EDITORIAL
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September 01, 2014
Earlier this month the New York Times wondered aloud if the "libertarian moment" had arrived. A good question, to be sure. To answer it, though, Times reporter Robert Draper sought out not quite the top libertarian thinkers in the world, but instead those peopl ...
August 30, 2014
Dr. Henry Kissinger has written an article entitled, "Henry Kissinger on the Assembly of a New World Order" posted at The Wall Street Journal. It's an important article written by an important man. Dr. Kissinger, the Journal tells us, "served as national securi ...
August 28, 2014
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA or Obamacare) became law in early 2010. Arguably, it is the single greatest assault on the right of individuals to control their own bodies that America has seen in decades. Few matters are more intimate tha ...
August 28, 2014
Every public institution in the United States and most private ones are corrupt. To tell this story would be a multi-book task. Lawrence Stratton and I have written one small volume of the story. Our book, The Tyranny of Good Intentions, now with two editions a ...
August 26, 2014
For more than a decade, now, Federal Reserve policy has been guided by the fear of one economic bogeyman: the presumed danger of "price deflation." The fear is unfounded and the inflationary "solution" only leads to disaster. During Alan Greenspan's and Ben Ber ...
August 25, 2014
America's attention recently turned away from the violence in Iraq and Gaza toward the violence in Ferguson, Missouri, following the shooting of Michael Brown. While all the facts surrounding the shooing have yet to come to light, the shock of seeing police usi ...
August 25, 2014
Many have wondered about the status of Galt's Gulch Chile (GGC), the libertarian community that was planned and sold in lots as a liberty oasis for those who wished to live freedom before they died. My husband and I purchased an option on 1.25 acres in July 201 ...
August 23, 2014
The Economist has just posted a "leader" for its latest issue entitled "What China Wants" that begins, "After a bad couple of centuries, China is itching to regain its place in the world. How should America respond?" This kind of approach to geopolitics is actu ...
August 21, 2014
On June 17, 2013, the United States Supreme Court (SCOTUS) further eroded one of the most potent protections Americans had against unfettered authority: the right to remain silent. In Salinas v. Texas, SCOTUS ruled that a defendant's refusal to answer police qu ...
August 20, 2014
Governments and their defenders insist that taking taxes from citizens in perfectly okay. As Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes alleged, it is "the price we pay for civilization." Like saying handing over your money to a hood amounts to paying for safety! Balderdash ...
August 19, 2014
Since the economic crisis of 2008-2009, the Federal Reserve – America's central bank – has expanded the money supply in the banking system by over $4 trillion, and has manipulated key interest rates to keep them so artificially low that when adjusted for pr ...
August 18, 2014
We have been at war with Iraq for 24 years, starting with Operations Desert Shield and Storm in 1990. Shortly after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait that year, the propaganda machine began agitating for a US attack on Iraq. We all remember the appearance before Congre ...
August 16, 2014
Things are "coming up roses" (or "buds") when it comes to marijuana decriminalization and legalization. In this editorial I'll share some recent fertile events in Canada and around the world. First, the CBC has just reported that a Canadian appeals court ruled ...
August 14, 2014
The term "kafkatrapping" describes a logical fallacy that is popular within gender feminism, racial politics and other ideologies of victimhood. It occurs when you are accused of a thought crime such as sexism, racism or homophobia. You respond with an honest d ...
August 13, 2014
For those of us who have escaped Draconian tyrannies and reached America, for a long time it may be difficult to adjust to the fact that American Leftists are every bit the fascists that some claim they are. As the late Susan Sontag put it, "Communism is succes ...
August 12, 2014
Böhm-Bawerk is most famous as one of the leading critics of Marxism and socialism in the years before the First World War. He is equally famous as one of the developers of "marginal utility" theory as the basis of showing the logic and workings of the competit ...
August 12, 2014
On January 6, 2004, Paul Craig Roberts and US Senator Charles Schumer published a jointly written article on the op-ed page of the New York Times titled "Second Thoughts on Free Trade." The article pointed out that the US had entered a new economic era in which ...
August 11, 2014
The US government's decision to apply more sanctions on Russia is a grave mistake and will only escalate an already tense situation, ultimately harming the US economy itself. While the effect of sanctions on the dollar may not be appreciated in the short term, ...
August 09, 2014
CNN has announced that "trust in government is at an all time low." Like so many CNN articles, this one makes a factual statement and then lets it lie there, undisturbed. In fact, the article, based on a CNN poll, needlessly complicates its point by seeming to ...
August 07, 2014
There is an attempt to change the ground rules of libertarianism through introducing left-leaning attitudes and concepts. Two distinct approaches are in play within this attempt. I applaud one. I will leave the movement if the other prevails. My friend Chris Sc ...
August 06, 2014
Individualism – a Hundred Years Apart As a rather friendly observer of 19th Century America, Alexis de Tocqueville oddly shared a view of individualism with someone who isn't usually linked to his political viewpoint, namely, Karl Marx. This is understandable ...
August 05, 2014
Dear President Obama, For nearly six years, now, you have declared your intention and desire of being my Nanny-in-Chief. Your original campaign slogan of "Hope and Change" was really a promise of "Control and Command." Well, Mr. President, I have a request: Min ...
August 04, 2014
President Obama announced last week that he was imposing yet another round of sanctions on Russia, this time targeting financial, arms, and energy sectors. The European Union, as it has done each time, quickly followed suit. These sanctions will not produce the ...
August 02, 2014
Once more we are reminded how the modern economic intelligentsia is divorced from our miserable economic realities. And we have Paul Krugman to thank for that. In a recent editorial, Krugman pointed out that top economists believe the Obama administration's "st ...
August 02, 2014
Nothing in the world is easier than opposing a war that ended long ago. It takes no real courage to be against the Vietnam War in 2014. What takes courage is opposing a war while it is being fought – when the propaganda and intimidation of the public are at t ...
July 31, 2014
A manufactured conflict is flashing through libertarianism: self-described "humanitarians" versus insultingly-labeled "brutalists." In a much circulated article entitled "Against Libertarian Brutalism," the libertarian luminary Jeffrey Tucker defines the "human ...
July 30, 2014
In the history of political thought natural rights theory is most closely associated with John Locke, although as Brian Tierney has shown, the idea had been formed much earlier and some, for example Fred D. Miller, Jr., even hold that Aristotle was already cons ...
July 29, 2014
We live in a time when virtually all political parties and candidates stand for the same fundamental ideological idea: state interventionism and compulsory redistribution. This also applies to the mainstream media. Even many who say they adhere to a "pro-market ...
July 29, 2014
The extraordinary propaganda being conducted against Russia by the US and UK governments and Ministries of Propaganda, a.k.a., the "Western media," have the purpose of driving the world to war that no one can win. European governments need to rouse themselves f ...
July 28, 2014
Remember back in April, 2007, when then-CIA director George Tenet appeared on 60 Minutes, angrily telling the program host, "we don't torture people"? Remember a few months later, in October, President George W. Bush saying, "this government does not torture pe ...
July 26, 2014
Nation-states don't exist. Only cultures abide. But is has been the great triumph of globalists that they have created an entire history built around non-existent entities. "France goes to war with Germany." "Russia makes peace with Austria." "Tensions arise be ...
July 25, 2014
Despite the conclusion by US intelligence that there is no evidence of Russian involvement in the destruction of the Malaysian airliner and all lives onboard, Washington is escalating the crisis and shepherding it toward war. Twenty-two US senators have introdu ...
July 24, 2014
The Italian Marxist and philosopher Paolo Virno was imprisoned in 1979 for his affiliation with the Red Brigades. The organization attempted to create a revolutionary state through acts of violent destabilization such as bank robbery. While in prison, Virno had ...
July 23, 2014
The concept of "rights" was developed, in part, from the concept of "right" – correct, true – as used in the tradition of natural law ethics (concerning how we ought to act or not act because we are human beings). In time, a natural rights theory was produc ...
July 22, 2014
The Obama Administration has proposed its latest form of collectivist control over the American people. In a letter to Congress, U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew has called for punishment and prohibition of any company that tries to move its headquarters overse ...
July 21, 2014
Just days after the tragic crash of a Malaysian Airlines flight over eastern Ukraine, Western politicians and media joined together to gain the maximum propaganda value from the disaster. It had to be Russia; it had to be Putin, they said. President Obama held ...
July 19, 2014
The UN has now called for the decriminalization not just of marijuana but of other drugs as well, including so-called injectables. Our analyses are often correct, but in this case, we're a little surprised at how fast confirmation has arrived. The Economist inf ...
July 18, 2014
Mark Tier's latest title, Trust Your Enemies: A Political Thriller, which I found to be an intensely compelling Libertarian ride, is his first foray into fiction, following upon his excellent nonfiction writing that I've enjoyed for years. Having known Mark for ...
July 18, 2014
The unilateral US sanctions announced by Obama on July 16 blocking Russian weapons and energy companies access to US bank loans demonstrate Washington's impotence. The rest of the world, including America's two largest business organizations, turned their backs ...
July 17, 2014
Libertarians believe a better world is possible. Libertarian anarchists believe the best world is a stateless one; it consists of voluntary societies which would include institutions or customs to prevent and deal with occasional crime. The practical applicatio ...
July 16, 2014
That freedom is the matrix required for the growth of moral values – indeed not merely one value among many but the source of all values – is almost self-evident. It is only where the individual has choice, and its inherent responsibility, that he has occas ...
July 15, 2014
In the minds of many people around the world, including in the United States, the term "capitalism" carries the idea of unfairness, exploitation, undeserved privilege and power and immoral profit making. What is often difficult to get people to understand is th ...
July 14, 2014
Over the past several weeks we have seen a significant increase in illegal immigration, as thousands of unaccompanied minors pour across what seems an invisible southern border into the United States. The mass immigration has, as to be expected, put an enormous ...
July 12, 2014
BusinessInsider tells us that "America's Drug Companies Are Bankrolling the Crusade Against Legal Weed." This article is actually a summary of a larger article in The Nation, and BusinessInsider presents it this way: "Last week, The Nation published an interest ...
July 10, 2014
The third and final estimate (until the annual GDP revisions) of first quarter 2014 real GDP growth released June 25 by the US Bureau of Economic Analysis was a 2.9% contraction in GDP growth, a 5.5 percentage point difference from the January forecast of 2.6% ...
July 09, 2014
Throughout history political thinkers have been doing a lot of fretting about the public good (or public interest, common good, general welfare, etc.). Usually they came up with massive plans or enchanting visions. Plato's teacher, Socrates, was the great grand ...
July 08, 2014
This is an election year and as in all past election years we are inundated with promises and proposals from candidates, each hoping to attract our votes. For the most part what they are promising is "leadership" and political solutions to our personal, social ...
July 07, 2014
This week, supporters of religious freedom cheered the Supreme Court's ruling in the Hobby Lobby case. The Court was correct to protect business owners from being forced to violate their religious beliefs by paying for contraceptives. However, the decision was ...
July 05, 2014
In the past few months, we've examined articles and editorials that seem to align themselves with a neo-French Revolution meme, odd as that sounds. In fact, each article we've analyzed has presented an argument that income disparity is leading to increased viol ...
July 04, 2014
Did you know that 85 to 90 percent of war's casualties are non-combatant civilians? That is the conclusion reached by a nine-person research team in the June 2014 issue of the American Journal of Public Health. The deaths of soldiers who are fighting the war ar ...
