for Remaining in the EU
June 17, 2015
Syriza, the new Greek government that intended to rescue Greece from austerity, has come a cropper. The government relied on the good will of its EU "partners," only to find that its "partners" had no good will. The Greek government did not understand that the ...
Prisons Without Walls: We’re All Inmates in the American Police State
June 17, 2015
“Free worlders” is prison slang for those who are not incarcerated behind prison walls. Supposedly, those fortunate souls live in the “free world.” However, appearances can be deceiving. “As I got closer to retiring from the Federal Bureau of Prisons ...
American Progressives are Bismarck's Grandchildren
June 16, 2015
American "progressives" portray themselves as "forward-looking," advocates of a higher and better freedom than the traditional American conception of liberty as freedom from government coercion and control. In fact, they are the intellectual great-grandchildren ...
Soros Pushes US Bailouts and Weapons for Ukraine
June 15, 2015
If you look at the track record of the interventionists you might think they would pause before taking on more projects. Each of their past projects has ended in disaster yet still they press on. Last week the website Zero Hedge posted a report about hacked ema ...
'Production Versus Plunder' ~ Part 11
June 13, 2015
As many of us have noted (loudly and often), centralization is the executioner of liberty and prosperity. That truth is seen very clearly in the history of Rome. Continued from last week… THE ECONOMIC FALL OF ROME This slave economy was a crucial factor in th ...
Fact Checking Paul Krugman's Claim To Be 'Right About Everything'
June 12, 2015
"But can the debate really be as one-sided as I portray it? Well, look at the results: again and again, people on the opposite side prove to have used bad logic, bad data, the wrong historical analogies, or all of the above. I’m Krugtron the Invincible!" Thus ...
Should Freedom of Association Be Conditional?
June 11, 2015
Sir Patrick Stewart, of Jean Luc Picard/Professor X fame, has recently come under fire for defending the embattled North Irish bakery, Asher's Baking Company, that refused to bake a cake with a pro-gay rights theme: "Stewart called the Asher's case "a delicious ...
The Truth About Gurus
June 10, 2015
Reflecting on my life, I find a warm sense of kinship with Forrest Gump. For the handful of you unfamiliar with the fictional Mr. Gump, he’s a cranially challenged individual who by pure happenstance ends up living an extraordinary life brimming with interest ...
Slave or Rebel? Ten Principles for Escaping the Matrix and Standing Up to Tyranny
June 10, 2015
“Until they become conscious, they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled, they cannot become conscious.”—George Orwell. The more things change, the more they stay the same. It’s a shell game intended to keep us focused on and distracted b ...
The Tyranny of Trigger Words and College Safe Spaces
June 09, 2015
The media has been full of stories recently about the new sensitivity on college and university campuses concerning the avoidance in courses or assignments of the use of "trigger words" or phrases that may have a "hurtful" effect on students when thoughtlessly ...
Soros Pushes US Bailouts and Weapons for Ukraine
June 08, 2015
Soros is very close to the Ukrainian president, who was put in power after a US-backed coup deposed the elected leader of Ukraine last year. In the email correspondence, Soros tells the Ukrainian leadership that the US should provide Ukraine "with same level of ...
'Production Versus Plunder' ~ Part 10
June 06, 2015
If you want to analyze a large economic system, the best way to start is by tracking its surplus. Who gathers the surplus? Where does it go? Who decides? And that applies to our modern systems just as well as it does historical systems. THE DEMOCRATIZATION OF P ...
The National-Security State Lives
June 05, 2015
Sen. Rand Paul accomplished something worthwhile when, almost single-handedly, he saw to it that Section 215 of the Patriot Act expired. For that he deserves our heartfelt thanks. But where does the expiration now leave us opponents of indiscriminate government ...
Free Speech, Facebook and the NSA: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
June 04, 2015
“A person under surveillance is no longer free; a society under surveillance is no longer a democracy.”—Writers Against Mass Surveillance. THE GOOD NEWS: Americans have a right to freely express themselves on the Internet, including making threatening—e ...
The Warfare State Strikes Back Against Rand Paul
June 03, 2015
If you're interested in knowing which scepters of power the Warfare State is most unwilling to relinquish, try wrenching a few from its grasp. The volume of the cacophony will let you know just how grievously the beast in DC has been wounded. And it's never roa ...
Ron Paul and the Political Theatre
June 03, 2015
Students in the state's official propaganda institutions learn about the wonders of the ­­democratic process, so called, throughout their years of formal study. But the truth is on full display during a presidential election season. These are not wise statesm ...
Keynesian Medicines are Not the Cure for China's Ills
June 02, 2015
Keynesians never seem to learn. Every time an economy slows down or reverses gears and "goes negative," in terms of growth and employment, their only answer is a call for "aggregate demand" stimulus and more government spending manipulation. An example of this ...
Ex-Im Bank is Welfare for the One Percent
June 01, 2015
This month Congress will consider whether to renew the charter of the Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im Bank). Ex-Im Bank is a New Deal-era federal program that uses taxpayer funds to subsidize the exports of American businesses. Foreign businesses, including state-own ...
Freedom, Global Poverty, and the Failure of Foreign Aid
June 01, 2015
The standard narrative floating about the mainstream press is that the developing world is held back by a quagmire of free market fundamentalism. Sure, there are a few exceptions to this narrative, such as Peter Bauer and William Easterly. But pretty much all w ...
'Production Versus Plunder' ~ Part 9
May 30, 2015
Rome deviates from the cultural pattern we have been examining in that their creativity was not home grown and they did not simply overrun nearby creative peoples. Instead, they gathered to themselves the good ideas of distant peoples and made use of them, with ...
Washington Protects Its Lies With More Lies
May 29, 2015
My distrust has deepened of Seymour Hersh’s retelling of the Obama regime’s extra-judicial murder of Osama bin Laden by operating illegally inside a sovereign country. That Hersh’s story, which is of very little inherent interest, received such a large a ...
Let the Clock Run Out on the NSA
May 28, 2015
Regarding the feverish effort either to reauthorize, "reform," or abolish the National Security Agency's collection of our phone and email data, two things need to be said: First, thank you, Edward Snowden. Second, isn't it great to see the ruling elite panicki ...
The NSA’s Technotyranny: One Nation Under Surveillance
May 27, 2015
We now have a fourth branch of government. As I document in my new book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, this fourth branch came into being without any electoral mandate or constitutional referendum, and yet it possesses superpowers, above a ...
The Bait-and-Switch Behind Economic Populism
May 27, 2015
Argentina will hold elections this year, and a number of provinces will be electing governors. Buenos Aires, the capital city, is holding elections for mayor, and Mauricio Macri, who is stepping down as mayor, is a favorite to become the next president. Toward ...
Markets, Not Janet Yellen, Should Set Interest Rates
May 26, 2015
Financial markets in the United States and around the world are all waiting with "bated breath" for when the Federal Reserve modifies its "easy money" policy and starts to raise interest rates. No one, however, asks a simple question: Why is the American centra ...
Janet Yellen is Right: She Can’t Predict the Future
May 25, 2015
This week I found myself in rare agreement with Janet Yellen when she admitted that her economic predictions are likely to be wrong. Sadly, Yellen did not follow up her admission by handing in her resignation and joining efforts to end the Fed. An honest examin ...
'Production Versus Plunder' ~ Part 8
May 23, 2015
The cynical dictum, one sows, another reaps, is sometimes true in real life, but it has been burned into our history books. In some primary instances, usurpers have, famously, been given credit for what they did not create, but rather destroyed. Continued from ...
Magna Carta and Libertarian Strategy
May 23, 2015
The middle of next month will mark the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta. My knowledge of the "great charter" is modest, to be sure, but lately I have been reading about it and legacy. (See the "Liberty Matters" discussion, in which I have a small editorial role ...
Unionized Leviathan
May 22, 2015
The idea that government employees can or should have the right to unionize appears absurd on the face of it. Unlike the private sector, we are forced to pay for the "product" offered by government. We can't take our business elsewhere in the same way we do in ...
The Forgotten Depression
May 20, 2015
American prosperity demand fiscal and monetary stimulus to jump-start the sick economy back to life. And so we got fiscal stimulus, as well as a program of monetary expansion without precedent in US history. David Stockman recently noted that we have in effect ...
militarized police officer
Militarization Is More Than Tanks and Rifles
May 20, 2015
It’s a Cultural Disease, Acclimating the Citizenry to Life in a Police State. Talk about poor timing. Then again, perhaps it’s brilliant timing. Only now—after the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security (DHS) and Defense have passed off billions of dol ...
Why Government Deficits and Debt Do Matter
May 19, 2015
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reported in early May that for the month of April 2015 the Federal government ran a budget surplus, taking in more in taxes than it laid out in expenditures. Don't be fooled by one month, especially when it was a month when ...
Military-Industrial Congressional Complex – No Debate Allowed
May 18, 2015
New Military Spending Bill Expands Empire But Forbids Debate on War - On Friday the House passed a massive National Defense Authorization for 2016 that will guarantee US involvement in more wars and overseas interventions for years to come. The Republican major ...
'Production Versus Plunder' ~ Part 7
May 16, 2015
There have been lots of complaints about governments sticking their fingers into school curricula... and the people complaining have been right; setting knowledge free from the state was the key to its growth. We'll cover the story this week. … Chapter Three: ...
How GDP Metrics Distort Our View of the Economy
May 15, 2015
GDP purports to measure economic activity while largely divorcing itself from the quality, profitability, depth, breadth, improvement, advancement, and rationalization of goods and services provided. For example, even if a ship – built at great expense – ...
The Philosophy of Liberty Transcends Political Labels
May 14, 2015
One of the most amazing aspects of Ron Paul's twin presidential campaigns was the way they brought together people who, on the surface, attached themselves to many different political labels. I met wonderful people who identified as conservative, liberal, liber ...
The Empire Lies
May 14, 2015
Four years ago the late great journalist Alexander Cockburn wrote, "Alas, the actual story of 'our history' is an unrelenting ability to lie about everything, while simultaneously claiming America's superior moral worth." It so happens he wrote that sentence in ...
‘We the People’ Need to Circle the Wagons: The Government Is on the Warpath
May 13, 2015
How many Americans have actually bothered to read the Constitution, let alone the first ten amendments to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights (a quick read at 462 words)? Take a few minutes and read those words for yourself—rather than having some court or p ...
Spending and Redistribution Are Not the Answers to Slow Growth
May 12, 2015
Old fallacies never seem to die, they just fade away to reemerge once again later on. One such fallacy is that if there is significant unemployment and slow economic growth it must be due to not enough consumers' spending in the economy, what Keynesian economis ...
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