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It’s becoming increasingly clear that the U.S. interventionist crowd is finding itself in a pickle with respect to the U.S. government’s 12-year occupation of Afghanistan and 12-year “war on terrorism. “
On the one hand, we have President Obama’s announcement ...
Do you ever wonder about the final thoughts of a U.S. soldier who has just been shot by one of his compatriots in the Afghan army? After all, his killer is one of the guys he’s been training and ...
One of the most interesting, albeit frustrating, aspects of being a libertarian is having to repeatedly show the fallacies behind statist thinking. No matter how many times we libertarians destroy statist reasoning behind statist policies, the statists just keep ...
John Cornyn, the U.S. Senator from Texas, has ignited a firestorm with an op-ed in which he stated that it might be necessary to “partially shut down the government” as part of the upcoming debt-ceiling debate in “our ...
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3| Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 (to be posted) | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11
At the ...
Last Sunday besieged Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad delivered a public speech at which he condemned the Syrians who are trying to oust him from power as “murderous criminals” and “terrorists.” According to a Syrian shopkeeper quoted in a
Lynne Stewart is a New York attorney who is serving a 10-year sentence in the federal penitentiary for being a supporter of terrorism. Her crime? Two years after the 9/11 attacks, she read the following message from her client, ...
There are three important things to remember about the Second Amendment. First, it doesn’t give people the right to own guns. Second, it is an implicit acknowledgement that the U.S. government is the biggest threat to the freedom and ...
It’s time for Republicans to do the right thing. It’s time to put the brakes on out-of-control federal spending. The best way to do it is by refusing to lift the debt ceiling when the current ceiling is reached ...
The fiscal-cliff deal shouldn’t surprise anyone. A sufficient number of Republicans caved, enabling President Obama to bask in the glory of causing Republicans to vote for a massive tax increase.
What did the Republicans get in return with respect to ...
Given the statist direction in which our nation continues to head, one might be tempted to succumb to despondency. After all, everywhere you look, there’s a crisis, with calls for even more statism to address the crises. The worse ...
The situation certainly doesn’t look good. The U.S. welfare-warfare state is more entrenched than ever. Federal spending continues to soar. The national debt continues to mount. The Federal Reserve is cranking up the inflationary ...
Yesterday, I pointed out one of the big downsides to the embrace of the national-security-state way of life — that it has induced Americans to maintain a constant state of delusion with respect to U.S. foreign policy. I ...
The New York Times published an article on December 25 that exposes a harsh reality about U.S. foreign policy to mainstream Americans. The article, entitled “Bahrain, a Brutal Ally,” focuses on one of the principal dark sides of ...
Have you noticed that all that fear-mongering among the statists regarding the fiscal cliff is starting to diminish? That’s because they are now coming to the realization that their fear-mongering might not succeed in driving Congress and the president ...
The U.S. government’s ongoing dispute with Russian President Vladimir Putin reflects what a disaster the U.S. government’s “war on terrorism” has been, at least from the standpoint of moral standing.
Ever since his election, Putin, harkening back to what he ...
If there is a more emotionally painful experience than a parent’s losing a child, I can’t imagine what it would be. The emotional wound is raw and goes down to the deepest recesses ...
Following up on my blog post of December 17 on the shootings in Connecticut, “Those Government Gun-Free Zones,” I wish to make a supplemental point, one about interventionism.
It appears increasingly likely that the Connecticut massacre will lead to ...
Pity Republicans and conservatives. At a time they thought they would be celebrating the Christmas season with planning for inaugural balls for Mitt Romney, they are instead wallowing in depression and soul-searching. They ...
It’s no big surprise. A gun massacre brings out the gun-control crowd, which loudly demands that gun control be imposed on the American people, as if that would have prevented the massacre in ...
Stephanie George, who is now 42 years old, has spent the last 15 years of her life in jail. That might turn out to be a short period of time, given that her ...
President Obama has just announced that the U.S. government has decided to formally recognize the rebel group that is trying to oust Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad from power.
Benjamin Franklin once said, “Where liberty dwells, there is my country,” inspiring Thomas Paine to reply, “Where liberty is not, that is my home.”
We libertarians happen to ...
American statists are wringing their hands in anxiety and fear over the impending “fiscal cliff” and debt ceiling. The problem, however, is that every statist has his own personal favorite government programs, either ...
The war on drugs provides a good example of the power of ideas. Twenty years ago, it was mostly libertarians who were challenging this war and calling for it to be ended. Today, ...
The New York Times is at it again, pounding on Republicans for not quickly agreeing to raise the debt ceiling once again. In an editorial
Following up on my blog post of December 4, entitled “It’s Time to End the War against Cuba,” the conservative ...
A few days ago the New York Times carried an article entitled “How Capitalist Are the Cubans?” The article addressed ...
When is enough enough? The U.S. military and the CIA have waged war on Cuba for more than 50 years. After a half-century of invasions, assassination attempts, terrorist attacks, and a cruel and ...
Sometimes I wonder whether the profuse thanks that many Americans shower on the troops shouldn’t instead be an apology. After all, I think it’s a fair assumption that those who do the thanking ...
In an editorial this week entitled, “The Tea Party Goes to War,” the Wall Street Journal takes Republicans Rand Paul and Mike Lee and Democrats Dianne Feinstein and Max Baucus to task for proposing an amendment to the current ...
Statists are ecstatic over the fact that a few Republican members of Congress are turning their backs on the no-tax-hike pledge they signed at the request of GOP activist Grover Norquist. Overjoyed by the fact that the welfare-warfare state ...
Yesterday, the New York Times carried a fascinating article entitled "Suit Planned Over Death of Man C.I.A. Drugged." According to the article, the children of a former ...
It is so amusing to see mainstream commentators condemning Egypt’s president, Mohamed Morsi, for assuming dictatorial powers. Their critiques are well-taken, as I observed in my blog post of yesterday, “
Recent actions by Egypt’s president Mohamed Morsi expose how ludicrous U.S. foreign policy is, both with respect to its purported goal to spread democracy around the world and its ardent support of brutal ...
This article was originally published in November 2008.
As Barack Obama prepares to assume the presidency, it would be appropriate today to remember that the original Thanksgiving celebrated the demise of the ...
On the 49th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, among the glaring issues that cry out for explanation is the multiple delivery of Kennedy’s body to the Bethesda morgue on the evening of the assassination. After ...
A good example of how liberals view federal spending and the role of the federal government in American society comes in the form of an article by Robert Reich, former secretary of labor in the Clinton administration.
Reich says that ...
I still don’t get why Gen. David Petraeus is portrayed as a hero by public officials and the mainstream press for his leadership in the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Even with the passage of time the discomforting facts ...
For those who are pacing the floors and taking anti-anxiety pills owing to scare hype about the “fiscal cliff” that public officials and their unofficial spokesmen in the mainstream press have been issuing, I am about to put your ...
It was inevitable. Today the Guardian reported the first death of an Iranian child from the U.S. Empire’s sanctions on Iran. The death of 15-year-old Iranian Manoucherhr Esmaili-Liousi brings to mind the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi ...
In my blog post yesterday, I pointed out how Ecuador’s president, Rafael Correa, provides a good insight into the mindsets of liberals and conservatives here in the United States. Correa, of course, is an ardent socialist. Everyone agrees on ...
Leave it to 495ExpressLanes.com to bring a bit of humor and misguided economic analysis to the Washington, D.C., environs in the form of an advertisement in the Washington Post. The ad promotes the new beltway express lanes that ...
The Jacob Hornberger Show broadcasts live every Sunday night at 6:30 pm EST. Visit FFF's Ustream Channel to watch the show live.
For an excellent example of the economic ignorance that pervades the mainstream press, take a look at these two articles: “Behind New York Gas Lines, Warnings and Crossed Fingers” by David W. Chen, Winnie Hu, and Clifford ...
Yesterday, I saw a political yard sign that said “Keep Us Free. Elect Romney.” It exemplifies perfectly one of the major problems we face in this country: the fact that so many Americans honestly believe they live ...
I wish to follow up on my blog post of yesterday, where I wrote about how the vast U.S. military establishment is a major contributing cause of America’s economic problems.
Let’s consider North Korea, a nation in which the ...
CNN’s Wolf Blitzer made an interesting and revealing observation last night while discussing exit polls that CNN had conducted. Blitzer’s observation provides good insight into how mainstream political commentators and pundits think when it comes to such issues as ...
Last night we were treated to a fascinating and timely talk by economics professor Daniel Smith at our Economic Liberty Lecture Series, which is cosponsored by the student-run Econ Society at George Mason University. We’ll be posting his talk ...
Two articles in the New York Times last week exemplify perfectly why our nation is in such bad shape. Both articles concerned the devastation from Hurricane Sandy. The first was a Times editorial, entitled “A Big Storm Requires ...
Mocking Mitt Romney’s shifting positions on the auto bailout, the New York Times editorializes that the bailout turned out to be a huge success because “nearly 1.5 million people are working as a direct result of the bailout. ...
I had a fun session with nine students from George Mason University’s economics department last night at the informal law and economics seminar I’m conducting once a month at GMU. The seminar is sponsored by the GMU Econ Society, ...
Yesterday I wroteabout an op-ed in the New York Times entitled “Time to Get Tough on Iraq” by Nussaibah Younis, which was harshly critical of the Maliki regime in Iraq.
In his op-ed, Younis criticized the ...
Uh, oh! The time might be approaching when the U.S. government will need to invade and bomb Iraq again, with the intent of, once again, achieving regime change and installing a regime that is obedient, submissive, and loyal to ...
To understand the statist mindset when it comes to the U.S. national-security state, all one has to do is read an article published last week in the New York Times entitled “How Castro Held the World Hostage” ...
Most everybody is commenting on how last night’s foreign policy “debate” wasn’t really a debate at all, given the extent to which Barack Obama and Mitt Romney have the same views on foreign policy. I don’t see how this ...
It was exciting, eventful, and enjoyable! I’m referring, of course, to our second College Civil Liberties Tour, which took place out west last week. At each of the five events, the audiences, which ranged in size from around 140-200, ...
This evening we kick off our College Civil Liberties Tour with a program at the University of Washington at Seattle. If you’re able to tune in, it will be live-streamed here. This week’s schedule is there too. If you ...
Our second College Civil Liberties Tour kicks off this Monday, October 15, in Seattle. Then, we’re off to Davis, California, and San Diego. Then on to Tucson. And then we wrap it up in Boulder.
We are psyched!
A supporter called ...
An article in last Friday’s New York Times about Venezuela’s presidential election provides some fascinating insights into America’s welfare-warfare state and the reason that U.S. officials love the welfare-warfare state way of life.
The article, which was written before election ...
Conservatives are on the warpath over the reelection of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. They’re saying that Venezuelans have made a huge mistake in extending Chavez’s term as president, pointing out that Chavez’s socialism is destroying Venezuela’s economy. They’re also ...
A classic example of the horror of dependency that comes with a dole society comes out of Germany. According to a fascinating article in the New York Times, Germany’s Catholic bishops are up in arms over ...
Imagine a society in which there is no income taxation, one in which everyone keeps everything he earns and then decides what to do with his own money — invest, spend, lend, save, or donate it.
Along comes someone who ...
The New York Times reports that the Pentagon and the CIA are preparing plans to target suspects in the murder of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and two colleagues in Libya with assassination by drone. The process is ...
Last night, I had the good fortune of attending the world premier of Atlas Shrugged, Part 2, in Washington, D.C. I say good fortune because it was an absolutely awesome film. It had everything — action, adventure, suspense, great ...
The New York Times reports today that the value of Iran’s currency has fallen 40 percent in the last week alone, another sign of the horrible economic pain that the U.S. government is inflicting on the Iranian people with ...
Both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, along with their vice-presidential running mates, are fighting hard to convince voters that they will support and defend Medicare to their dying day. All of these political candidates understand an uncomfortable truth about ...
Two separate articles in the mainstream press provide good examples of how proponents of the welfare-warfare state are getting so desperate over the failure of their beloved statist paradigm that their thinking is getting ever more muddled. The two ...
President Obama’s pointed observation that Egypt is no longer an ally of the United States reveals the imperial mindset that characterizes U.S. officials.
Obama was recently asked in a television interview, “Would you consider the current Egyptian regime an ally ...
Article One, Section 10, of the U.S. Constitution reads: “No state shall … make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts.”
Article One, Section 8, reads as follows: “The Congress shall have Power … ...
We should bear in mind what the Pentagon initially had in mind when it established its prison camp and judicial system at Guantanamo Bay after the 9/11 attacks. Its plan was to make its prison camp totally independent from ...
The real shame of the Obama-Romney race will be the lack of debate on the fundamental issues facing our nation. Alas, the sad reality is that we’ve got a race between two statists who are battling over which one ...
One of the most fascinating phenomena of our time is the extreme reverence that the American people have been taught to have for the military. Wherever you go -- airports, sports events, church -- there is a god-like worship ...
Why is it important to advance ideas on liberty even when the odds against us seems so daunting?
One reason is because it is the right thing to do.
Another reason is because it’s the only way to achieve a free ...
It’s a real shame that Mitt Romney and Barack Obama are on the same page on civil liberties, the war on terrorism, and foreign policy. The big losers of this bi-partisan mindset are the American people, who will continue ...
The opening sentence of my blog post of last April 23, which was entitled “Americans Should Watch Egypt,” was: “Egypt is developing into a fascinating situation, one that involves the United States. It’s worth paying attention to in the ...
Leave it to the Los Angeles Times to inject a bit of humor into today’s celebration of Constitution Day. The humor comes in the form of an op-ed entitled “The Audacity of Democracy” by Akhil Reed Amar, ...
One thing is for sure: All the love that the U.S. government claims to have generated among the people of the Middle East with its sanctions, invasions, occupations, democracy-spreading operations, and other interventionist actions has failed to manifest itself ...
To understand why this country is in deep financial and economic trouble, all we have to do is examine the reasoning of the editorial board at the Los Angeles Times. The only reason I select the Times to demonstrate ...
The federal government’s designation of September 11 as “Patriot Day” raises an obvious question: What does it mean to be a patriot, especially in the context of 9/11?
The statist version of patriotism entails citizens who rally to their government ...
On the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, let us never forget the role that the U.S. government played in engendering the anger and hatred that produced the attacks.
Yes, I know the standard statist response: “You’re a justifier! You’re ...
I don’t understand why Mitt Romney doesn’t offer to replace Joe Biden as President Obama’s running mate. Wouldn’t that save everyone a lot of time, money, and energy? After all, is there any real fundamental difference between Obama and ...
Yesterday I happened to tune in on the radio to a fascinating and boring exchange between conservative talk-show host Sean Hannity and a liberal economist named Austan Goolsbee, who used to serve on President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors.
The ...
When Republicans talk about the exceptional nature of the U.S. government, they might well be referring to both its brutality and its hypocrisy. Such characteristics are on full display in a just-released report by Human Rights Watch, which details ...
American statists love to tell us how important it is that the U.S. government continue spending and borrowing ever-increasing amounts of money. They say all that spending and borrowing is the key to economic prosperity. Stimulus, they call it. ...
When the next U.S. debt ceiling comes around, one thing is for sure: the mainstream press will be shouting and crying about how important it is to lift the ceiling once again, thereby permitting the federal government to pile ...
Imagine if you lived in a society in which the state controlled religion in the same way that it currently controls education. Imagine that this has been going on for more than a century.
Each locality is divided into church ...
One of the favorite mantras of conservatives is “We favor small government.” As the conservative Wall Street Journal put it, “Rep. Paul Ryan took the national political stage Wednesday as the Republican Party’s vice presidential candidate, giving a televised ...
Dana Milbank’s column in the Washington Post yesterday, entitled “A Storm Inside the GOP Convention,” detailed some rather shabby treatment of Ron Paul and his delegates by Mitt Romney and the Republican establishment. Milbank writes: “The Romney ...
Not surprisingly, in the wake of the recent shooting in front of the Empire State Building, the gun-control crowd has surfaced again. After Jeffrey Johnson shot and killed former co-worker Steven Ercolino, gun controllers trotted out their old familiar ...
While the Obama camp and even some in the GOP ranks are upset with Mitt Romney for bringing up the issue of President Obama’s birth certificate, the reason Romney did it might well be that it’s the only issue ...
Notice that all the talk about whether the U.S. government should attack Iran and Syria focuses on whether President Obama will order his army to attack these two countries or on whether he should do so. The process has ...
A piece in today’s New York Times shows why, under the statist paradigm in which we live, it is so difficult for America to extricate itself from the federal government’s over-spending and over-borrowing.
The article, “Beware the Fiscal ...
Statists oftentimes accuse libertarians of holding extreme views. One reason for that is that since we have all been born and raised in a society based on welfare and warfare, the libertarian philosophy, which stands in opposition to socialism, ...
Interventionists justify the existence of the vast military and intelligence establishment in America by telling us that there are “radical Islamic elements” in the world.
But the question is: Should that be a justification for continuing the U.S. national security ...
I wonder how many U.S. soldiers who died in Iraq, or have who lost arms or legs or mental stability from their invasion or occupation of the country, figured that the reason they were making such an enormous sacrifice ...
Ever since Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, liberals have maintained that the way to alleviate poverty is to have government wage war on poverty.
What does that mean? It means two things.
First, it means having the government use its power to ...
Guess who the Greek government and Greek citizenry are blaming for their economic woes. Immigrants — the people who also serve as a favorite scapegoat for many Americans who, like the Greeks, are lamenting the ever-mounting crisis of the ...
Whenever the subject of Adolf Hitler arises, it usually begins and ends with the Holocaust and World War II. That’s unfortunate because Hitler had another side, one that is similar to that of liberals and conservatives in America.
Consider Social ...
U.S. officials undoubtedly don’t know what to do about Egyptian President Morsi’s implicit challenge of Egypt’s military dictatorship with his sacking of high military officials in Egypt. For decades, the U.S. government has funded Egypt’s military dictatorship to the ...
Even while U.S. officials decry the brutal dictatorships in Syria and Iran, the U.S. government is fortifying the military dictatorship in Egypt. A recent attack in the Sinai Peninsula that killed six Egyptian soldiers is the latest excuse that ...
Have you noticed that the “we’re at war with the Muslims” crowd has been noticeably silent in the wake of the murders at the Sikh temple in Wisconsin and the arson of the Islamic mosque in Missouri? Well, they’re ...
In 1890, Americans lived in a society without income taxation, the IRS, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, public (i.e., government) schooling, farm subsidies, foreign aid to dictatorships, minimum-wage laws, price controls, paper money, the Federal Reserve, Departments of Education, Labor, ...
When defenders of civil liberties condemn President Obama’s assassination program, some of them place a greater emphasis on the constitutional right of American citizens to be protected from assassination as compared to foreigners. However, as much as they might ...
Let’s review the arguments of the gun-control crowd in the wake of the shooting at the Sikh temple in Milwaukee.
Wisconsin is a concealed-carry state — that is, one in which people with state-issued permits are allowed to carry guns ...
Russian billionaire Aleksandr Lebedev is selling all his Russian assets and moving his money elsewhere. The reason? According to the New York Times, Lebedev, who has supported the opposition to President Putin’s increasingly authoritarian rule, stated that police and ...
One of the things about liberals that really fascinates me is their hypocrisy, especially when it comes to one of their favorite attacks on libertarians for opposing the welfare state. Whenever libertarians call for the abolition of the moral ...
The Chick-Fil-A controversy provides a good example of how differently statists and libertarians view the concept of freedom. By the term “statists,” I’m referring, of course, to both conservatives and liberals.
The controversy arises out of statements opposing gay marriage ...
Texas farmers are suffering severe drought conditions. Thus, it should come as no surprise that Congress has decided to help them out with U.S. taxpayer dollars to the tune of around $600 million. It should also come as no ...
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3| Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 (to be posted) | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part ...
If you want to see a good example of liberal or progressive thinking on fiscal policy, read this article in the Philadelphia Inquirer entitled “Social Security Is Not Headed for Disaster” by Barbara R. Bergmann, who serves ...
Earlier this month, the New York Times published a hilarious article. It was entitled, “Philosophic Clash Over Government’s Role Highlights Parties’ Divide” by Peter Baker.
The article revolves around President Obama’s suggestion that people don’t really start their ...
Uh, oh! While the focus is on U.S. foreign interventionism in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, and elsewhere in the Middle East, could it be that the U.S. Empire is ginning up for a regime-change operation over in ...
It’s a shame that libertarians still have to address minimum-wage articles written by liberals. You would think by now that the fallacies of the minimum wage would be so apparent to liberals that they would have abandoned the concept. ...
Suppose the Franklin Roosevelt administration had enacted a law in the 1930s that required every restaurant customer in America to pay a 15 percent tip to waiters. The argument in favor of such a law would have been twofold: ...
In yesterday’s blog, I stated that while Colorado permits the concealed carry of guns, the Aurora movie theater where the massacre took place has a policy prohibiting guns from being carried onto the premises.
There’s a new twist to the ...
While it’s too soon to know what motivated that Aurora, Colorado, shooter to kill and maim all those people, one thing seems clear: Whatever his motive was, it wasn’t personally directed toward the victims. It seems as though he ...
Everywhere you look in both the welfare state and the warfare state, you find massive failure.
Social Security? Busted, like other Ponzi schemes. There isn’t a fund, and there never has been a fund. It’s a straight welfare program. Increasing ...
Watch Jacob Hornberger on RT Russia Today in a segment called "War and Peace."
Oftentimes Latin American regimes blame the failure of the drug war on the U.S. government and the American people. They say that the fundamental problem is the demand for drugs among Americans as well as the failure of the ...
When U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently visited Laos as part of a U.S. government “friendship” mission to counteract the rising influence of China, she inadvertently reminded the American people of some of the horrors of U.S. foreign ...
Dear Friend of The Future of Freedom Foundation:
Last winter The Future of Freedom Foundation held one of the most important programs in our 22-year history — our College Civil Liberties Tour, which took us to four college campuses: Columbia ...
Parking lots at local commercial establishments provide a good example of the difference between statism and libertarianism. Such parking lots provide parking places near the entrance of the store for handicapped drivers. Why do they do that? Because statists ...
During her trip to Egypt over the weekend, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was pelted by tomatoes, shoes, and chants of “Monica, Monica, Monica” from Egyptian protestors. Playing the role of the innocent as she met with the ...
Conservatives are at it again. Faced with the possibility that Americans are finally starting to realize that U.S. foreign policy is the cause of anti-American terrorism, conservatives are now reverting to their old stand-by position for justifying the continued ...
When one lives under a regime of a welfare state, it is oftentimes tempting to mire one’s self within the muck of “reform” proposals, as liberals and conservatives do. This is especially true in a country like the United ...
Take a look at these two articles, one from the Washington Times and the other from the Los Angeles Times:
Egypt’s Real Ruler: Military Leader Tantawi
Will Egypt’s Generals Yield?
What’s the significance of those two articles? ...
I find it fascinating how American television sportscasters steadfastly hew to the official line regarding the continued occupation of Afghanistan. During virtually every game, the sportscaster will make some reference to U.S. soldiers who have died or lost limbs ...
The U.S. government has an un-American way of making friends in foreign affairs, one that the American people should abandon once and for all. It’s a method of friendship based on militarism, extortion, bribery, and military mercantilism.
Concerned about the ...
Scott Horton interviws Jacob Hornberger about his article “Needed: A National Debate on U.S. Support of Dictatorships;” the 1953 CIA-supported coup in Iran, leading to the hostage crisis, 1979 Islamic Revolution, and poor relations to this day; the US-supplied ...
Okay, I’ve got the perfect summation of everything that is wrong with America, thanks to a letter to the editor written by a guy from Indiana that criticized a recent FFF op-ed by Sheldon Richman.
The op-ed, “Bloomberg’s ...
Mexico has a new president, 45-year-old Enrique Pena Nieto, who is a member of the PRI, the political party that once held the Mexican people in a monopolistic iron grip for some seven decades.
In 2000, with much hope and ...
The Sunday edition of the New York Times published an interesting article that is certain to make some Americans who read it uncomfortable. Why is that? Because the article, which is entitled, “What’s a Socialist?” makes a ...
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3| Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 (to be posted) | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part ...
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 (to be posted) | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part ...
It really doesn’t matter which way the Supreme Court ruled on President Obama’s healthcare mandate. As long as the government is involved in healthcare, there is going to be an endless series of interventions, leading ultimately to a total ...
Some people believe that the term “the rule of law” means that people are expected to obey the law. You hear this often from public officials, who say such things as, “People might not agree with the drug laws ...
Month after month, the U.S. government continues to disburse $1.3 billion in annual U.S. taxpayer money to Egypt’s military dictatorship. The justification for this is twofold: “national security” and to help Egypt’s “transition to democracy.”
The first rationale — national ...
As most every American knows, we now live in a country in which the ruler possesses the unfettered power to assassinate his citizens. What an extraordinary situation. Who would have ever thought that America would end up with a ...
The people of Bahrain are figuring out what libertarians have long been saying about U.S. foreign policy — that the U.S. government is sometimes partly responsible for the tyranny under which people are suffering and have suffered for a ...
While the U.S. government continues to squawk about the Assad dictatorship’s oppression of the Syrian people, Americans need to constantly keep in mind that the squawking has nothing to do with any principled objection to dictatorship or tyranny. Instead, ...
To understand why the United States and much of the rest of the world are in a world of hurt economically, all you have to do is take a look at the economic reasoning in this New York Times ...
The crisis in Egypt is providing another real-world example of how differently statists think as compared to how we libertarians think, especially when it comes to moral principles and foreign policy. Demonstrations of the statist mindset have been provided ...
A recent New York Times op-ed entitled Pinched and Griping in Iran by Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof shows how differently statists think in comparison to us libertarians, especially when it comes to foreign policy and moral ...
The Egyptian people are learning firsthand why America’s Founding Fathers were so opposed to standing armies. Our ancestors understood that standing armies are a grave threat to the freedom and well-being of the citizenry. Thus, it’s no surprise that ...
This week, the Egyptian people got a taste of the reality of military dictatorship, while the American people got a taste of the reality of U.S. foreign policy.
The Egyptian Supreme Court dissolved the Egyptian Parliament, and Egypt’s military dictatorship ...
After Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accused Russia of shipping attack helicopters to the Assad regime in Syria, Russian foreign minister Sergey V. Lavrov reminded Clinton of something she might have forgotten: that the U.S. government supplies weaponry to ...
Among the big choices facing Americans is the role of the U.S. government in foreign affairs.
Should the U.S. government have military bases in foreign countries … have a navy patrolling waters thousands of miles away from American shores … ...
If you want to see a look of stunned silence on the face of a drug-war proponent, ask him the following question: To win the war on drugs, what do you propose be done that hasn’t already been done ...
According to a front-page article in today’s New York Times, Mexico’s top presidential contenders are signaling a shift in how Mexico intends to fight the drug war. While the movement is in a positive direction, unfortunately it ...
I don’t get U.S. officials. They’re so outraged over the brutality of the Syrian regime. They calling for an investigation into atrocities committed by Syrian forces against the Syrian people as part of the regime’s effort to suppress a ...
My article this past Tuesday, “Partnering with the Communists,” detailed how the Pentagon is doing its best to partner with the communist regime in Vietnam in order to provoke crises with China.
The Pentagon’s troublemaking strategy is already working. ...
For statists who were hoping that Greece’s financial crisis had receded into the background for the indefinite future, their hopes have been dashed. This title of an article on the front page of today’s New York Times sums up ...
Given the U.S. government’s longtime military and financial support for dictatorships around the world, including Egypt, Jordan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and its historical support of military dictatorships in Latin America, I suppose it’s not too surprising that the Pentagon ...
The times they are a-changin’!
A pro-drug war congressman from El Paso, Silvestre Reyes, a Democrat, has just been defeated in his bid for reelection by a man named Beto O’Rourke. And take a wild guess what O’Rourke’s principal issue ...
Sometimes I find the paternalistic mindset to be so darned fascinating. What is it that drives a person to initiate force against another human being to protect the latter from making bad choices in life? Why can’t the paternalist ...
When a former federal prosecutor who is now a federal judge complains about the lack of justice and fairness in drug-war sentencing, you know that something is dreadfully wrong with the drug war, that is, on top of everything ...
Have you ever noticed that Nazi soldiers, especially those who died in World War II, are never celebrated as heroes? Why is that? Didn’t they answer the call of their government in time of war? Didn’t they serve their ...
What a disaster conservatives are. They preach their old 1950s mantra “free enterprise, private property, and limited government” while embracing every socialist and interventionist program that comes down the pike. A recent example is Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s ...
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 (to be posted) | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | ...
One of the ostensible goals of U.S. foreign policy is to spread democracy. Of course, the reality is the exact opposite. The U.S. Empire is one of the greatest lovers of nonelected dictatorships in the world, as manifested by ...
With Hondurans angrily demanding that the U.S. government withdraw its drug-war personnel from the country, we shouldn’t forget that this isn’t the first time that U.S. drug officials have participated in the drug-war killing of innocent people. Almost 11 ...
In an era in which many statists are doing their best to assure themselves and others that they are not socialists, this might be a good time to visit one of the most deeply entrenched and popular socialistic programs ...
Just as I have repeatedly predicted since the last debt-ceiling debate, statists are already gearing up for another lifting of the debt ceiling. A good example comes in a New York Times editorial, which is already trying ...
One of the main arguments made by pro-torture Americans is that the information acquired by torture can lead to important information that can save the lives of innocent people. Their argument is a classic example of the old maxim, ...
Scott Horton interviews Jacob Hornberger about his article, “It’s Again Time to Dismantle the Cold War Military Machine,” how Americans are kept in a perpetual state of fear so massive military budgets seem like a necessity; the Pentagon’s latest make-work ...
Immediately after the 9/11 attacks, President Bush and other U.S. officials immediately proclaimed that the terrorists were motivated by their hatred for America’s “freedom and values.”
Let’s examine that position in light of two important events that took place in ...
The George W. Bush Presidential Center in Washington, D.C., is holding a special event today to celebrate “the brave efforts of dissidents and activists around the world in their fight to be free.”
Wow! How exciting is that!
At least one ...
Have you noticed that whenever something goes wrong in life, statists call for more government regulations? How come they never seem to notice that their beloved regulated economy failed to prevent the thing that went wrong? No matter how ...
After the Civil War, Washington, D.C., became a model Jim Crow city for the United States. Having supposedly waged the war for the purpose of ending slavery, U.S. officials proceeded to keep the nation’s capital city segregated all the ...
In perpetual financial agony, the Postal Service has announced that it no longer intends to close thousands of rural post offices, notwithstanding the fact that, according to the New York Times, such offices earn an average of ...
After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the U.S. government came up with the idea of instituting military tribunals for trying suspected terrorists as a possible alternative to prosecuting them under the U.S. Code in regular federal courts. Since then, some ...
If there is anything good about the military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay, it is that the American people will get to see how trials are conducted in totalitarian countries. One thing is for sure: The procedural protections found in ...
In 1989, when the Soviet Union dismantled, the American people had a grand opportunity, one in which they could have dismantled the massive national-security state apparatus that had come into existence at the end of World War II for ...
Let’s assume that an American critic of U.S. foreign policy goes abroad and travels around the Middle East delivering a series of lectures, speeches, and articles attacking the U.S. invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. He refuses to ...
The Ninth Circuit’s decision holding John Yoo immune from liability in Jose Padilla’s lawsuit against him pretty much confirms what I recently wrote about the exalted position that the U.S. military and the CIA hold in American society. See ...
Conservatives are having a heyday calling President Obama a socialist. What they block out of their minds is that by their own measure, they are socialists too.
In its purest sense, socialism refers to a situation in which the state ...
President Obama says that the one-year anniversary of the U.S. military’s killing of Osama bin Laden should be a time of reflection rather than a time of celebration.
Indeed. Let’s do some reflecting.
Immediately after the 9/11 attacks, U.S. officials claimed ...
Last Thursday I attended a great lecture by Joy Gordon, professor of philosophy at Fairfield University in Connecticut. The talk was based on her book Invisible War: The United States and the Iraq Sanctions. It was sponsored ...
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 (to be posted) | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | ...
Consider the following hypothetical. DEA agents in Columbus, Georgia, suspect that Joe Blow is selling cocaine and heroin to city youths. They’re sure he’s guilty but have been unable to come up with any evidence of his guilt. Under ...
Good for the ACLU! It is taking Jose Padilla’s civil suit to the U.S. Supreme Court for what will hopefully be an adjudication by the highest court in the land as to the power of the U.S. military and ...
In Egypt, up to a hundred thousand demonstrators have again engulfed Cairo's Tahrir Square to protest against the ruling military council. The rally involves supporters from opposite ends of the political spectrum, with secular activists ...
In Egypt, up to a hundred thousand demonstrators have again engulfed Cairo's Tahrir Square to protest against the ruling military council. The rally involves supporters from opposite ends of the political spectrum, with secular activists ...
“I love sweatshops.”
That was how economics professor Benjamin Powell, our Economic Liberty Lecture Series speaker last night, wrapped up his excellent talk on the benefits of sweatshops. An overflow crowd, mostly composed of George Mason University students, was treated ...
Egypt is developing into a fascinating situation, one that involves the United States. It’s worth paying attention to in the coming months.
Egypt has been ruled by a brutal military dictatorship for the past 30 years. The regime has been ...
I confess that I have trouble sometimes figuring out the nature and logic of the so-called war on terrorism. The following are what seem to be the principles of this “war”:
1. Since the “war on terrorism,” according to U.S. ...
Ludwig von Mises pointed out that one government intervention into economic activity inevitably leads to more interventions. The reason? Each intervention brings with it more crises and more chaos, which then cause public officials to enact new interventions to ...
Argentina’s president, Cristina Fernandez Kirchner, had better watch her back. She could conceivably be the target of a regime-change operation, compliments of the CIA.
Given all the other things the CIA is currently engaged in, why would it target Argentina ...
Both Glenn Greenwald and Chris Hedges have excellent analyses of the federal terrorism conviction of American citizen named Tarek Mehanna.
At his sentencing hearing last week in federal court, Mehanna delivered a scathing condemnation of U.S. ...
President Obama’s “free-trade pact” with Colombia at the recent Summit of the Americas demonstrates the statist mindset of liberals and, well, for that matter, conservatives — and shows how different their mindset is from that of libertarians.
According to the ...
The Internet is abuzz with talk about how Latin American leaders are increasingly considering the idea of drug legalization.
Latin America should not hesitate to end the war on drugs — and the sooner, the better. Latin American ...
The Justice Department has filed an antitrust lawsuit against Apple and five of the biggest book publishers. The action alleges that Apple and the publishers secretly got together and colluded to fix prices of e-books.
If they did, so what? ...
In early 1976 the National Enquirer published a story that shocked the elite political class in Washington, D.C. The story disclosed that a woman named Mary Pinchot Meyer, who was a divorced spouse of a high CIA official named ...
Ozzie Guillen, the manager of the Miami Marlins baseball team, is in hot water over words of praise that he spoke about Cuban president Fidel Castro. Team owners have suspended him for 5 days and he’s issued a profuse ...
Last night we wrapped up our discussion of the Gold Clause Cases in the informal law and economics seminar I’ve been conducting for economics students at George Mason University. The seminar is hosted by the GMU Econ Society, a ...
Fresh shelling is being reported across Syria, with dozens of alleged fatalities in the past 24 hours alone. Damascus blames the bloodshed on terrorists, funded and armed by Turkey and some of the Gulf states. ...
Last week a rant about a public-schooling controversy by a conservative radio talk-show host reminded me of how differently conservatives think as compared to libertarians.
The controversy involved the Lee Greenwood song, “God Bless the U.S.A.,” which was to be ...
People are taking President Obama to task for suggesting that the Supreme Court should not interfere with the will of Congress by declaring his healthcare legislation unconstitutional. Critics are reminding Obama that under our system of government it is ...
Yesterday I participated in a very interesting panel at another liberal forum. This one was part of an Occupy Washington event that attracted people from around the country. Just like the panel in which I participated at the Left ...
The full horror of the federal government’s much-ballyhooed, 40-year-old war on drugs is on display in the case of Ernesto Lira.
Lira’s “crime”?
According to this article in the New York Times, the drug-war gendarmes caught him driving with ...
A recent crime crackdown in China reminds us of why our American ancestors demanded the inclusion of the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eight Amendments to the Constitution. To enforce their crackdown, Chinese officials did the types of things that ...
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
The most significant aspect of the case of Jose Padilla is not the horrific treatment to which he was subjected but the fact that what was done ...
Good for Pope Benedict! During his trip to Cuba this past week, not only did he criticize Cuba’s embrace of Marxism and the Castro regime’s infringements on religious liberty and civil liberty, he also condemned the 50-year-old U.S. embargo ...
In his recent lecture (pdf) condemning the gold standard to students at George Washington University, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke suggested that speculators had “attacked” central banks in the 1930s, forcing them to abandon the gold standard. ...
In a series of interviews in 1977, television journalist David Frost asked Richard Nixon about the legality of his actions as president. Nixon responded, “Well, when the president does it, that means it is not illegal.”
That mindset has also ...
The current controversy over U.S. foreign aid to Egypt highlights perfectly the moral bankruptcy of U.S. foreign policy and what such a policy has done to our nation.
For the past three decades, the U.S. government has been funneling billions ...
Sometimes the adverse effects of the U.S. government’s pro-empire, pro-interventionist foreign policy take years to manifest, long after the original intervention that engendered them. By that time, many Americans will have forgotten about the original intervention, and statists can ...
In a recent lecture to an undergraduate class at George Washington University, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Benanke, not surprisingly, blasted the gold standard and praised paper money and the nation’s central bank, the Federal Reserve. He said that it ...
A March 17 Washington Post editorial entitled “A Bad Decision on Egypt” criticizes a decision by U.S. officials to consider renewing foreign aid to Egypt, given that the Egyptian government is still prosecuting certain non-governmental political organizations ...
In an era of unrestrained federal spending and debt, one of the most ludicrous arguments made by statists is that reducing the military budget would be harmful to the economy. Their suggestion is that military spending is beneficial to ...
Moscow's ready to back a UN resolution on Syria, as long as it contains no ultimatums aimed at Assad's regime. That's according to the Russian Foreign Minister, who's voicing strong support for the UN special envoy's road-map to peace ...
Among the favorite mantras of conservatives is With freedom comes responsibility. They love to hurl it at liberals whenever they point to the disastrous failure of the welfare state. When liberals cry, Please, judge us by our good intentions, ...
For two years in a row — 2010 and 2011, The Future of Freedom Foundation participated in the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C. Ordinarily, we would never do something like that, given how ardently conservatives support such ...
Given all the talk about the possibility of President Obama initiating another war of aggression, this one against Iran, now would be a good time to review the illegality of such an operation, a point that will likely be ...
Ironically, while the U.S. military is grappling with the cold-blooded killing of 16 Afghans, including women and children, the Guatemalan people are dealing with a military massacre of their own. A Guatemalan court has just sentenced a former member ...
How ironic. Countless American Christians supported the U.S. government’s war of aggression on Iraq, and now consider this headline from last Sunday’sNew York Times: “Exodus from North Signals Iraqi Christians’ Slow Decline.”
And now we learn that an American soldier went ...
The Jacob Hornberger Show broadcasts live Saturday nights at 7pm EST. Visit FFF's Ustream Channel to watch the show live.
The pro-empire crowd sometimes claims that the U.S. Empire is different from other empires in history in that it doesn’t try to acquire foreign lands. They fail to grasp the real nature of the U.S. Empire. It isn’t about ...
Today’s Los Angeles Times has an interesting editorial on the Lynne Stewart case. Stewart is a 72-year-old criminal defense lawyer from New York who is now serving a 10-year sentence in a federal penitentiary. She was convicted in 2005 of supporting ...
As most everyone knows, after President Obama’s reelection, most liberals went silent with respect to the defense of civil liberties and condemnation of the war on terrorism. Of course, there have been a few notable exceptions, such as Glenn ...
With Attorney General Eric Holder’s speech attempting to justify the president’s omnipotent power to assassinate Americans, we are seeing, once again, the consequences of having permitted U.S. officials with getting away with the sham of converting a criminal offense, ...
Who needs diplomacy, or international law? Not former presidential candidate (R-AZ) John McCain, who became the first senator to publicly call for a US-led military strike on Syria in order to halt the nearly year-long conflict there. ...
In an economic transaction, who should be the one saying thank you — the buyer or the seller? Or in an employment relationship, who should be thanking the other — the employer or the employee?
In real life, we see ...
We can only hope that President Obama doesn’t order a military invasion of Portugal for refusing an extradition request by the U.S. government to extradite a convicted murderer to the United States.
The case involves 68-year-old George Wright, who was ...
Let’s not forget the big debate several months ago over whether the debt ceiling should be raised. It’s important that we periodically revisit this issue before the new ceiling is reached in couple of years from now, at least ...
It’s quite amusing to see President Obama, Secretary of State Clinton, and other U.S. officials exclaiming against the brutality of the dictatorship in Syria. One reason, of course, is that the U.S. government partnered with the Syrian dictatorship precisely ...
Friday, March 30, 2012
Good for Pope Benedict!
Good for Pope Benedict! During his trip to Cuba this past week, not only did he criticize Cuba’s embrace of Marxism and the Castro regime’s infringements on religious liberty and civil liberty, he ...
Wouldn’t it be great to have a national debate between liberals and libertarians over whose philosophy and policies help the poor?
For decades liberals have claimed that the welfare-state/regulated-economy way of life helps the poor. That has been the major ...
Why won’t conservatives ever go to the root of the statist problems that face our nation? A good example involves education, an area that most conservatives will admit has long been mired in crisis. Yet, all that conservatives end ...
Let’s give credit where credit is due. At least U.S. officials are not claiming that the recent killing of two U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan was owing to generalized hatred for our “freedom and values,” which was the claim made ...
The Jacob Hornberger Show broadcasts live Saturday nights at 7pm EST. Visit FFF's Ustream Channel to watch the show live.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
Suppose a nation’s constitution prohibits the ruler of the country from infringing fundamental, God-given rights such as freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, privacy, economic liberty, ...
All the buzz over possible war with Iran brings us a déjà vu feeling, given that U.S. officials prepared Americans with similar pre-war hype in the run up to their war on Iraq. WMDs. Mushroom clouds over American cities. ...
This program discusses the real issues surrounding Occupy Wall Street and Main Street. It includes street interviews from those actively involved.
With President Obama and various Republican presidential candidates competing to reduce corporate income taxes, it must be election time. Do you ever feel like you’re living in a Latin American country, where the presidential candidates are notorious for offering ...
While U.S. officials are decrying the Egyptian military dictatorship’s criminal prosecution of U.S.-government-funded NGOs for supposedly spreading “freedom and democracy” without a government-required license, now would be a good time to revisit Cuba’s criminal conviction of Alan Gross.
Gross, an ...
The New York Times, along with other members of the mainstream media, is in a tizzy over the Egyptian government’s decision to charge three American NGO’s, along with 19 American officers of the organizations, with criminal violations. Apparently the NGO’s failed ...
This past weekend, we had another great session on “Civil Liberties, the War on Terrorism, and the Constitution.” This time we were at the annual conference of the Students for Liberty, a fantastic organization of college students who ...
On February 18, 2012, the Future of Freedom Foundation sponsored a panel entitled "The War on Terrorism, the Constitution, and Civil Liberties" at the 5th annual International Students for Liberty Conference. The panel included Bruce Fein ...
In the second week of February 2012, the Future of Freedom Foundation and Young Americans for Liberty cosponsored a panel entitled "The War on Terrorism, the Constitution, and Civil Liberties" that included Bruce Fein, Glenn Greenwald, and FFF president ...
As most everyone knows, the CIA has been assassinating people practically since the time it was formed in 1947. By and large, however, the CIA kept its assassinations secret. Americans, for their part, had a feeling that such things ...
I’m always intrigued by those in the pro-interventionist crowd who trot out World War II to justify U.S. imperialist interventionism in the Middle East and the rest of the world. They always act as if the United States won ...
Nazi leader Hermann Goering once stated:
Naturally the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine ...
The United States is in a downward spiral, and it just keeps getting worse and worse, both on the welfare-state side of things and, of course, the warfare-state side of things.
If you want to see what the dole society ...
The Jacob Hornberger Show broadcasts live Saturday nights at 7pm EST. Visit FFF's Ustream Channel to watch the show live.
Our College Civil Liberties Tour went absolutely fantastic. We are all still flying high from the experience.
We kicked off the program at Columbia University in New York City on Monday evening. The next day we flew to Indianapolis for ...
On February 6, 2012, Mises Chair Lew Rockwell and Future of Freedom President Jacob Hornberger explain how we got to a place where both political parties have the same major policies.
Watch the latest video at video.foxbusiness.com
The Jacob Hornberger Show broadcasts live Saturday nights at 7pm EST. Visit FFF's Ustream Channel to watch the show live.
When did the U.S. government get religion with respect to Syria’s dictatorship? Sure, right now they’re protesting the Syrian dictatorship’s brutal suppression of a rebellion within the country. They’re issuing all sorts of demands to Syria’s dictator to cease ...
Next week we kick off our College Civil Liberties tour! We start Monday at Columbia University in New York City, then Indiana and Purdue universities on Tuesday, then Middle Tennessee State University on Wednesday, and wrapping up at ...
One of the things that fascinate me about progressives is how government welfare programs make them feel about themselves. The fact that progressives support such programs makes them feel like they are good, caring people. What’s also fascinating is ...
Jacob Hornberger, the founder and president of the Future of Freedom Foundation, told RT that the only thing UN resolutions can do is “pour fuel onto the fire.”
“That is the whole idea of these resolutions,” he explained. The real ...
Whenever libertarians bring up the idea of open borders, some people in the controlled-borders crowd immediately go ballistic, exclaiming, “But borders are essential to preserve our national sovereignty. If we abolish borders, our nation will cease to exist.”
But open ...
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Libertarians versus Liberals on the Poor
Wouldn’t it be great to have a national debate between liberals and libertarians over whose philosophy and policies help the poor?
For decades liberals have claimed that the welfare-state/regulated-economy way of life ...
The Jacob Hornberger Show broadcasts live Saturday nights at 7pm EST. Visit FFF's Ustream Channel to watch the show live.
I just don’t get conservatives. They say they support individual freedom, economic liberty, free markets, limited government, and the Constitution.
They also say they oppose socialism, interventionism, collectivism, and paternalism. They point out that such isms just don’t work.
Okay, fine.
Then ...
The year before a presidential election is a period of great euphoria for the American people, for this is the period of time when presidential candidates are extremely nice to the American people.
And why not? They’re seeking votes. They’re ...
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
Of all the dangers to the freedom of the American people, I would rank the enemy-combatant doctrine as the greatest. In my opinion, the federal government’s power ...
The biggest con in history — bigger even than Social Security — might well be the one in which statists have conned the poor into believing that the welfare state helps them. If those at the bottom of the ...
President Obama says that people are poor because others are rich. What a crock that is. It’s nothing more than a refusal to accept personal responsibility for the failure of the welfare-warfare way of life and the managed-economy way ...
It’s fascinating to see the GOP presidential candidates supporting the principles of economic liberty while, at the same time (except Ron Paul), ardently supporting Obama’s imposition of sanctions against Iran. Not only are sanctions an attack on the people ...
When I heard what Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Santorum said about Cuba in last nights Florida presidential debate, I felt like I was in a Cold War time warp and that we were about to see flower ...
As Glenn Greenwald points out in his excellent analysis of the Megaupload case, immediately after opponents of SOPA and PIPA caused congressmen to back off from their proposed Internet legislation, the Justice Department stepped up to the plate and ...
Well, the GOP candidates had all the correct libertarian, free-market mantras out last night: pro-free enterprise, pro-capitalism, pro-free market, pro-private property, pro-fundamental rights, pro-Constitution, anti-socialism, and anti-regulation.
And then came immigration, and all those mantras went out the window.
It was ...
A federal appeals court in Richmond has ruled against GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry’s request to be placed on Virginia’s GOP primary ballot. The ruling came in an appeal of a U.S. district court’s ruling against Perry, Rick Santorum, ...
The current debate over income-tax rates in the GOP presidential race highlights another major difference between conservatives and libertarians. It is a debate that involves moral, philosophical, economic, and practical issues. Most important, it is a debate over the ...
The Jacob Hornberger Show broadcasts live Saturday nights at 7pm EST. Visit FFF's Ustream Channel to watch the show live.
A point made by James Madison might well explain the U.S. government’s strangulation of Iran’s economy with ever-tightening sanctions: “Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended.”
What better way to ...
Amidst all the discussion and debate over the theological differences between Mormons and Protestants and Catholics, most everyone fails to focus on a critical issue: Are welfare-state programs consistent with Christian principles?
Suppose Peter’s elderly parents are ill and need ...
Conservatives love to accuse President Obama of being a socialist. But as the old adage goes, when they point their finger at Obama, they’ve got three fingers pointing back at themselves.
Consider, for example, three of the biggest socialist programs ...
One of the most fascinating aspects of the Ron Paul campaign is the standard reaction of his opponents to Paul’s foreign-policy positions. They say that Paul's libertarian foreign-policy views are outside the Republican mainstream.
What is the Republican mainstream view ...
Twelve years ago, I wrote an article entitled “Electing Our Daddy,” which pointed out that every four years Americans go to the polls not just to elect a president bur also to elect a daddy, one who ...
The Jacob Hornberger Show broadcasts live Saturday nights at 7pm EST. Visit FFF's Ustream Channel to watch the show live.
U.S. officials are objecting to Iran’s criminal conviction of an American for spying on behalf of the CIA. The Iranians have sentenced the American, 28-year-old Amir Mirzaei Hekmati, to death.
Unfortunately, however, the U.S. government has no moral standing to ...
The liberals are at it again. They’re calling for another increase in the minimum wage in their purported attempt to help the poor. Two new minimum-wage articles have recently been posted on the liberal websites Counterpunch and Common Dreams. ...
Wouldn’t it be great if some mainstream pundit were to ask the following question of the Republican presidential candidates: “Do you believe that the time has come to end the war on poverty?”
Alas, it’s not going to happen. The ...
Sometimes I feel like I’m living in an alternative universe, one that is similar toBizarro World, which was introduced in the early 1960s in Superman comics. It’s a world in which everything that is normal is considered ...
A Chilean judge has indicted a retired U.S. Naval officer, Capt. Ray E. Davis, in the murder of two American citizens in Chile during the U.S.-supported Pinochet coup in 1973. The indictment indicates that the U.S. military and the ...
The most fascinating aspect of Ron Paul’s presidential campaign is how it is revealing the real nature of the battle facing our country. It is not a battle between left and right, as we have all been taught, but ...
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Just Ditch Medicare and Medicaid
I just don’t get conservatives. They say they support individual freedom, economic liberty, free markets, limited government, and the Constitution.
They also say they oppose socialism, interventionism, collectivism, and paternalism. They point out ...
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 ...
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
The most disgraceful — but, at the same time, the most revealing and, also, the most ominous — aspect of Wall Street Journal editorial board member Dorothy Rabinowitz’s
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
The most disgraceful — but, at the same time, the most revealing and, also, the most ominous — aspect of Wall Street Journal editorial board member Dorothy Rabinowitz’s
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
Given the ongoing tensions between the U.S. government and the Iranian regime, it is not surprising that Wall Street Journal editorial board member Dorothy Rabinowitz brought ...
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
One of the more fascinating attacks on Ron Paul comes from Dorothy Rabinowitz in the December 22, 2012, issue of the Wall Street Journal.
Not surprisingly, given ...
The Jacob Hornberger Show broadcasts live Saturday nights at 7pm EST. Visit FFF's Ustream Channel to watch the show live.
Future of Freedom Foundation Founder Jacob Hornberger tells FBNs Ashley Webster why Ron Paul is turning up the heat on his competitors for the 2012 nomination as he surges in the polls.
Watch the latest video at
As Ron Paul continues to surge in Iowa, the attacks on him and on libertarianism are increasing. That's, of course, not surprising, especially since Paul is now in the top position in the Iowa polls. But at the very ...
A Message from Jacob Hornberger - Video 3 from The Future of Freedom Foundation on Vimeo.
While big government statists in both the Republican and Democrat parties remain mystified over Ron Paul’s surge in the polls in Iowa, the ones who seem most confounded by this phenomenon are the members of the mainstream media, who ...
With congressional passage of the new military-detention bill, and President Obama’s unsurprising flip-flop decision to sign it into law, perhaps this would be a good time to review where we are as a country.
We now live in a country ...
Watch the latest video at video.foxbusiness.com
After those bogus WMDs failed to materialize in Iraq, the U.S. government changed its rational for invading and occupying the country to one purportedly intended to bring freedom and democracy to Iraq. Countless Iraqis have been killed, maimed, tortured, ...
The Kennedy Assassination Series:
The Kennedy Casket Conspiracy, by Jacob G. Hornberger
The Shot That Killed Kennedy, by Jacob G. Hornberger
The Kennedy Autopsy, Part 1, by Jacob G. Hornberger
The Kennedy Autopsy, Part 2, by Jacob G. Hornberger
Why not immediately repeal Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, education grants, food stamps, foreign aid, and all other welfare-state programs?
While welfare-statists won’t state this directly, the following describes their attitude toward the American people:
You are a bad people. You are ...
Like most everyone else, I periodically encounter people at some busy intersection with a cardboard sign saying something like, “Homeless with three children. Please help.” My immediate reaction is to feel sympathy, which is then followed by the thought ...
Jacob Hornberger, founder of the Future of Freedom Foundation, believes the US has imposed a dictatorship that just happens to be democratically elected on the Iraqi people.
You've got a regime that is dictatorial in every sense of the word, ...
The Kennedy Assassination Series:
The Kennedy Casket Conspiracy, by Jacob G. Hornberger
The Shot That Killed Kennedy, by Jacob G. Hornberger
The Kennedy Autopsy, Part 1, by Jacob G. Hornberger
The Kennedy Autopsy, Part 2, by Jacob G. Hornberger
I’ve got a modest welfare-state proposal that I’m sure every welfare-state advocate is certain to embrace. The fact that my idea comes at Christmas makes it doubly good.
I propose a new law that would mandate that every single American ...
A Message from Jacob Hornberger - Video 2 from The Future of Freedom Foundation on Vimeo.
The drug war just keeps getting weirder and weirder. First it was the feds selling assault rifles to the drug cartels. Now, it turns out that the feds have also been laundering large amounts of cash for the drug ...
Now that the 9-year military occupation of Iraq is presumably coming to an end, it would be appropriate to reflect on the Iraqi people who died as a result of the U.S. invasion and occupation of the country.
How many ...
Given that today is the anniversary date of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, we’ll no doubt be treated to standard interventionist articles stating what a great thing World War II was.
The American people were overwhelmingly opposed to entry ...
The Jacob Hornberger Show broadcasts liveSaturday evenings at 7pm EST. Visit FFF's Ustream Channel to watch the show live.
According to the New York Times, “The American Embassy in Baghdad has placed sharp new restrictions on how government workers can travel inside the walled-off International Zone, citing serious threats of kidnapping and terrorist attacks across Iraq ...
The Kennedy Assassination Series:
The Kennedy Casket Conspiracy, by Jacob G. Hornberger
The Shot That Killed Kennedy, by Jacob G. Hornberger
The Kennedy Autopsy, Part 1, by Jacob G. Hornberger
The Kennedy Autopsy, Part 2, by Jacob G. Hornberger
Stephen Kinzer’s excellent op-ed in Sunday’s New York Times provides another side of the story with respect to Iran. The title of the article is, “Iran’s First Great Satan Was England.” The article is an excellent starting ...
I find chicken-hawks to be an interesting group of people. They’re calling on the U.S. government to wage war on Iran, just as they did with Iraq. Yet, at the same time, they steadfastly refuse to join the U.S. ...
Video Message 2 - Economic Liberty Lecture Series
A Message from Jacob Hornberger - Video 2 from The Future of Freedom Foundation on Vimeo.
The Future of Freedom Foundation is one of the most important organizations ...
Friday, December 30, 2011
Dorothy Rabinowitzs Attack on Ron Paul, Part 4
Dorothy Rabinowitzs Attack on Ron Paul, Part 1
Dorothy Rabinowitzs Attack on Ron Paul, Part 2
Dorothy Rabinowitzs Attack on Ron Paul, Part 3
The most disgraceful ...
The disingenuousness of the U.S. government clearly has no bounds. What better example than its recent, somewhat lackadaisical call on the Egyptian military to relinquish power to the civilian sector?
After all, guess who’s been propping up and supporting Egypt’s ...
Part 1 | Part 2
With federal spending continuing to soar out of control, the obvious question arises: How do we get our nation back on the right track — toward economic prosperity and economic liberty? To answer that ...
A Washington Post op-ed by Democratic Senator Carl Levin and Republic Senator John McCain shows, once again, that the threat to the freedom and well-being of the American people comes from both liberals and conservatives, especially those ...
American statists just don't get it. They see whats happening with Greece, and yet steadfastly continue down the same road here in the United States. With Americans unable to let go of warfare-state programs and welfare-state programs, federal spending ...
Jacob G. Hornberger speaks at the Delphian School in Sheridan, Oregon, on November 18, 2011.
Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, a conservative, and New York Times columnist Gail Collins, a liberal, recently provided excellent insights into how the statist mind operates, both from a conservative and a liberal perspective.
During a recent presidential debate, Gingrich ...
FFF is embarking on one of the most exciting programs in our 22-year history.
We are partnering with the Young Americans for Liberty (YAL) to go on a one-week college tour next February featuring a panel entitled “The ...
Ron Paul's interview with Bob Schieffer on CBS's Face the Nation last Sunday provides a fascinating look at the mainstream media mindset.
Referring to the 9/11 attacks, Schieffer remarked, Basically what you're saying is that it was Americas ...
Last weekend, I experienced one of those great libertarian highs that come with advancing liberty! I spoke at two separate venues in Portland, Oregon the first at a great private school named the Delphian School and ...
The Kennedy Assassination Series:
The Kennedy Casket Conspiracy, by Jacob G. Hornberger
The Shot That Killed Kennedy, by Jacob G. Hornberger
The Kennedy Autopsy, Part 1, by Jacob G. Hornberger
The Kennedy Autopsy, Part 2, by Jacob G. Hornberger
The last Republican presidential debate — the one on foreign policy — was absolutely pathetic. Except for John Huntsman and Ron Paul, the candidates seemed to be fighting to show that they would be bigger and better torturers, aggressors, ...
The lead editorial in the New York Times today explains why the U.S. dollar is worth only about 5 percent of its value compared to when the Federal Reserve was established in 1913. The editorial doesn’t specifically ...
Let’s assume a society in which there is no income tax, no welfare state, no overseas military empire, and no military-industrial complex. Assume that the tax burden amounts to an average of 2 percent per person, with it being ...
Talk of war with Iran is back in the air. Conservatives and liberals alike are doing exactly what they did when the U.S. Empire was ramping up the crisis environment in the build-up to the Empire’s undeclared war on ...
I watched a couple of episodes of a new television reality series on A&E called “Bordertown: Laredo” since Laredo is where I grew up. The series is about the drug war and follows a special drug-enforcement team within the ...
The Jacob Hornberger Show broadcasts live Saturday nights at 7pm EST. Visit FFF's Ustream Channel to watch the show live.
Well, it seems that Greece and the United States aren’t the only countries that are suffering the consequences of socialism. So is Cuba. But the difference is that unlike Greece and the United States, Cuba seems to be moving ...
Imperialism sure is complicated.
Consider, for example, Libya. Imperialists tell us that the U.S Empire’s military machine hammered Libya with missiles and bombs in order to free the Libyan people from tyranny. The idea was that the Empire was so ...
Yesterday I attended a funeral for a friend’s mother at Arlington National Cemetery. During the service, my eyes focused on three nearby gravestones — a Lt. Colonel, a 1st Lieutenant, and a captain. The inscriptions on the gravestones stated ...
Like many states, Virginia has long had a concealed-carry law, one that permits citizens to carry concealed weapons upon securing a permit from the state. However, for a long time there was a glaring exception to the law: Concealed-carry ...
Neocons are attacking President Obama for his plan to end the U.S. occupation of Iraq by the end of December. Never mind that Obama is operating under the contractual agreement entered into between former President Bush and the Iraqi ...
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Dictatorship Codified
by Jacob G. Hornberger
A Washington Post op-ed by Democratic Senator Carl Levin and Republic Senator John McCain shows, once again, that the threat to the freedom and well-being of the American people comes ...
The European Union’s bailout of Greece will only delay the inevitable because it doesn’t get to the root of the problem — Greece’s welfare state, along with the fierce refusal of the Greek citizenry to abandon the welfare-state way ...
Whenever someone asks me how he can learn more about the libertarian perspective on foreign policy, I recommend Chalmers Johnson. Johnson, who recently passed away, was a liberal, not a libertarian. But there are few people who have a ...
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
Declaring that Saddam Hussein had become a new Hitler who was bent on conquering the United States and the rest of the world, President George H.W. Bush went to war ...
The extraordinary power of the U.S. government to assassinate people has, once again, been manifested in the assassination of Abdulrahman al-Awlaki. No, that’s not Anwar al-Awlaki, the American Muslim cleric whom U.S. officials recently assassinated in Yemen. That’s Abdulrahm ...
American military statists, along with U.S. officials, are glorifying the U.S. government’s opposition to the dictators in Libya, Syria, and Egypt. They’re saying that such opposition shows that the U.S. government is concerned about the people suffering under those ...
There is a principle in the law that requires a person to have “standing” as a prerequisite to bringing a lawsuit in court. The law requires the plaintiff to have a direct interest in the outcome of the case ...
The Jacob Hornberger Show broadcasts live every Saturday night at 7pm EST. Visit FFF's Ustream Channel to watch the show live.
...
Ever since 9/11, we have repeatedly emphasized why the assumption of extraordinary emergency powers by the president, the military, and the CIA as part of their war on terrorism was antithetical to a free society.
Everyone is coming to the ...
No doubt that many supporters of the U.S. government’s war on terrorism and its global assassination program will come to the defense of the Libyans who executed former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi after taking him captive. They will say, ...
It really is sad — no, actually pathetic — to see Republican presidential candidates competing with each other to show how tough they are on illegal immigrants in order to garner votes from Republican voters. That’s not to say, ...
On the matter of great disparities of income and wealth in a society, the manner in which people become wealthy is of great importance.
In a society based largely on socialism and crony capitalism, which is the system under which ...
The Kennedy Assassination Series:
The Kennedy Casket Conspiracy, by Jacob G. Hornberger
The Shot That Killed Kennedy, by Jacob G. Hornberger
The Kennedy Autopsy, Part 1, by Jacob G. Hornberger
The Kennedy Autopsy, Part 2, by Jacob G. Hornberger
American statists are now claiming that Americas economic woes are rooted in income inequality. They're suggesting that the reason people are struggling economically is because there are millionaires and billionaires in American society. If only the government would take ...
The Jacob Hornberger Show broadcasts live Saturday nights at 7pm EST. Visit FFF's Ustream Channel to watch the show live.
President Obamas reaction to the alleged Iranian assassination plot reflects, once again, the dictatorial powers that the president of the United States now wields in foreign affairs.
As many commentators are noting, the whole scheme appears to be as bogus ...
In todays blog, I thought I would share with you a deeply insightful quote by Alan Barth (1906-1979), who served on the Washington Posts editorial board for 30 years. The quote is from his book The Rights of Free ...
Yesterday, the would-be plane bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab pled guilty to terrorism in federal district court in Detroit. Hes the guy who was charged with trying to explode a bomb on an international flight coming into Detroit.
Federal court, you ...
The Egyptian military is denying having killed 26 Egyptian citizens who were protesting on the streets of Cairo, even though witnesses claim to have seen Egyptian troops shooting the protestors and running them down with tanks. One thing is ...
Yesterday, I described one of the principal dangers of a ruler having the omnipotent, non-reviewable power to assassinate his own citizens (and, for that matter, foreigners as well). All too often rulers, along with their armies and intelligence forces, ...
Lyndon Johnson once remarked, We had been operating a damned Murder Inc. in the Caribbean.
What Johnson was referring to was the CIA's assassination program during the 1960s in which the agency targeted Latin American leaders for assassination. Johnson's statement ...
Statists are continuing to say that President Obama's assassination of American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki (through his CIA and military forces) was justified because Awlaki was supposedly exhorting Muslims to resist U.S. foreign policy with force and that he was ...
Yes, I fully realize that some conservatives will claim that I'm smearing the reputation of Chile's former military dictator Augusto Pinochet by comparing him to President Obama, but since Obama's assassination program is so similar to Pinochet's, the comparison ...
The Kennedy Casket Conspiracy, by Jacob G. Hornberger
The Shot That Killed Kennedy, by Jacob G. Hornberger
The Kennedy Autopsy, Part 1, by Jacob G. Hornberger
The Kennedy Autopsy, Part 2, by Jacob G. Hornberger
The Kennedy Autopsy, ...
Statist supporters of President Obamas assassination of an American citizen overseas, Anwar al-Awlaki, are convinced that Awlakis actions warranted his assassination. There is at least one big problem, however, with their convictions: How do they know what Awlaki did ...
If there's a bright side to the national security states assassination of one of its citizens, its this: At least the statists are not saying that the dead man, Anwar al-Awlaki, hated America for its freedom and values. Most ...
The Jacob Hornberger Show broadcasts live Saturday nights at 7pm EST. Visit FFF's Ustream Channel to watch the show live.
Download the MP3 here, or subscribe to the RSS feed
...
In a Fourth of July message to Congress, John Quincy Adams suggested that if America were ever to embrace the principles of empire and militarism, she would become a dictatress of the world. What better evidence of Adams wisdom ...
Monday, October 31, 2011
Greek Bailout Delays the Inevitable
The European Union’s bailout of Greece will only delay the inevitable because it doesn’t get to the root of the problem — Greece’s welfare state, along with the fierce refusal of the ...
The Kennedy Assassination Series:
The Kennedy Casket Conspiracy, by Jacob G. Hornberger
The Shot That Killed Kennedy, by Jacob G. Hornberger
The Kennedy Autopsy, Part 1, by Jacob G. Hornberger
The Kennedy Autopsy, Part 2, by Jacob G. Hornberger
The Jacob Hornberger Show broadcasts live Saturday nights at 7pm EST. Visit FFF's Ustream Channel to watch the show live.
The New York Times is hosting a online debate entitled “Should the School Day Be Longer?”
Wow, how exciting is that? Not! Well, at least not for libertarians. It’s the same old statist nonsense over how to fix and reform ...
For statists who have been depressed over the killing of Osama bin Laden and the near-destruction of al-Qaeda, fear not: the U.S. Empire has come up with another new official enemy as part of its never-ending war on terrorism.
This ...
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
Today, many Americans have come to accept that Iran is an official enemy of the United States. Most people know about the animosity between the Iranian government and the U.S. ...
What a high I had last night! It was the first session of my informal seminar on law and economics at George Mason University. The seminar is being co-sponsored by FFF and the GMU Econ Society. The Econ Society ...
GOP president candidate Rick Perry says that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, a monstrous lie, and unconstitutional. His GOP opponent, an ardent supporter of Social Security and, for that matter, socialized medicine, Mitt Romney, says that Perry can’t ...
One of the most fascinating aspects of the post-9/11 debate has been the “Blame America” phenomenon. Whenever libertarians have pointed to the role that U.S. foreign policy played in producing the anger and rage that ultimately manifested itself with ...
The Jose Padilla case is back in the news. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that the 17-year sentence handed down by the presiding district judge was too lenient. The court has ordered the case remanded to ...
We had a great time at the Liberty Political Action Conference in Reno sponsored by the Campaign for Liberty. About 500-600 people attended the event, which featured many speakers, including both Ron Paul and Rand Paul. Ron created a ...
The Kennedy Assassination Series:
The Kennedy Casket Conspiracy, by Jacob G. Hornberger
The Shot That Killed Kennedy, by Jacob G. Hornberger
The Kennedy Autopsy, Part 1, by Jacob G. Hornberger
The Kennedy Autopsy, Part 2, by Jacob G. Hornberger
The news media is reporting the possibility of an imminent release of the two American hikers who have been jailed in Iran since July 31, 2009. Shane Bauer, his fiancée Sarah Shourd, and their close friend Josh Fattal were ...
The Kennedy Assassination Series:
The Kennedy Casket Conspiracy, by Jacob G. Hornberger
The Shot That Killed Kennedy, by Jacob G. Hornberger
The Kennedy Autopsy, Part 1, by Jacob G. Hornberger
The Kennedy Autopsy, Part 2, by Jacob G. Hornberger
The ...
Well, shades of 2008 and former presidential candidate Rudolf Guliani! During last night’s Republican presidential debate, it was déjà vu, all over again.
Taking a page from Rudy Guliani’s now-famous attack against Ron Paul in one of the early Republican ...
The Jacob Hornberger Show broadcasts live Saturday nights at 7pm EST. Visit FFF's Ustream Channel to watch the show live.
Last Friday’s New York Times carried a front-page article entitled “Desperate Guatemalans Embrace an ‘Iron Fist,’” which showed how the failures of government interventionism inevitably lead toward calls for dictatorship to bring “order and stability” to society.
The article is ...
Statists love to say that 9/11 changed the world. Actually, it didn’t change anything insofar as the federal government is concerned. It continued doing the same things it was doing prior to 9/11 and even expanded them. 9/11 did ...
Last Friday and last Tuesday, I wrote about New York Times’ columnist Nicholas Kristof’s paeans to the U.S. government’s intervention in Libya, paeans that contained no reference to the U.S. government’s torture partnership with Libya’s dictator, Muammar Gaddafi. ...
Tonight’s Republican presidential debate might well witness the surrender of Texas Gov. Rick Perry. I don’t mean his dropping out of the race but rather the almost-certain abandonment of his principles, in the hopes of being taken seriously by ...
Last Friday, I commented about how mainstream journalists seem to live in a universe in which they view the U.S. government as a glorious, saintly entity that roams the world helping the poor and oppressed, as exemplified most recently ...
The Jacob Hornberger Show broadcasts live Saturday nights at 7pm EST. Visit FFF's Ustream Channel to watch the show live.
Download the MP3 here, or subscribe to the RSS feed.
...
A fascinating example of the mindset of American mainstream journalists is provided by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, who wrote a glowing piece this week praising the U.S. government’s humanitarian intervention in Libya. It’s entitled “Thank You, America!”
Kristof’s ...
Liberals love to portray themselves as lovers of the poor. Their “proof,” they say, is their ardent support of the welfare state. In fact, liberals oftentimes go on the attack against us libertarians for our call to dismantle welfare-state ...
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
A Nonsense Debate at the New York Times
The New York Times is hosting a online debate entitled “Should the School Day Be Longer?”
Wow, how exciting is that? Not! Well, at least not for libertarians. It’s the ...
The JFK Series:
The Kennedy Casket Conspiracy, by Jacob G. Hornberger
The Shot That Killed Kennedy, by Jacob G. Hornberger
The Kennedy Autopsy, Part 1, by Jacob G. Hornberger
The Kennedy Autopsy, Part 2, by Jacob G. Hornberger
The ...
Not surprisingly, Governor Rick Perry is catching flack from mainstream statists over his calling Social Security “a Ponzi scheme.” For statists, Social Security, as the crown jewel of the welfare state, is sacrosanct. Any challenge to the program or ...
As the presidential campaign season gets into full swing, be prepared to hear the standard arguments as to which candidate and which party is better at managing the economy. The debate surfaces every four years.
Republicans will cry, “President Obama ...
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
Now that the celebrations over the killing of Osama bin Laden have died down, reality is setting in for the American people. It is slowly dawning on them that the ...
Well, if it’s hurricane season, it must be anti-price-gouging season. It’s bad enough for people to be hit by a hurricane. You’d think that statists would show some mercy and spare people some economic idiocy during difficult times.
Alas, it ...
Why can’t the U.S. government ever learn lessons from any of its failed programs? The biggest lesson it fails to learn is the importance of ending programs that are obvious failures, especially ones that are inherently incapable of succeeding. ...
Venezuelan President Hugh Chavez has announced that he’s nationalizing the country’s gold industry. He also announced that he’s bringing Venezuelan gold reserves held in the American and European banks to Venezuela.
There’s no doubt as to why Chavez is bringing ...
Needless to say, U.S. officials will claim that but for the U.S. intervention in Libya, the revolution would never have succeeded. It’s just part of a long tradition of demeaning treatment that comes with welfare.
And make no mistake about ...
The Kennedy Assassination Series:
The Kennedy Casket Conspiracy, by Jacob G. Hornberger
The Shot That Killed Kennedy, by Jacob G. Hornberger
The Kennedy Autopsy, Part 1, by Jacob G. Hornberger
The Kennedy Autopsy, Part 2, by Jacob G. Hornberger
The ...
Don’t you sometimes wish that someone in authority in the U.S. government would explain how they determine which dictators we’re supposed to like and which ones we’re supposed to dislike?
Consider, for example, Syria. Right now, Syria is our enemy ...
The Jacob Hornberger Show broadcasts liveSaturday nights at 7pm EST. Visit FFF's Ustream Channel to watch the show live.
Amazingly, two separate articles in Sunday’s Washington Post mentioned such libertarian luminaries as Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, Ayn Rand, Walter Williams, and John T. Flynn. For names such as these to be mentioned in the mainstream press — and some ...
The exchange over Iran between Ron Paul and Rick Santorum in the recent Republican presidential debate goes a long way in explaining why the mainstream statists, including those in the Republican Party and the mainstream media, wish that libertarians ...
It’s funny to see liberals harkening back to Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal as a model for how the federal government should deal with the nation’s current economic woes. Liberals just don’t get it: It’s because of the socialist revolution ...
What’s amazing is that the mainstream media doesn’t even appear embarrassed at the way they’ve been treating Ron Paul. I suppose they think that since they’ve treated libertarians with such disdain for so long, no one will notice that ...
Given the 40th anniversary of President’s Nixon’s “closing of the gold window,” we shouldn’t forget the role that such action had in enabling the federal spending spree that has been going on for decades.
Let’s go back, first of all, ...
It is so funny watching liberals coming up with all sorts of weird solutions to America’s economic woes. Every one of the solutions involves more of the same things that have caused the woes, but liberals just won’t let ...
The Jacob Hornberger Show broadcasts live every Saturday night at 7pm EST. Visit FFF's Ustream Channel to watch the show live.
After those 30 American soldiers were recently killed in Afghanistan when their Chinook helicopter was downed by Afghan insurgents, the commander of the international mission in Afghanistan, Gen. John R. Allen, stated, “All of those killed in this operation ...
The Jacob Hornberger Show broadcasts liveSaturday nights at 7pm EST. Visit FFF's Ustream Channel to watch the show live.
Here are seven reasons to oppose President Obama’s imposition of sanctions on Syria:
1. The struggle for freedom and democracy in Syria is none of the U.S. government’s business. U.S. officials, from Obama on down, should just butt out of ...
Americans are getting some great lessons in both economics and history in the federal spending-debt crisis.
Yesterday, the Federal Reserve announced that it definitely intends to keep interest rates low for two more years. Translation: We will inflate (and debase) ...
Here we go again. Amidst all the talk about out-of-control federal spending and debt, what does the U.S. government do? It goes out and spends more money by expanding the drug war in Mexico.
Hey, when a federal program has ...
Did you ever think you’d see the day that communist China would be lecturing the United States on fiscal responsibility? It’s just a sign of how far down American statists have taken our country.
Sure, it’s humiliating that Standard & ...
If the debt ceiling had not been lifted and then the stock market had plunged 700 points, administration statists and mainstream commentators would have been screaming, “The stock market has plunged because the debt ceiling wasn’t lifted!”
But the debt ...
Okay, so the Tea Party is good at speaking out against out-of-control federal spending and debt, even if its members in Congress are not so good at reining in government spending and borrowing when voting on whether to permit ...
Imagine that people in society own a total pool of wealth of $1 million. The group is divided into three categories — the poor ($50,000), the middle class ($250,000), and the rich ($700,000).
The entire group as a whole produces ...
The Kennedy Casket Conspiracy, by Jacob G. Hornberger
The Shot That Killed Kennedy, by Jacob G. Hornberger
The Kennedy Autopsy, Part 1, by Jacob G. Hornberger
The Kennedy Autopsy, Part 2, by Jacob G. Hornberger
The Kennedy Autopsy, Part ...
I told you so! For the past several months, I have been saying that the Republicans were going to cave on the lifting of the debt ceiling. I’ve been writing it and I’ve been proclaiming it on my weekly ...
A good example of the power of the government dole is found in the reaction of Detroit automakers to President Obama’s demand to raise mileage requirements for automobiles.
According to an article in the New York Times, four years ago the automakers ...
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Perry Is Right about Social Security
Not surprisingly, Governor Rick Perry is catching flack from mainstream statists over his calling Social Security “a Ponzi scheme.” For statists, Social Security, as the crown jewel of the welfare state, ...
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
Two of the primary complaints made by the protesters in the Middle East have been the refusal of government officials to lift decades-old emergency legislation that permits the dictatorial ...
I had an interesting lunch yesterday. Congressman Ron Paul invited me to share libertarian perspectives on the warfare-welfare state and the debt ceiling with his private luncheon group, which consists of several of Ron’s fellow congressmen. About 8 other ...
The Postal Service has announced that it is closing 3,700 post offices across the country due to financial troubles.
I’ve got a better idea. How about closing the Postal Service itself and turning over the delivery of first-class mail entirely ...
At the risk of belaboring the obvious, the massacre in Norway reminds us, once again, of the three big reasons that our American ancestors enshrined the right to keep and bear arms in the Second Amendment.
First, the right to ...
Actually the killings in Norway by accused murderer Anders Behring Breivik are logical from the standpoint of those who have been claiming that the West is in a war against Islam. If we’re really at war, as these people ...
Add my name to the many libertarians congratulating Pete Eyre and his buddy Adam Mueller for their quick acquittal in a jury trial in the town of Greenfield, Massachusetts. I know Pete personally, and he has been a tremendous ...
Yesterday, I had an extensive email exchange with a guy named Rich Aucoin. He was taking me to task for my recent article “They Also Hate Us for Our Hypocrisy” along with articles I have written in ...
During our panel discussion at the recent FreedomFest conference in Las Vegas, which was entitled “The War on Terrorism Is a War on Freedom,” an attendee pointed out that there were lots of instances of terrorism around the world ...
The front page of today’s New York Times details another instance of the rank hypocrisy that underlies U.S. foreign policy. According to the article, U.S. officials are hopping mad at their partner and ally, the Pakistani government, for trying to ...
Periodically it’s important to sit back, reflect, and contemplate what kind of country America has become under the warfare state under which we have born and raised. It is really quite astonishing.
When I was growing up, the last thing ...
The Egyptian people are getting a harsh lesson in militarism and tyranny. After successfully ousting Egypt’s dictator, Hosni Mubarak, from power, through the power of protest and demonstration, dissenters are discovering that the problem involves much more than “getting ...
If you’ve ever wondered what snake oil tastes like, just swallow a bit of what the liberals are prescribing for America’s economic ills. Too bad the FDA doesn’t make them put warning labels on that junk.
Liberals are saying that ...
Why are so many people opposed to ending the welfare-state programs that have come into existence since the 1930s, especially when they see that they’re contributing to the downfall of our nation?
One reason is because after years of paying ...
The Jacob Hornberger Show broadcasts live every Saturday night at 7pm EST. Visit FFF's Ustream Channel to watch the show live.
Download the MP3 here, or subscribe to the RSS feed.
Americans might be wise to prepare themselves for what might happen if the feds are permitted to continue spending and borrowing to their heart’s content, which of course they will be able to do if the debt ceiling is ...
Since the debt-ceiling deadline is now only a month away, I thought I should repeat the prediction I made several months ago: The Republicans are going to cave. They will vote to lift the debt ceiling once again, confirming ...
In the wake of the jury’s verdict of acquittal in the Casey Anthony murder trial, the obvious question arises: How about letting the states employ the U.S. military’s tribunal system in murder cases, well at least in those cases ...
People living in the socialist paradise of North Korea are suffering another big bout of famine and starvation, so severe in fact that the European Union is sending $14.6 million in emergency food aid for more than 650,000 starving ...
The Jacob Hornberger Show broadcasts live every Saturday night at 7pm EST. Visit FFF's Ustream Channel to watch the show live.
Download the MP3 here, or subscribe to the RSS feed.
I’d like to share two points about the Fourth of July that I believe are important:
First, the people who signed the Declaration of Independence were not American citizens, as is commonly believed. The people who took up arms against ...
Friday, July 29, 2011
Sharing Ideas on Liberty at Ron Paul’s Congressional Luncheon Group
I had an interesting lunch yesterday. Congressman Ron Paul invited me to share libertarian perspectives on the warfare-welfare state and the debt ceiling with his private luncheon ...
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
Among the many ways that our American ancestors viewed the role of government in a free society that were so different from modern-day Americans was how they regarded militarism and ...
Yesterday I commented on conservative Pat Buchanan’s recent anti-immigration rant. Today, I wish to comment on an aspect of immigration controls that both conservatives and liberals rarely confront — the federal government’s police-state powers that come with enforcing immigration ...
Conservative Pat Buchanan went off on one of his periodic anti-immigration rants in an article yesterday entitled Say Goodbye to Los Angeles. In the article, Buchanan laments the fact that thousands of people in the Rose Bowl ...
The U.S. Supreme Court has declared a California law banning the sale of violent videos unconstitutional. That’s fine, but how about going further and declaring laws banning the possession and distribution of illicit drugs by adults to be unconstitutional ...
The Jacob Hornberger Show broadcasts live every Saturday night at 7pm EST. Visit FFF's Ustream Channel to watch the show live.
Download the MP3 here, or subscribe to the RSS feed.
One of the enjoyable things about being a libertarian is being attacked by both the right and the left. Whenever a libertarian attacks some form of statism, you can be confident that either conservatives or liberals or both are ...
Today’s op-ed in the Washington Post by noted conservative Charles Krauthammer, entitled “Who Takes Us to War?” reveals a lot about conservatives and how differently they view the Constitution compared to us libertarians.
Krauthammer’s article is about the Constitution’s declaration-of-war ...
Dear Friend of Freedom,
With two libertarian Republicans, Ron Paul and Gary Johnson, running for president, libertarianism is certain to be a topic of political conversation in the next 18 months. The Future of Freedom Foundation is well positioned to ...
It’s really fascinating to see how American statists are addressing the financial problems in Greece. They’re blaming Greece’s problems on the credit bubble, the banksters, greedy people, government mismanagement and corruption, or some combination thereof. So far, it doesn’t ...
Last February I published an article entitled, “Jury Nullification Prosecutorial Abuse,” in which I detailed the ridiculous and abusive federal indictment of Julian Heicklen.
What was the crime that the feds indicted Heicklen for? Handing out pamphlets in ...
Immediately after a NATO missile hit a home a few days ago and killed several civilians, including children, Libya’s foreign minister, Abdulati al-Obeida, called “for all Muslims to initiate a global jihad against the oppressive criminal West,” according to ...
The Los Angeles Times published an article last week about another travesty in the war on immigrants. Georgia farmers are having trouble finding people to pick their fruit crops. The likely reason is that Georgia’s new harsh immigration law, set to ...
The New York Times is reporting that a former CIA official, Glenn L. Carle, has revealed that the George W. Bush White House “sought damaging personal information on a prominent American critic of the Iraq war in order to discredit him.” ...
The New York Times yesterday carried an interesting article about U.S. military attacks in Yemen, one of five countries (that we know of) in which the U.S. Empire is killing people. The article indicated that the CIA is building a secret ...
Article II, Section 4, of the Constitution states in part:
“The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other High Crimes and ...
The Jacob Hornberger Show broadcasts live every Saturday night at 7pm EST. Visit FFF's Ustream Channel to watch the show live.
Download the MP3 here, or subscribe to the RSS feed.
Sometimes it’s good to look at foreign dictatorships to see what the president and the U.S. military have done to our country. Consider, for example, the trial of 20 doctors that is currently taking place in Bahrain.
As most everyone ...
The New York Times’ account of Cuban cyclist Damian Lopez Alfonso could help Americans regain their faith in a free-market healthcare system.
When he was 13, Lopez was electrocuted while trying to retrieve a kite caught in some power lines. Doctors ...
One of the U.S. Empire’s big arguments for continuing to occupy Afghanistan is the fear that the Taliban might regain control over the country. The idea is that the Taliban might harbor al Qaeda or other terrorist groups who ...
The Pentagon and the military-industrial complex and other drug-war proponents must be reeling over recent reports on the federal fiasco known as the drug war.
Two of the reports were issued by the U.S. government itself. According to the
The ongoing fiasco in healthcare shows why it was so wrong to have enacted Medicare in the first place.
For one thing, Medicare reflects perfectly the mindset of dependency that the welfare state has inculcated in the American people, who ...
The Jacob Hornberger Show broadcasts live every Saturday night at 7pm EST. Visit FFF's Ustream Channel to watch the show live.
Download the MP3 here, or subscribe to the RSS feed.
Last week the Washington Post published an editorial condemning libertarians for violating a rule against dancing at the Jefferson Memorial. The Post said that the violation of the rule really didn’t constitute real civil disobedience because it didn’t involve a protest in support ...
With the ridiculous criminal indictment of former presidential candidate John Edwards, this would be a good time to call for the repeal of all restrictions on the right of people to donate as much money as they want to ...
Let’s face it: As I have been repeatedly predicting for the last several months, the Republicans are going to cave when it comes to the raising the debt ceiling. Republicans always cave when it comes to principle. Their caving ...
A reader asked if we would post online reader feedback on my article “An Open Letter to the Troops: You’re Not Defending Our Freedoms.” Here it is:
****
Thank you for your great article on the troops aren't fighting for freedom. ...
The headline of this recent New York Times article highlights the problem: “Drug Trade Flourishes in Spanish Port Town.” The article is referring to the Spanish town of Barbate, Spain, a port town located in the southern region of Andalusia.
Like ...
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Immigration Controls and a Police State
Yesterday I commented on conservative Pat Buchanan’s recent anti-immigration rant. Today, I wish to comment on an aspect of immigration controls that both conservatives and liberals rarely confront — the federal ...
Let’s give credit where credit is due: When it comes to hypocrisy, liberals can be just as two-faced and duplicitous as conservatives.
We’re all familiar with conservative hypocrisy. The favorite mantra of conservatives is: “Private property, free enterprise, and limited ...
Dear Troops:
Yesterday — Memorial Day — some people asserted, once again, that you are “defending our freedoms” overseas.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Those people are just repeating tired old mantras. The reality is that you are not ...
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
The widespread revolts against dictatorships in the Middle East hold valuable lessons for the American people. Time will tell whether Americans focus on those lessons and heed them or ...
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The Supreme Court has upheld an Arizona law that imposes harsh penalties on employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens. The penalty of violating the law entails the suspension of a firm’s business license. The law requires state companies to ...
Yesterday, I wrote about the president’s dictatorial power regarding the waging of war. I pointed out that when it comes to war, the president can now violate with impunity the constitutional provision requiring him to secure a declaration of ...
Given President Obama’s refusal to comply with the Constitution’s declaration-of-war requirement in his war on Libya, perhaps this would be a good time for Americans to reflect upon the underlying philosophy of constitutionally limited government, especially as compared to ...
Two Latin American countries — Chile and Guatemala — are confronting coups of long ago that ousted democratically elected presidents and installed U.S.-supported unelected dictators in their stead.
In 1973 Chilean Army Gen. Augusto Pinochet ousted democratically elected Chilean President ...
The U.S. Supreme Court has let stand an appellate court ruling that immunizes agents of the federal government who kidnap people and deliver them into the clutches of foreign dictators for the purpose of torture. The case is Mohamed v. ...
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The angry protests currently taking place in Afghanistan provide a microcosm of the U.S. government’s entire foreign policy and so-called war on terrorism. Afghan citizens are protesting NATO’s recent killing of four people, including two women. NATO officials are ...
One of the silliest and not-thought-out arguments that drug-war proponents make against libertarians is the following: “Since you favor drug legalization, that means that you favor drug abuse.” The accusation is a perfect example of the mindset that public-schooling ...
A recent article about the First Amendment in the Christian Science Monitorreflects how differently libertarians think about religious and educational liberty compared to non-libertarians. The article is entitled “What If Public Schools Were Mandated to Teach Islamic Creation ...
The federal government has now reached its $14.3 trillion debt limit, even though Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is buying the government a couple of more weeks through some clever financial finagling. That means that the federal government cannot legally ...
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Among the most potent weapons employed by the Syrian dictatorship have been the arbitrary arrest, confinement, and torture of people without trial. Syrian police and military are simply arresting people without cause, jailing them indefinitely without trial, and torturing ...
The drug war will never be won no matter how fiercely it is waged. Why? Because there will always be people who will be attracted to making big money fast. The drug war provides people with the opportunity to ...
The title of today’s Los Angeles Times editorial says it all: “Get moving on immigration reform.”
The operative word is “reform.” Here we go again. More calls for immigration reform after decades of immigration reform. I thought that Berlin Wall type of ...
Michael Gerson’s attack on Ron Paul in Tuesday’s Washington Post confirms, once again, that the real battle facing our nation is between statists and libertarians.
Gerson is your standard conservative. He worked at the Heritage Foundation and then as a speechwriter for ...
A New York Times editorial today provides a perfect example of the statist thinking that has produced the out-of-control federal spending and massive debt that now threaten the United States with bankruptcy.
The editorial points out that several state governors refused ...
Just as I suggested last Monday, the killing of Osama bin Laden isn’t going to change a thing. The war on terrorism will continue, along with the invasions, bombings, occupations, sanctions, embargoes, kangaroo tribunals, torture and abuse, assassinations, ...
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There is good news coming out of Mexico. CNN is reporting that hundreds of protestors have begun a 3-day march to Mexico City seeking an end to the drug war. It’s seems that the group might be calling for ...
The operation in Pakistan that ended in bin Laden’s death brings to mind the case of Ramzi Yousef. He was one of the terrorists who committed the bombing of the World Trade Center some 8 years before the 9/11 ...
A controversy over food stamps in New York City shows what happens when people plunge into the muck of socialism.
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is trying to prohibit food-stamp recipients from using their food stamps to purchase sugar-sweetened ...
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My hunch is that once the jubilation over the killing of Osama bin Laden dissipates, everything will return to normal. The war on terrorism will continue indefinitely into the future. New official enemies will appear to take bin Laden’s ...
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Immigration and Liberal Hypocrisy
Let’s give credit where credit is due: When it comes to hypocrisy, liberals can be just as two-faced and duplicitous as conservatives.
We’re all familiar with conservative hypocrisy. The favorite mantra of conservatives is: ...
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
The 50-year-old economic embargo by the U.S. government against the Cuban people stands as a testament to the power of the state to mold the minds of a ...
Even while bombing and killing people overseas, the federal government hasn’t forgotten its important role of being a daddy for the American people. According to an article in today’s New York Times, the Food and Drug Administration is issuing rules directed ...
The doomsday crowd claims that the sky will fall in if the Congress fails to raise the debt ceiling. If the ceiling isn’t raised, they say, the federal government will be forced to default on its debt payments, which ...
The brutal military crackdown in Syria confirms the wisdom of our Founding Fathers’ opposition to standing armies. The Syrian military is loyally obeying the orders of their commander in chief to suppress the protests sweeping the country by opening ...
With respect to the debt ceiling, let me issue an easy prediction: The Republicans are going to cave. They are going to vote to raise the debt ceiling. Oh sure, there will be plenty of posturing. There will be ...
The U.S. government is criticizing the Chinese government for one of the communist regime’s favorite tactics: using “economic crimes” as a legal cover to prosecute, convict, and incarcerate people who are actually guilty of political crimes. The latest instance ...
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Outgoing U.S. ambassador to China Jon M. Huntsman Jr. recently issued a broadside against China’s human-rights record, a pointed attack that comes in the wake of a brutal crackdown on dissent by the communist regime. “The United States will ...
The disastrous failure of Cuba’s socialist economic system provides valuable clues to the American people as to why the United States is mired in economic woes. While total socialism has led Cuba into the depths of economic despair, the ...
An interesting aspect of the Syrian protests shows, once again, the big success of public (i.e., government) schooling in America.
Syria is ruled by a brutal dictatorship. Everyone agrees on that. The world is witnessing the power of that dictatorship ...
No doubt to the chagrin of many judges across the land, a New Hampshire jury has shown, once again, that juries are the final judges of both the law and the facts in criminal cases, contrary to what all ...
This month marks the 50th anniversary of the Bay of Pigs invasion, a regime-change operation in Cuba planned and initiated by the CIA. The invasion was a disastrous failure, one that the CIA is still trying to rectify half-a-century ...
Perhaps the most damaging effect of public (i.e., government) schooling is the malleable mindset that it produces in American children, a mindset that defers to the authority of the government in important matters. Day after day, year after year, ...
Not surprisingly, liberals are calling for tax hikes on the rich as their way to pay for the ever-burgeoning costs of the welfare-warfare state.
Conservatives pretend to oppose tax hikes. Their preferred method of funding the welfare-warfare state is through ...
Among the many Middle East dictatorships that are rounding up, incarcerating, torturing, and killing protestors and demonstrators is the one in Syria, which has long been recognized as one of the most brutal and oppressive regimes in the region. ...
The economic situation in Cuba goes a long way in explaining the economic woes of the American people as well as the response of American statists to such economic woes.
After Fidel Castro took power in 1959, his mindset was ...
What a joke that government-shutdown showdown turned out to be. Didn’t I tell you last week that neither the Republicans nor the Democrats would ever permit the federal government to “shut down” for any length of time? The reason: ...
Republicans are cheering while liberals are mute over another important cave-in by President Obama, this time over his flip-flop regarding the trial of accused terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, whom Obama initially intended to prosecute in federal district court in ...
The Jacob Hornberger Show broadcasts live every Saturday night at 7pm EST. Visit FFF's Ustream Channel to watch the show live.
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There is one big reason that neither the Republicans nor the Democrats will permit the federal government to remain “shut down” for too long: They’re both too afraid that the American people will discover what a wonderful thing it ...
President Obama’s claim that his concern for Libyan civilians motivated him to wage his undeclared war of aggression on Libya has got to be one of the most laughable lies to come out of a president’s mouth since President ...
In my article of yesterday, “The Benefit of Obama’s War on Libya,” I pointed out how President Obama’s new war provides him with the justification to indefinitely maintain war-on-terrorism powers that are akin to those wielded by the U.S.-supported ...
Lost within the “humanitarian” rationale that President Obama and his liberal cohorts have provided for the U.S. Empire’s war on Libya is one of the principal benefits of the Libyan War, at least from the standpoint of U.S. officials: ...
Friday, April 29, 2011
Nutrition and the Nanny State
Even while bombing and killing people overseas, the federal government hasn’t forgotten its important role of being a daddy for the American people. According to an article in today’s New York Times, the Food ...
The Jacob Hornberger Show broadcasts live every Saturday night at 7pm EST. Visit FFF's Ustream Channel to watch the show live.
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
Many years ago, I had the opportunity to visit Cuba, a country that holds valuable lessons in freedom for the American people, albeit not in ways that one might imagine.
As ...
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Would someone please tell me what limits constrain President Obama in foreign affairs?
A dictator is a government ruler with omnipotent powers, one who has no constitutional or legislative constraints on his powers. Operating through his military, paramilitary, intelligence, and ...
Given the battlefield success of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi’s standing army against Libyan rebels, President Obama has now shifted his tune. Instead of simply advocating a no-fly zone over Libya, Obama is now requesting the United Nations Security Council ...
With Saudi Arabia’s military intervention into Bahrain, the dark side of U.S. foreign policy becomes even more exposed. The purpose of the Saudi intervention is to prop up the brutal dictatorship in Bahrain, one of the many dictatorships that ...
No doubt American statists are feeling that they are good and caring people given the fact that the U.S. government is sending warships and supplies to the Japanese people. I wonder if they also feel that they are bad ...
A Cuban court has sentenced USAID contractor Alan Gross to 15 years in prison for engaging in subversive activity intended to undermine the Cuban government. Some 15 months ago, Gross was arrested by Cuban authorities for delivering satellite telephone ...
I continue to be fascinated by the response of the American people to U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Specifically, I cannot understand why people seem so blasé about the fact that their very own government, including the ...
In the controversy over the U.S. military’s decision to nudify Bradley Manning, I suspect that most Americans have not yet come to the realization that U.S. military forces have the authority to do the same thing to each and ...
Yesterday, I appeared on the Glenn Beck Show (at 27:40), with Judge Andrew Napolitano as substitute host, to discuss U.S. Rep. Peter King’s upcoming congressional hearings on the “radicalization of Muslims.”
Let me tell you what’s going on here.
If U.S. ...
March 8, 2011, on the Glenn Beck Show (Fox News) Judge Napolitano interviews Jacob Hornberger and Zuhdi Jasser on the Peter King's Muslim Hearings (video at 27:40)
In a scene that almost certainly made Pentagon and CIA officials both angry and nervous, Egyptian protestors stormed the headquarters of the much-feared State Security Investigations agency in Cairo, where they began examining top-secret documents. This is the agency ...
In yesterday’s blog post, I provided four possible reasons why President Obama is likely to refuse to open up U.S. files on the 1973 Pinochet coup, in response to a probable request from Chilean officials when Obama visits ...
The Jacob Hornberger Show broadcasts live Saturday nights at 7pm EST. Visit FFF's Ustream Channel to watch the show live.
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In yesterday’s blog post, I provided four possible reasons why President Obama is likely to refuse to open up U.S. files on the 1973 Pinochet coup, in response to a probable request from Chilean officials when Obama visits ...
Scott Horton from Antiwar Radio interviews Jacob Hornbeger Audio
When President Obama visits Chile next month, he is going to be hit with a request that is certain to make people in the Pentagon, the CIA, and the U.S. State Department uncomfortable. According to an article in today’s Washington ...
Dina Gusovski from RT Russia Today interviews Jacob Hornberger Video (scroll to bottom)
After more than 30 years of death, destruction, and failure, the two primary advocates of the war on drugs are public officials and drug lords. The reason is obvious: these two groups are the biggest beneficiaries of the drug ...
The U.S. government is now deliberating on whether to militarily intervene in Libya out of “shock” over the brutal behavior of 40-year Libyan dictator Muommar Gaddafi. Here we go again. If the U.S. government isn’t supporting dictatorships with money ...
Friday, March 18, 2011
American Dictatorship
Would someone please tell me what limits constrain President Obama in foreign affairs?
A dictator is a government ruler with omnipotent powers, one who has no constitutional or legislative constraints on his powers. Operating through his ...
While the U.S. government was expressing outrage over attacks on freedom of speech at the hands of U.S.-supported dictators in the Middle East, the U.S. Justice Department was securing a federal grand jury indictment against a man named Julian ...
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
Addressing the WikiLeaks controversy, noted New York Times columnist David Brooks opened up his November 29, 2010, column with the following observation:
mother didn’t enroll him in the local ...
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A federal judge in South Carolina has dismissed a civil suit brought by convicted terrorist Jose Padilla against Defense Secretary Robert Gates, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and other U.S. officials. The judge held that Padilla had no right ...
No doubt many American statists celebrated the ouster of Hosni Mubarak as dictator of Egypt in the belief that freedom had arrived for the Egyptian people, given that the country was now experiencing the “order and stability” provided by ...
More proof that licensing of lawyers doesn’t guarantee that judges won’t engage in judicial idiocy comes out of the state of Oklahoma.
Three days before Christmas, a state judge named Susie Pritchett, whose retirement would become effective on December 31, ...
America’s Founding Fathers would not be surprised by what is happening in places like Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, Libya, Yemen, and Iran. They understood that the real value of a standing army, from the standpoint of dictatorial regimes, is that ...
The controversy with public schoolteachers in Wisconsin proves, once again, that there isn’t a dime’s worth of difference in principle between Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals. This time, the big battle between the statists is whether state schoolteachers ...
The Jacob Hornberger Show broadcasts live Saturday nights at 7pm EST. Visit FFF's Ustream Channel to watch the show live.
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The U.S. Empire includes 750-1,000 military bases in more than 130 countries. The reality of that extensive military empire has come to the forefront in Bahrain, where the authoritarian government in that country is cracking down on protestors with ...
Preliminary Note: Just in case you’ve missed them in this week’s FFF Email Updates, here are links to recent FFF videos:
Campaign for Liberty Panel at CPAC with Ivan Eland, Jim Bovard, and Jacob Hornberger.
Jacob Hornberger Show ...
Once it became clear that Egypt’s dictator Hosni Mubarak was on the way out, U.S. officials quickly shifted gears and took the side of the demonstrators, the people who had suffered for 30 years under the brutal Mubarak dictatorship. ...
This edition of the Jacob Hornberger Show was recorded at the Conservative Political Action Conference on February 11, 2011. Jacob and special guest James Bovard discuss "Why Do Conservatives Support Statism?"
The Jacob Hornberger Show broadcasts live every Saturday night ...
I have long pointed out that there isn’t a dime’s worth of difference between conservatives and liberals in that they are both statist to the core. Sure, it’s true that conservatives love to employ libertarian-type mantras, such as “free ...
Count on U.S. officials, from Obama on down, along with their conservative supporters, to bring some hilarity into the events occurring in Egypt. Don’t you just love watching them on television providing their advice and counsel to the Egyptian ...
Flip-flopping over events in Egypt, President Obama and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have decided that it would be a bad idea for unelected Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak to immediately resign from office. Their reason? Under Egypt’s constitution, ...
On July 4, 1821, U.S. Secretary of State John Quincy Adams delivered a speech to the U.S. House of Representatives in which he observed that America was founded on principles of liberty and limited government that precluded our nation ...
As it continues to seep into the consciousness of the American people that their very own government — the U.S. government — has been the primary financial supporter of the Mubarak dictatorship for the past 30 years, the fact ...
Scott Horton of Anti-War Radio and Jacob Hornberger discuss "how Washingtons mixed messages on Egypt are exposing the US governments preference for dictatorships over democracies when they suit policy goals; why the US isnt quite ready to join ...
The Chilean government is investigating hundreds of cases of human-rights abuses under the dictatorial regime of army Gen. Augusto Pinochet, who took power in a violent coup in 1973. Notably, the probe will include an investigation into the death ...
On the surface of it, one might reasonably ask how it is that President Barack Obama and other U.S. statists feel so comfortable having the U.S. government partner with a brutal dictator like Hosni Mubarak. In an attempt to ...
If only the American people were as angry and outraged over the U.S. government’s partnerships with foreign dictatorships as the Egyptian people are with the U.S-supported dictatorship under which they have been suffering for 30 years. If that were ...
There’s one part of the dictatorial tyranny in Egypt against which the Egyptian people are protesting that might make American statists very uncomfortable, which is perhaps why they’re not focusing too much attention on it. It’s the part that ...
Monday, February 28, 2011
Jury Nullification Prosecutorial Abuse
While the U.S. government was expressing outrage over attacks on freedom of speech at the hands of U.S.-supported dictators in the Middle East, the U.S. Justice Department was securing a federal grand jury ...
Among the people who might be most disturbed about the popular revolts in the Middle East are public schoolteachers across America. No, not because they necessarily oppose popular uprisings against brutal dictatorships but rather because they’re likely to be ...
Sometimes it’s constructive to just sit back and reflect upon some of the major differences between libertarians and statists.
With respect to foreign policy, both conservatives and liberals are devoted to the continuation of America as a military empire. Sure, ...
A former Border Patrol agent, Bryan Gonzalez, has filed suit against his former employer. He’s alleging he was fired for pointing out that legalizing drugs would end drug-war violence in Mexico. The agent’s observation prompted an internal affairs investigation, ...
The Jacob Hornberger Show broadcasts live Saturday nights at 7pm EST. Visit FFF's Ustream Channel to watch the show live.
With big anti-dictator demonstrations in Egypt and Yemen in the wake of the Tunisian revolution that ousted the U.S.-supported dictator Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, U.S. officials are in a tight spot. On the one hand, they clearly want to ...
In his State of the Union address, President Obama raised the issue of tax cuts for the rich, one of the big battlegrounds between liberals and conservatives.
Yawn!
Conservatives: “Lower taxes for the rich! Make the cuts permanent!”
Liberals: “Raise taxes on ...
People are commemorating the 50th anniversary of President Eisenhower’s Farewell Address in which he warned Americans about the dangers posed by the military-industrial complex. However, while the commentators are focusing on the obvious impact that the military-industrial complex has ...
Ever since the Christmas holidays, I have been unable to sleep. Every night I pace the floors in anxiety. The cause of my concerns? My purchase of a Christmas present for myself — an easy chair. No, it’s not ...
Yes, I know that American statists hate it when someone brings up Hitler in the context of U.S. government policies. But it seems to be that bringing up Hitler can sometimes be instructive, especially given his historical role as ...
I had a great time on Judge Napolitano’s Freedom Watch last night. It’s refreshing to see a libertarian talk show host, especially on a conservative television network, who recognizes the realities of U.S. foreign policy and the benefits of transparency ...
If you want to get a sense of why foreigners hate the U.S. Empire for its arrogance, elitism, and pomposity, just take a look at the following two editorials by the New York Times and the Wall Street ...
What has happened in Tunisia provides a perfect encapsulation of U.S. foreign policy and why U.S. officials are so angry over the WikiLeaks leaks.
According to the New York Times, some of the WikiLeaks cables “make it clear just how much United ...
I’ll be addressing the evils of the drug war tomorrow night, Saturday, at 7-8 pm on my Internet show. Click here if you want to listen live.
Most everyone is familiar with the disastrous consequences of the war on ...
Americans who travel overseas do so at their own risk. That principle used to apply only to foreign governments but now it also applies to the U.S. government, which is exercising unlimited powers against Americans and others while operating ...
The standard explanations for the Arizona killings are now being set forth, such as widespread violence in America and right-wing extremism. I’d like to weigh in with another possible factor, one that I can’t prove but one that I ...
A good example of the military mindset that has predominated in American society since at least World War II is found in an op-ed in the Washington Timestoday. Its title is “China’s Imperialism on Full Display” and is written by ...
House Republicans are making a big deal about voting for a repeal of Obamacare. Unfortunately, it is nothing more than standard political posturing. The following is what they will say when the Democrat-controlled Senate votes it down or when ...
For those who still claim that conservatives are different from liberals, they might want to take a close look at Virginia Governor Bill McDonnell, a conservative darling who has just exposed himself as another big spender and big borrower. ...
Within two days of being sworn into office, congressional Republicans are already breaking their promises with respect to out-of-control federal spending and borrowing. In their much-ballyhooed “Pledge to America” they promised to cut $100 billion out of non-defense discretionary ...
For years, some conservatives have claimed that school vouchers are a gradual method to end state involvement in education. For the life of me, I just cannot understand the logic of their argument. It seems clear to me that ...
Those who still doubt that President Obama is a clone of his predecessor should talk to Bert Sacks, a 68-year-old American from Seattle. The long, sordid saga of Bert Sacks not only shows that Obama is nothing more than ...
Jacob Hornberger and Jeff Cohen with Dina Gusovsky
RT Russia Today
A congressional vote next spring will flush out the frauds currently serving in Congress — the ones who rail against federal spending and borrowing while supporting the programs and policies that are funded by the spending and borrowing. The ...
Every Sunday at church, Christians pray the Lord’s Prayer, which includes the following exhortation: “Lead us not into temptation.”
During the other six days of the week, many Christians continue to support the war on drugs, a federal program that ...
Monday, January 31, 2011
U.S.-Supported Tyranny in Egypt
Among the people who might be most disturbed about the popular revolts in the Middle East are public schoolteachers across America. No, not because they necessarily oppose popular uprisings against brutal dictatorships but ...
If you haven’t already made an end-of-year donation to The Future of Freedom Foundation, I hope you will do so. Our work for liberty in the coming year depends in large part on the financial support we receive at ...
Imagine if the Obama administration proposed a new federal law that required everyone to give Christmas presents to every member of his family, to at least 5 poor people in the community, and to at least one public official.
Wouldn’t ...
On December 21, the Central Intelligence Agency gave its Agency Seal Medal to Rep. Pete Hoekstra, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee. Hoekstra has labored almost ceaselessly to assure that the CIA can break federal laws with ...
Yesterday’s New York Times carried an interesting article about North Korea that in some ways reminds one of the United States. The country is suffering severe economic depression but the government is promising that prosperity is just around the corner. Meanwhile, ...
People sometimes ask why libertarians have had a difficult time achieving success in the political arena. The answer is: Because libertarians are calling for an entirely new paradigm, rather than simply a reform of the status quo. Given the ...
The Power of Ideas on Liberty from The Future of Freedom Foundation on Vimeo.
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What would happen if agents of the Venezuelan government entered the United States, kidnapped a person suspected of being a terrorist, and whisked him away to Cuba to have him tortured?
I’ll tell you: U.S. officials would be hopping mad, ...
Bill of Rights Day was yesterday. Undoubtedly, American statists celebrated the fact that the Constitution and the federal government give them their rights and that the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are fighting to protect their politically granted rights.
Actually, ...
Get a load of this op-ed in yesterday’s New York Times: “Give Up on the Estate Tax” by Ray D. Madoff, a professor at Boston College Law School.
Referring to the estate tax, Madoff writes: “This tax, first enacted ...
Consider this opening paragraph from an article in last Sunday’s edition of theNew York Times:
After World War II, American counterintelligence recruited former Gestapo officers, SS veterans and Nazi collaborators to an even greater extent than had been previously disclosed ...
In one of the stupidest political debates in modern history, liberals and conservatives demonstrate, once again, how worthless their joint commitment to statism is. Their current big debate centers around the liberal dream of extending jobless benefits to unemployed ...
The Jacob Hornberger Show broadcasts live Saturday night at 7pm EST. Visit FFF's Ustream Channel to watch the show live.
Download the MP3 here, or subscribe to the RSS feed
The statist outrage against Julian Assange and WikiLeaks is rooted in the U.S. government’s imperial foreign policy. In fact, the entire war on terrorism and the ever-growing infringements on the fundamental rights and liberties of the American people revolve ...
One of the big reasons that liberals support the welfare state is the covetousness-and-redistribution factor. Liberals hate the fact that some people are rich while other people are poor. Moreover, the rich, liberals say, only get richer while the ...
Last Sunday’s New York Times published an interesting article about U.S. military bases in Iraq that carries valuable lessons for America with respect to military spending, governmental dependency, and national bankruptcy.
The article, entitled “As U.S. Leaves, Iraqis Suffer Economic ...
While supporters of WikiLeaks are criticizing Amazon, Paypal, Mastercard, and other companies who are distancing themselves from WikiLeaks, we should at least consider why such companies might be doing so. When it comes to the U.S. government, everyone knows ...
Federal secrecy and deference to authority go hand in hand. The good citizen is expected to not question decisions by federal officials to keep governmental activities secret and to defer to authority by trusting that those in power are ...
We All Have a Stake in the Outcome of this Battle from The Future of Freedom Foundation on Vimeo.
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Washington Times conservative columnist Jeffrey T. Kuhner, who serves as president of the Edmund Burke Institute, a conservative organization, has a simple solution to the WikiLeaks controversy: Assassinate WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
Good old conservatives. Kuhner’s Washington Times op-ed today reminds us ...
Ever since I discovered libertarianism some 30 years ago, I have dreamed of a “great awakening” in which the American people discover our nation’s libertarian heritage and restore individual liberty, free markets, and a limited-government constitutional republic to our ...
The WikiLeaks controversy is exposing one of the great divides among the American citizenry: the good, little citizen who has a reverential deference for government power and the independent, critical thinker who isn’t scared to expose and oppose government ...
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
The Bill of Rights should actually have been called the Bill of Prohibitions because it actually doesn’t give any rights to anyone. Instead, it expressly prohibits the federal government from ...
Thursday, December 30, 2010
We Need Your End of Year Support
If you haven’t already made an end-of-year donation to The Future of Freedom Foundation, I hope you will do so. Our work for liberty in the coming year depends in ...
The left and right are debating whether tax cuts for the rich should be extended. The debate only goes to show how there’s really not any difference, philosophically speaking, between liberals and conservatives. They both believe in the income ...
One of the benefits of the war on terrorism, from the standpoint of the statists, is that it has served to distract attention from the violations of civil liberties and privacy arising from that other famous federal war — ...
Do you want to know what the real crime of the Muslims was, in the minds of American statists?
It is that Muslims haven’t quietly acquiesced to what the U.S. Empire has done to them. If Muslims had meekly submitted ...
James Madison, the father of the Constitution, had a deep insight into the nature of government and public officials. Here is what he said:
A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. ...
We’re linking to the third segment of my Internet show in today’s FFF Email Update. I think you’ll enjoy it. I’ve entitled it “Gold, the Constitution, and the Fed” since I spent the entire hour on that subject.
The ...
’m having trouble deciding which topic to address today: the Pentagon’s announcement that it intends to be occupying Afghanistan into 2014 and beyond or the bailout of the Irish government. I’ll do both.
When is enough enough? How long are ...
The Kennedy Casket Conspiracy, by Jacob G. Hornberger
The Shot That Killed Kennedy, by Jacob G. Hornberger
The Kennedy Autopsy, Part 1, by Jacob G. Hornberger
The Kennedy Autopsy, Part 2, by Jacob G. Hornberger
The Kennedy Autopsy, Part ...
The statists are upset over the jury’s verdict in the federal court trial of former Guantanamo prisoner Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani. After hearing and considering all the evidence, the jury returned a verdict of acquittal on 276 counts of murder ...
In the midst of the perpetual statist debate over whether President Bush’s tax cuts for the rich should be extended or not, we libertarians should refrain from getting mired in that debate and instead continue raising people’s vision to ...
Americans are getting upset over the TSA gropers and porn scanners. But are they now ready to support the libertarian call to dismantle the U.S. government’s overseas military empire, which is the root cause of the TSA groping and ...
As the statists debate the future impact of the Fed’s latest inflationary binge, it’s important that we keep the big picture in mind.
This is what the Fed has done since it was established in 1913. Decade after decade, it ...
To get a good picture of the plight that afflicts the American people, imagine a great big box in which the American people are living. The box is a statist box, one in which there is a jungle of ...
Given their commitment to the Constitution, members of the Tea Party must confront the legality of the invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq.
I’m referring to the declaration of war provision in the Constitution. It delegates the power to ...
LewRockwell.com has recently been linking to a spate of articles condemning TSA’s airport security operations, including the agency’s enthusiastic embrace of body scanners:
TSA Porno-Scanners: What They’re Really Looking by Claire Wolfe
TSA Resistance Taking Off: Are ...
Whenever people raise evidence of CIA wrongdoing, deception, and cover-ups, mainstream statists immediately respond with, “Conspiracy theory! Conspiracy theory”! The statist mindset is one that is best reflected by the word “Inconceivable!” To mainstream statists, it is simply inconceivable ...
Statists love to say that people have a right to such things as health care, education, or a job. That’s just plain statist nonsense. People do not have a right to health care, education, or a job.
People have a ...
The Jacob Hornberger Radio Show 11/6/2010
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One of the things that distinguish libertarians from conservatives is with respect to moral principles, a phenomenon that is reflected in the current debate over federal spending.
Notice that conservatives focus exclusively on the fact that the federal government is ...
People sometimes ask what the differences are between liberals, conservatives, and libertarians.
The primary differences are moral and philosophical.
Libertarians believe that people should be free to live their lives any way they choose, so long as their conduct is peaceful. ...
There’s a website entitled Save Our Social Security. It issues the following scary, sinister, and ominous warning:
“Powerful forces are gathering. They have prestige and wealth but they want more, and they want to take it from you. Their ...
Some mainstream media types are reporting that voters effectively rejected President Obama in the elections yesterday. The problem is that they’re not looking at the big picture.
With the Republican takeover of the House, Obama is assured of full support ...
In response to my blog post of yesterday, entitled “Libertarianism and the Tea Party,” some Tea Party supporters posted comments on my Facebook page indicating that my “attack” on the Tea Party was unfounded.
My article, however, wasn’t ...
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Willie Nelson and the Drug War
One of the benefits of the war on terrorism, from the standpoint of the statists, is that it has served to distract attention from the violations of civil liberties and privacy ...
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
Throughout most of history, it was a given that government had the legitimate authority to wield omnipotent power over its citizenry. If the king wanted a person’s land, he took ...
Will Tea Party wins in congressional elections make any difference at all?
Nope. Federal spending and debt will continue to soar, and the prospect of inflation and even federal bankruptcy will continue to loom on the horizon.
While Tea Party members ...
I just returned from Tampa, Florida, where I engaged in a debate sponsored by the Tampa branch of the Young President’s Organization. The topic was “Libertarianism or Socialism?”. My opponent was a gentleman named Brian Moore, who is a ...
The controversy over NPR’s firing of Juan Williams brings two predictable consequences: liberals decrying a violation of freedom of speech and conservatives making their periodic call for the termination of federal funding for NPR.
Actually, there is no free-speech violation ...
The Wikileaks revelations confirm that ever since the U.S. government invaded Iraq seven years ago, U.S. officials were willing to accept any amount of death, destruction, and brutality among the Iraqi people to achieve that goal.
Recall what U.S. officials ...
Constitution of the Republic of Cuba, 1992
Preamble: We, Cuban citizens … guided by … the political and social ideas of Marx, Engels, and Lenin.
Principles of the State:Article 1. Cuba is an independent and sovereign socialist state….
Article 9: ...
The latest illegal-alien controversy in California’s gubernatorial race reflects the vicious and hypocritical assault on fundamental rights and economic liberty that liberals and conservatives have waged for decades.
In 2000 Meg Whitman, the Republican candidate for governor, employed a Hispanic ...
The latest political controversy in the Christine O’Donnell and Chris Coons race shows how conservatives, liberals, and, yes, Tea Party types, still operate within the box of statism.
The controversy involves whether public schools should be teaching creationism or evolution.
Coons ...
For a good example of what a disaster conservatives are — and why they are just as responsible as liberals for America’s healthcare (and economic) woes — just look at an article that was published this week in the Washington ...
We have exciting news here at The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Beginning on Saturday, November 6, from 7-8 pm ET, I will have my very own weekly Internet radio program, entitled “The Freedom Oasis.” You can listen to (and watch!) ...
Washington Post columnist David Ignatius is saying that interventionism just isn’t getting the credit that it’s due. He’s pointing to the “successful” government bailouts of the automobile and banking industries. Thanks to the bailouts, he says, the banks and the ...
As the killing and destruction in Afghanistan have mounted over the past 10 years, and as they have expanded into Pakistan during the Obama administration, interventionists have tried to justify the massive death and destruction by claiming that the ...
Speech given at Virginia Liberty Fest
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The case of a Maryland man named Alan Gross shows how much the U.S. military has altered the course of U.S. criminal and constitutional law since 9/11, and not in a good way.
Gross is a technology expert who was ...
We just posted the video of a great lecture that George Mason University economics professor Don Boudreaux delivered last week at our Economic Liberty Lecture Series, which we co-sponsor with the GMU Econ Society, a real fire-in-the-belly student group ...
Given the anger of the Tea Party over out-of-control federal spending, soaring debt, taxation, inflation, and constitutional violations, it would be nice if they got angry over something much more fundamental: the infringements on the fundamental rights and freedoms ...
Even though U.S. officials rail against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Americans can learn a lot about the U.S. government and, indeed, about America’s political, economic, and education system by studying what is happening in Venezuela.
Recently, the Venezuelan people delivered ...
According to an article in yesterday’s New York Times, Barack Obama has effectively given up hope of generating support from independents for Democratic Party candidates in the upcoming mid-term elections and instead is trying to energize the liberal base that supported ...
I can’t help but comment on the latest liberal attack on libertarians because the entire episode is so humorous. This newest attack comes from Joshua Holland, senior editor at Alternet.org, one of the most liberal organizations in the country.
The ...
Everyone is finally starting to recognize that the federal government is merrily traveling down the road to national bankruptcy … and is going to take a lot of Americans down with it. The government is spending at least $1 ...
If I had suggested that the U.S. government had probably done syphilis experimentation on people other than the Tuskegee experiments on unsuspecting American black men, American statists would undoubtedly respond, “Conspiracy theory! Conspiracy theory! It is inconceivable that our ...
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
We live in a country whose economic system is a welfare state and a government-managed economy and whose foreign policy is now based on an extensive overseas military empire and ...
I had another exciting evening last night. I participated in a live and lively debate on immigration in Yuma, Arizona, from my home in Ashburn, Virginia. The debate was sponsored by a great organization named the Freedom Library, ...
with Scott Lee on Freedom & Prosperity Radio
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Friday, October 29, 2010
Debating a Socialist
I just returned from Tampa, Florida, where I engaged in a debate sponsored by the Tampa branch of the Young President’s Organization. The topic was “Libertarianism or Socialism?”. My opponent was a gentleman named ...
It’s been a great week for me! On Tuesday, I traveled to Leesburg, Florida, which is about 1 ½ hours from Orlando to give a lecture on the principles of libertarianism to the student body at Beacon College, ...
with Jim Bohannan on The Jim Bohannon Show
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The Justice Department’s motion to dismiss the ACLU’s lawsuit in the Anwar al-Awlaki case confirms, once again, that when it comes to civil liberties, the Obama administration is no different from the Bush administration, and in fact is arguably ...
Liberals supporters of Barack Obama become really upset when people call him a socialist. They say that such an accusation is so outrageous that it falls within the category of “extreme” or “fringe.”
Let’s see.
Consider the following four countries: Cuba, ...
The upside to the Tea Party movement — the one that has the welfare-warfare crowd so consternated — is that its members are not behaving as the good, little citizen-automatons that epitomize the statist crowd. The Tea Partiers are ...
As the fiascos in Iraq and Afghanistan continue worsening, expect American statists to do what they always do — avoid responsibility for their disasters and look for scapegoats on which to blame them.
Consider Iraq, which has the one of ...
A Washington Post editorial about Cuba yesterday depicts perfectly the mindset of statism that afflicts the mainstream media.
The editorial commented about the horrific economic conditions in Cuba, which has caused Cuban leaders to launch what the Post called “half measures.” Such half ...
The following is a non-verbatim transcript of a speech delivered by Jacob Hornberger at the Virginia Campaign for Liberty’s Liberty Fest in Richmond, Virginia, on September 18, 2010.
Ever since the dawn of recorded history, people’s minds have been inculcated ...
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
During the entire 11 years of the sanctions on Iraq, the anger in the Middle East was simmering, not only among Iraqi parents but also among ...
The Tea Party’s political shake-ups of the Republican establishment are undoubtedly causing no small amount of consternation among big-wigs in the Pentagon, the CIA, State Department, and other agencies and departments within the U.S. government.
As of now, the Tea ...
Last Monday, an audience of around 90, mostly students from George Mason University, was treated to the best lecture on open immigration I have ever seen. The talk was delivered by GMU economics professor Bryan Caplan as part of ...
I’d like to follow up on my blog post of yesterday about the Cuban government’s decision to lay off 500,000 government employees, given that Cuba’s socialist system has engendered a state of near-starvation poverty in the country.
Undoubtedly, there is ...
Cuba’s president Fidel Castro is surely making American liberals extremely nervous. Mugged by reality, Castro is moving his country in a direction away from socialism, at the very same time that American liberals are trying their best to move ...
An article in last Sunday’s New York Times provided an interesting analysis of the Egyptian military, one that holds some important lessons for America.
The article described the military in Egypt as “the single most powerful institution in an autocratic state facing ...
With the approaching elections, we are being treated to the expected political attack by Republican candidates — that President Obama has mismanaged the economy. In fact, within one day of Obama’s taking control over the presidency, Republicans were already ...
I suspect that the reason that so many Americans have gone off on the anti-Islamic kick is their steadfast refusal to confront the fact that the 9/11 attacks were the direct consequence of the bad things their federal government ...
The Ninth Circuit’s ruling yesterday in the case of Binyam Mohamed vs. Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc. confirms two things: the U.S. government wields the omnipotent, unreviewable power to torture people and, two, that Barack Obama, despite his much ballyhooed pre-election campaign hype ...
The anti-Muslim opponents of that Islamic community center/mosque in New York City are suffering a severe case of anti-Islamic schizophrenia.
On the one hand, they’ve gone ballistic over the possibility that an Islamic community center/mosque might be built a couple ...
One of the most morally obscene aspects of the Iraq War has been the cost-benefit analysis in which war proponents claim that the war has been worth the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi people killed in the operation. Since ...
Thursday, September 30, 2010
A Great Time at Beacon College
It’s been a great week for me! On Tuesday, I traveled to Leesburg, Florida, which is about 1 ½ hours from Orlando to give a lecture on the principles of libertarianism ...
Jacob Hornberger's blog will return on Tuesday, September 7th.
One of the primary arguments employed by statists to justify the welfare state is the necessity to equalize incomes. The rich just get richer and richer, and the poor just get poorer and poorer, in a free-market economy, say ...
The controversy over the mosque/cultural center in New York City is performing at least one valuable function, one that no one could have ever predicted: causing Americans to confront the wrongdoing of their own government and reflect on how ...
How come there’s an egg recall due to salmonella poisoning? Don’t we have government regulations and regulators for this sort of thing? Don’t we have government inspectors? Don’t we have a regulated economy so that the government will keep ...
President Obama’s announcement that all combat troops have exited Iraq, while 50,000 combat troops remain in Iraq, is fitting. Since the war began with a lie, the “end” of the war might as well be based on a lie ...
Last week, the New York Times displayed customary economic ignorance about two deficits — the trade deficit and the budget deficit. In a lead editorial entitled “Return of the Killer Trade Deficit,” the Times lamented the fact that the United States ...
President Obama and the Pentagon make the following joint announcement:
Our fellow Americans, now that we have brought democracy to Afghanistan and Iraq with our military invasions and occupations, third on our list is Vatican City, a country that has ...
A common mistake by many Americans is when they use the pronoun “we” to conflate the U.S. government and the American people (i.e., the private sector). The error is most often manifested when it comes to foreign policy. “We ...
Those Americans who love being sheeplings must be ecstatic over President Obama’s rumored plans to ease travel restrictions to Cuba by permitting more students, educators, and researchers to visit Cuba, but only with an official government-issued license, of course.
Let’s ...
From the Sunday Washington Post:
“In squads of roaring dirt bikes and armed to the teeth, Taliban fighters are spreading like brush fire into remote and defenseless villages across northern Afghanistan. The fighters swarm into town, assemble the villagers and announce ...
In order to get our nation back on track, it’s important to return to fundamental principles, the principles on which our nation was founded. Let’s review how the Founding Fathers viewed the military and foreign policy in the context ...
Amidst all the furor over the Arizona immigration crisis, let’s not forget the cause of it: interventionism.
Do you recall that big fence they built in California several years ago? It was part of what the feds called “Operation Gatekeeper.” ...
In 1989 I founded The Future of Freedom Foundation from my apartment in Denver, Colorado.
The early days of FFF were extremely difficult, with little money and few donations. When subscriptions to Freedom Daily were in the hundreds, I would stuff the ...
The response among Virginia’s public officials to Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ call for closing the Joint Forces Command in Virginia reflects the depth of the financial problems our country is facing.
Most everyone knows that the road the federal government ...
With the welfare state cracking apart and with rising concerns among the citizenry about federal spending and debt, count on federal officials to provoke more overseas crises as a way to frighten people into rallying toward the government. It ...
The feds have figured out another way to use the war on terrorism as a way to avoid the Constitution, specifically the Bill of Rights. This time, it’s the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of effective assistance of counsel that falls ...
Statists who oppose the building of that mosque near the World Trade Center site are missing the point, and the reason they’re missing the point is that they simply cannot bring themselves to recognize that the problem is not ...
American statists and imperialists are coming up with all sorts of explanations to explain the epidemic of suicides among U.S. military personnel. The most popular explanations are war stress and stress at home.
I’ve got another possible cause: guilt, arising ...
At the recent sentencing of Walter Kendall Myers and his wife Gwendolyn, U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton announced that he was “perplexed” by the Myers’ claim that they had no intent to harm the United States by turning over ...
I have a proposal for reducing federal spending: End the drug war by legalizing drugs.
Let’s face reality: Unless something drastic happens, like bankruptcy or hyperinflation, Americans are not likely going to let go of their welfare-warfare state in the ...
The Mexican government has just killed a man named Ignacio Coronel Villarreal, who was purported to be the leader of a powerful Mexican drug cartel. According to the New York Times, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency congratulated the Mexican government on ...
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
The 40-year-old war on drugs has long been a favorite government program of both liberals and conservatives. It is a program by which statists have brought ...
Friday, August 27, 2010
The Market as a Redistributor of Wealth
One of the primary arguments employed by statists to justify the welfare state is the necessity to equalize incomes. The rich just get richer and richer, and the poor just ...
I grew up in Laredo, Texas, a border town that no doubt causes no small degree of consternation to those who lament Mexican culture in the United States.
I’d estimate that when I was growing up, about 95 percent of ...
The Washington Post yesterday profiled a Pakistani man named Hamid Gul, who served as head of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency from 1987 to 1989. The article pointed out that Gul is viewed by U.S. officials as a terrorist, one who ...
They don’t call Afghanistan the graveyard of empires for nothing. Just ask Great Britain and Russia. It seems that the U.S. Empire, however, is bound and determined to prove that it’s the exception to that adage.
No matter how bad ...
Dear Friend of FFF:
Americans are now recognizing the terrible threat to our freedom and well-being posed by ever-increasing spending, debt, and inflation. At the same time, people are questioning the never-ending occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. With the approaching ...
I wonder what torture-memo attorneys John Yoo and Jay Bybee are thinking regarding the report of a U.S. sailor who was apparently taken captive by the Taliban yesterday. Time will tell whether the sailor who was killed with him ...
Amidst the big dispute between liberals and conservatives over race in theShirley Sherrod controversy, I’d like to make a libertarian point: Rather than give Sherrod her job back at the Department of Agriculture, let’s instead simply abolish ...
Will America ever get to the point where Americans will be able to criticize the Israeli government without being accused of being anti-Semitic? Only when enough Americans finally come to the realization that the accusation is actually just a ...
Yesterday’s front page of the New York Times provides yet another horrible legacy arising out of the U.S. invasion, occupation, and war of aggression against Iraq, a country that never attacked the United States or even threatened to do so.
Last month, ...
The CIA is claiming that Iranian scientist Shahram Amiri was spying for the CIA while he was living in Iran and then that he later voluntarily defected to the United States. Amiri, on the other hand, is claiming that ...
Not surprisingly, the mainstream press, including editorial boards and op-ed writers, has quickly jumped to the side of the CIA in the dispute over Shahram Amiri. The CIA claims that the Iranian scientist was a spy for the CIA ...
In my recent posts calling for open borders, I have talked about how Americans are free to travel across state lines without encountering immigration officials at state borders. We all take this freedom for granted. But that’s only because ...
U.S. officials are denying claims by Shahram Amiri, an Iranian nuclear scientist, that CIA operatives kidnapped him, secretly transported him to the United States, tortured him, and kept him incarcerated for more than a year. The officials are saying ...
Libertarian Fox News commentator John Stossel has recently been the subject of attacks from the left for taking the position that private owners have the right, under principles of freedom and private property, to discriminate. (See here and ...
I have a modest ten-part proposal for the federal government, although some people undoubtedly will consider it radical.
1. Immediately vacate Afghanistan and Iraq. The U.S. government has had 8-9 years to do as much killing, injuring, maiming, and destroying ...
The former head of Cuba’s Department of State Security, Fabian Escalante, tells the Washington Post that accused terrorist Luis Posada Carriles has an insurance policy that ensures he will be provided excellent treatment at the hands of U.S. officials. According to
Mainstream commentators were extolling the effectiveness of Senator Robert Byrd, who recently died. They pointed out how successful he was in bringing federal largess to West Virginia. Their accolades reflect not only why the federal government is broke but ...
Statists continue to argue that to dig its way out of its welfare-warfare financial crisis, U.S. officials should continue to spend massive amounts of money. The problem, of course, is that the U.S. government doesn’t have massive amounts of ...
For decades, libertarians have been warning Americans of the coming crack-up of the welfare-warfare state. Of course, we couldn’t predict when the crack-up would finally occur. All we could do is to say that the road to statism, both ...
Ever since the invasion of Iraq, I have been absolutely amazed by the position taken by many American Christians. Needless to say, I’m no theologian but it just seems to me that it would be difficult to find a ...
In another sign that liberals are becoming increasingly concerned with the growing popularity of libertarianism, a liberal named Daniela Perdomo has gone on the attack against libertarian John Stossel at Alternet.org, one of the major liberal (or “progressive,” as ...
Friday, July 30, 2010
An Open Border in My Hometown
I grew up in Laredo, Texas, a border town that no doubt causes no small degree of consternation to those who lament Mexican culture in the United States.
I’d estimate that when ...
Glenn Greenwald has done great work detailing how subservient and submissive the mainstream press is with respect to the U.S. government. Here’s his latest article on the subject: http://tinyurl.com/2dypdly.
In fact, reporters in the mainstream press might well be ...
Friday, July 30, 2010
An Open Border in My Hometown
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Igrew up in Laredo, Texas, a border town that no doubt causes no small degree of consternation to those who lament Mexican culture in the United States.
Id estimate ...
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
Ever since it was established, the income tax has constituted an ever-growing assault on income, savings, and capital, which are the keys to a prospering nation, ...
While the gun-control crowd is going bananas over the fact that state and local governments are not constitutionally permitted to ban private ownership of handguns, they are remaining mute over a killing that took place in an apartment in ...
When it comes to gun rights and gun control, liberals are so predictable. Condemning the Supreme Court’s decision in the Chicago gun case that applied the Second Amendment to the states, the New York Times editorialized, “Mayors and state ...
In my April 2010 article Why Do Daily Kos and Alternet Support a Racist Program? I pointed out that liberals, including those at Daily Kos and Alternet, support minimum-wage laws notwithstanding the fact that such laws have horribly ...
Amidst the increasing calls among statists for increased federal spending, one can practically feel the deep, visceral hatred for gold arising within statists. The reason is that statists know that gold is a communications vehicle that tells people what ...
We really shouldn’t let the furor over President Obama’s firing of Gen. Stanley McChrystal cause us to lose focus on three important points regarding Afghanistan: The U.S. government should never have invaded and occupied the country in the first ...
In my June 21 blog post, “Barack Obama, Dictator,” I pointed out that President Obama exercised brute dictatorial powers in dictating to BP to hand over $20 billion of corporate money to federal officials, who plan on distributing the ...
Immediately after the 9/11 attacks, U.S. officials, from President Bush on down, went on the offensive with respect to what, they claimed, had motivated the terrorists to kill Americans. It was all because the terrorists hated America for its ...
What better example of dictatorship than President Obama’s dictate to BP to deliver $20 billion to a special fund that will be distributed by some political appointee to victims of the BP oil disaster?
Either a nation is ruled by ...
If someone had posited the notion that in 1961 the FBI might have monitoring President John Kennedy’s brother Ted on suspicion that the latter could be a threat to national security, statists would undoubtedly have cried, “Conspiracy theory! Conspiracy ...
Yesterday, I appeared on the Glenn Beck show, which was being guest-hosted by Judge Andrew Napolitano, to discuss the possible use of drones here in the United States. The idea is being proposed as just another way to keep ...
A good example of what passes for debate in this country occurred this week in a New York Times article entitled “State Backing Films Says Cannibal Is Deal-Breaker” by a reporter named Michael Cieply.
The article is about state government ...
Two stories in the news this week point to the difference in philosophy regarding child labor between state and federal officials.
In Iowa, a jury returned a verdict of acquittal in favor of Sholom Rubashkin, the former manager of Agriprocessors, ...
Two stories in the news this week point to the difference in philosophy regarding child labor between state and federal officials.
In Iowa, a jury returned a verdict of acquittal in favor of Sholom Rubashkin, the former manager of Agriprocessors, ...
Yesterday’s New York Times had an interesting article about North Korea that described how desperate life is in that socialist country.
The question, of course, is: Why are economic conditions so bad in North Korea?
The answer is: Because North Korea is a ...
Weighing in on the Helen Thomas controversy, Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen made an interesting observation as to one of the reasons that post-World War II Jews looked to the establishment of Israel as a safe haven for Jews. Cohen stated, ...
The so-called war on terrorism will surely go down in U.S. history as one of the most ridiculous, inane, hypocritical, crooked, corrupt, and destructive federal programs ever.
This week, federal officials have been proudly proclaiming the arrest of two New ...
Except for the fact that the North Korean regime doesn’t kowtow to U.S. officials, my hunch is that American statists really don’t really object in principle to the North Korean way of life. After all, the ...
Last Friday, we participated in one of the nicest and classiest affairs in FFF’s 21-year history. It was hosted by longtime FFF supporter Bob Bowers, who also serves on FFF’s board of trustees. The event took ...
If you want to understand why America is in deep crisis on the domestic front, consider an op-ed entitled “Tell Fox to Lay Off Our Civil Rights” by a liberal named James Rucker. The ...
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
The ancient Chinese symbol for “crisis” perfectly depicts the situation currently facing the American people. That symbol was actually composed of two separate symbols. One was ...
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
The Silence of the Gun-Control Crowd
While the gun-control crowd is going bananas over the fact that state and local governments are not constitutionally permitted to ban private ownership of handguns, they are remaining mute over a ...
One of the bromides we hear every Memorial Day is how countless American soldiers have died for their country. That’s nothing but sheer nonsense. Many of them died not for their country but rather for their ...
Nobel Prize winning libertarian economist Milton Friedman once suggested that libertarians could rightfully oppose the concept of open borders as long as the United States had a welfare state. Friedman’s point was that with open borders ...
The civil rights controversy that has arisen in the context of Rand Paul’s U.S. Senate bid might seem out of date given that it involves a provision in the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Actually, however, the ...
As I stated in yesterday’s blog post, both conservatives and liberals are using the Rand Paul controversy as a springboard to attack libertarianism in general. One almost gets the feeling that during the past several years, as the ...
One of the things that fascinate me about the Rand Paul controversy is how it is exposing the longtime confluence of conservatives and liberals. For 20 years, I’ve been arguing that there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between ...
I oftentimes wonder what causes a statist to be a statist. Whatever the reason, one thing is certain: Every generation has its share of statists — people who wish to impose their values on other people, ...
I recently wrote two articles in which I criticized liberals for being two-faced and hypocritical when it comes to racial issues. The articles, which concerned the minimum wage, a longtime favorite government program among liberals whose negative effects fall ...
As part of the controversy over Rand Paul’s comments on the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which I have addressed today in an article entitled “Rand Paul, Civil Rights, and More Liberal Hypocrisy on Race,” some liberals have been ...
One of the disastrous consequences of having adopted the welfare-state way of life is what it has done to the concept of voluntary charity. Let’s look at Medicare and Medicaid, socialist programs that go to the ...
Richard Blumenthal, who is Connecticut attorney general and candidate for the Democratic nomination to the U.S. Senate, has been fibbing about his military background. He’s been telling people that he served in the Vietnam War when, ...
A recent op-ed entitled “We’re Not Greece” by Paul Krugman in the New York Times encapsulates everything that is wrong with liberals when it comes to economics.
The good liberal that he is, Krugman suggests ...
Ever since 9/11, Americans have generally fallen into two camps in explaining why our country now faces the constant threat of terrorist attacks.
The first group is composed of people who claim that foreigners, particularly Muslims, hate ...
It is important that Americans be fully aware of an important rule with respect to U.S. foreign policy that the U.S. government has implemented and is now enforcing. In fact, knowing and understanding the rule is ...
A French court recently recognized the idiocy of one of the U.S. government’s attempts to enforce its sanctions against Iran by denying the government’s request to extradite an Iranian businessman for allegedly violating the sanctions. U.S. prosecutors were ...
One of the things that amaze me about life is how so many people remain wedded to statism despite the inherent defectiveness and destructiveness of the statist paradigm. Why remain committed to something — why ...
If you’re an American taxpayer, you should expect to receive a thank-you note from dole recipients in Greece fairly soon. The reason is that Barack Obama, working with his cohorts at the Federal Reserve, is using ...
On May 5, the Washington Post published an editorial questioning whether the Obama administration had considered treating the suspected Times Square attempted bomber as an enemy combatant rather than as a federal criminal defendant. I wrote an article entitled ...
Let me begin by making a very simple, direct point: There is one — and only one — solution to the so-called immigration crisis: freedom and free markets. Every other measure, including the recently enacted immigration law in Arizona, ...
Leave it to the Greeks to expose American liberals and the road to statism they continue to take our nation.
Over the past 20 years, how many times have we heard European statists extolling the virtues and ...
In an editorial yesterday entitled Obama Administration Owes Answers on How It Handled Times Square Suspect, the Washington Post wants to know whether the Obama administration was too hasty in treating accused Times Square ...
In a press conference yesterday about Faisal Shahzad, the Pakistani-American who allegedly tried to blow up the car bomb in Times Square, Attorney General Eric Holder stated, The reality that there is a constant threat from ...
In the past week, I have written two articles (here and here) detailing how one of the favorite economic interventions of liberals (i.e., liberals in the corrupted, big-government meaning of the term), falls disproportionately on poor, inner-city ...
An editorial in the Saturday New York Times indirectly confirms what I wrote in my recent article Why Do Daily Kos and Alternet Support a Racist Program?
In that article, I pointed out that a minimum-wage law ...
I was a liberal back in my late 20s. I was practicing law in my hometown of Laredo, Texas, where I was serving on the board of trustees for the local Legal Aid Society, a government agency that provided ...
Friday, May 28, 2010
Libertarians, Open Borders, and the Welfare State
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Nobel Prize winning libertarian economist Milton Friedman once suggested that libertarians could rightfully oppose the concept of open borders as long as the United States had a ...
How often have we heard proponents of the unlawful war of aggression against Iraq say that the real purpose of their invasion (after U.S. troops and the CIA failed to find those infamous and scary WMDs that were about ...
There is still no trial date set in the federal case of Luis Posada Carriles, the foreigner whom Venezuela accuses of having planned the terrorist downing of a Cuban civilian airliner in 1976 that killed 73 ...
With the possible exception of the war on drugs and public (i.e., government) schools, it would be difficult to find a government program that is more damaging to inner-city poor people, especially blacks, than the minimum wage. Yet, liberals, ...
An interesting discussion has erupted on FFFs Facebook page in response to two items I posted regarding the Tea Party movement:
Irony: Daily Kos and Alternet liberals are attacking me & Tea Party types are attacking Bovard, ...
What lots of Americans dont realize is that the new Arizona immigration law simply extends to the entire state the requirement that darker-skinned, poorer-looking Americans along the border have had to live with for decades carrying their papers, just ...
The Los Angeles Times is reporting that city governments, who are suffering severe financial strains, are looking to the federal government to bail them out. And the federal government, our nations daddy, is responding favorably. ...
On April 15, 2010, Jacob Hornberger gave the following speech at an event sponsored by the Young Americans for Liberty at Purdue University.
Last October I wrote an article entitled “Judge Andrew Napolitano’s Libertarian Phenomenon,” in which I stated: “Fox News legal commentator Judge Andrew Napolitano’s Internet program Freedom Watch is one of the most fascinating phenomena ...
It’s a fascinating phenomenon. The U.S. government’s war on drugs and its war immigrants are now meeting each other along the southern border, placing advocates of these two wars in an interesting position.
This week the New ...
Commentators are debating whether the Justice Department will be able to prove its civil fraud case against Goldman Sachs. Unfortunately, they’re missing the point. The Justice Department didn’t bring its suit with the aim of proving ...
The New York Times published an interesting … and revealing … article by former President Bill Clinton entitled “What We Learned in Oklahoma City,” in which Clinton commemorated the terrorist attack on the Alfred ...
A liberal named John Sumner, who goes by the pseudonym Devilstower, has weighed into the debate originally inspired by my article “Liberal Delusions about Freedom.” Sumner’s article, “What Conservatives Mean When They Say ...
Last Thursday I had the pleasure of traveling to Purdue University on the invitation of several students who are members of the Purdue chapter of Young Americans for Liberty (YAL), one of the student groups inspired by Ron Paul’s ...
A few years after the founding of The Future of Freedom Foundation some 20 years ago, a donor who had been giving us $1,000 a year telephoned me and asked me to write an op-ed in favor of school ...
As longtime supporters of The Future of Freedom Foundation know, as libertarians we have long called for open borders. One of the first books we ever published, in fact, is entitled The Case for Free Trade and Open ...
The case of Alan Gross has U.S. officials stymied. He’s the U.S. Agency for International Development subcontractor who the Cubans have jailed for allegedly violating Cuban laws against subversion. Gross was apparently caught giving cell phones ...
While the Obama administration is now officially confirming its power to assassinate Americans abroad as part of its foreign assassination program, Chilean military dictator Augusto Pinochet’s foreign assassination program has just reared its ugly head ...
In his column yesterday, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman demonstrates how wrong-headed liberal thinking on economics can be.
Pointing to the fiscal problems being experienced by Greece, Krugman correctly points to the core of ...
With April 15 almost upon us, this would be a good time to remind ourselves of how the income tax contributed to the destruction of American liberty.
We should first keep in mind that with the exception ...
I cant improve on Glenn Greenwalds analysis of the WikiLeaks video depicting the slaughter of Iraqi citizens. See here and here and here.
However, there is one part of the WikiLeaks video that I ...
We had a great session of the Economic Liberty Lecture Series last night, an event that we co-sponsor with George Mason Universitys student-run GMU Econ Society. Richard Ebeling gave a great talk on the continuing relevance of Friedrich ...
Things are not working out as well as the U.S. Empire intended in either Iraq or Afghanistan.
The original plan called for the installation of U.S. puppet regimes in both countries, regimes that would do the bidding of the Empire ...
A federal judge’s ruling in a case challenging the Bush administration’s infamous and illegal domestic surveillance case will likely demonstrate, once again, the hypocrisy and deceit of Barack Obama and his merry band of liberal statists.
When ...
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
Even though the CIA was the premier government agency in the world whose expertise was assassination, coups, and regime change, it does not necessarily follow that it employed its talents ...
Friday, April 30, 2010
Revisiting Freedom in Iraq
by Jacob G. Hornberger
How often have we heard proponents of the unlawful war of aggression against Iraq say that the real purpose of their invasion (after U.S. troops and the CIA failed to ...
My blog post yesterday, “Why Do Conservatives Still Love the Drug War?, generated many interesting comments on Facebook. One of the commentators made a point that both conservatives and liberals have long used to justify this failed and ...
An article by a conservative named Cliff Kincaid, who serves as editor of the Accuracy in Media (AIM) Report, provides a perfect example of how different libertarians are from conservatives and, well, for ...
The last thing statists want people to be doing is studying the Constitution. Because if people are studying the Constitution, there is a good possibility that they’ll discover what the Framers considered to ...
Ludwig von Mises pointed out that one government intervention inevitably leads to more interventions in order to address the crises that are generated by the previous interventions. Ultimately, Mises said, the crises continue ...
Yesterday, the New York Times published an article detailing another statist crisis involving the U.S. welfare state. This time the crisis involves the crown jewel of America’s socialist programs, Social Security.
According to ...
The reason that conservatives bit the dust in the recent health-care battle is simple: their fateful decision to abandon their principles many decades ago cost them any chance of defeating President Obama’s socialist health-care plan.
Think back to the 1960s, ...
On March 21, 2010, Jacob G. Hornberger gave the following speech at The Free State Projects Liberty Forum. The speech can viewed below in its entirety.
With another major victory for statism in the form of President Obama’s socialist and interventionist health-care reform plan, the obvious question arises: Do libertarians have any chance at all of attaining the free ...
The issue in the Terri Schiavo case is not whether the Florida district court originally entered a correct judgment or not. The issue is whether this is a nation in which the American people are going to continue permitting ...
Among the most extraordinary powers claimed by both President Bush and President Obama as part of the post-9/11 “war on terrorism” is the power to nullify — or ignore — jury verdicts of ...
We had an absolutely great time at the Free State Project’s Liberty Forum this past weekend. Lots of great speakers, hundreds of attendees, seeing old friends, meeting new ones, and perfect ...
A few days ago, Pete Eyre (who serves as outreach consultant to FFF) had an encounter with two police officers in Santa Fe, New Mexico, which Pete videotaped while openly carrying a weapon, ...
The Washington Post has just published an op-ed that pretty much sums up where we’ve arrived as a country, post-9/11, thanks to both conservatives and liberals. The op-ed is entitled “KSM’s Dispensable ...
The controversy over guns and Starbucks provides us with an opportunity to understand the relationship between gun rights and property rights.
The gun-control crowd is upset with Starbucks because the chain is permitting people ...
Let’s make no bones about it. Adolf Hitler, who served as chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, could easily be the inspiration for those here in the United States now calling for the creation of a special national ...
One of the things the mainstream media never mentions in discussing conservatives’ embrace of the Pentagon’s military-tribunal system in Cuba for prosecuting accused terrorists is the disdain that conservatives have for trial by ...
A battle in Texas provides a good example of the socialist central planning that takes place in public (that is, government) schools. All sorts of people are lobbying feverishly before a 15-member state ...
The letter that Ralph Groves, director of the U.S. Census Bureau, recently sent to the American people reflects what America has become under the welfare state. Here is what the letter states in ...
One of the distinguishing characteristics of statists is their inability to take responsibility for their failures. The fault always lies elsewhere. Two of the best examples of this phenomenon are the welfare state ...
Last December a 60-year-old American citizen was taken into custody in Havana by Cuban authorities. The man, Alan Phillip Gross, who resides in Potomac, Maryland, is suspected of being a spy for ...
Even while employing sanctions against Iran, the U.S. government is confirming that sanctions do not work.
The Chinese government has threatened to impose sanctions on the United States if the U.S. government persists in its decision to sell weapons, including ...
The statist reaction to Republican Sen. Jim Bunning’s temporary block of a welfare bill shows what the welfare state has done to the American people.
Everyone knows that federal spending is out of control. ...
We had a great time on Monday evening at FFF’s Economic Liberty Lecture Series, which we sponsor in conjunction with the George Mason University Econ Society, a student-run group whose members are mostly libertarians and advocates of Austrian economics.
Sheldon ...
Liberals seem to be getting bent out of shape over the fact that increasing numbers of people are challenging their statist paradigm. They’re suggesting that anyone who questions their beloved welfare-state socialism must ...
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
Among the reasons the CIA should have been made a specific target of a criminal investigation in the John Kennedy assassination were: (1) the CIA was the world’s premier expert in ...
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Why Do Conservatives Still Love the Drug War?
by Jacob G. Hornberger
An article by a conservative named Cliff Kincaid, who serves as editor of the Accuracy in Media (AIM) Report, provides a perfect example of how different ...
Yesterday’s New York Times had an interesting news story about a young Pakistani man named Umar Khundi, who was recently killed in a shootout with police. He had been attending medical school but ...
An op-ed entitled “Conservatives’ Isolationist Dalliance” in the Washington Times today by Jeffrey T. Kuhner, president of the conservative Edmund Burke Institute, is an excellent example of the difficult task that Ron Paul has in convincing conservatives ...
The rabidly pro-war, pro-intervention folks over at Frontpagemagazine.com are shocked and dismayed about our recent CPAC panel “You’ve Been Lied To: Why Real Conservatives Should Reject the War on Terror,” in which I had the good fortune of participating ...
Immediately after 9/11, Bush administration officials declared the motivation of the terrorists: that the terrorists hated America for its “freedom and values.”
In other words, the 9/11 attacks, according to President Bush, Vice-President Cheney, and other U.S. officials, had absolutely ...
While there has been much discussion over why Muslims hate Americans, much less attention has been given to why neocons hate Muslims. While it might be true that some neocons hate Muslims for their religious and cultural values, I ...
Is Americas current War on Terror essential to keeping our nation safe? Or is it yet another vehicle for the federal government to increase its power over our lives and take away our liberties? Is the War on Terror ...
What a great time we had at the CPAC conference! Yes, I know what you might be asking yourself: What in the world was FFF doing at CPAC? After all, it is a conference for conservatives, right? And we ...
President Bush and his neoconservative supporters were practically teary-eyed on election day in Iraq. No longer did it matter that the weapons of mass destruction that had been used to scare the American people into supporting the war didn’t ...
What an awesome day I had yesterday! Wow! I’ll give more details about the CPAC conference later. Right now I’ll just talk about the Big Highlight of the day — Judge Andrew Napolitano’s Freedom Watch, which ...
I tuned into conservative Bill O’Reilly’s show on Fox News last night to see what libertarian John Stossel had to say, and in the process I was treated to one of the most inane arguments I ...
How long have European socialists been telling us how successful European welfare-statism has been? The governments in Europe’s socialist countries, they tell us, take care of their people with pensions, social security, free health care ...
I’m no psychiatrist but it’s been said that the subconscious of people who are suffering severe guilt sometimes causes them to make inadvertent admissions of wrongdoing. That might well be why former Vice-President Dick Cheney ...
In preparation for the two recent back-to-back blizzards, D.C. residents were emptying the shelves of neighborhood grocery stores. Notwithstanding the pre-blizzard panic buying, what’s interesting is that no one was freaking out about whether the ...
In an obvious ambush of Texas Republican gubernatorial candidate Debra Medina, Fox News commentator Glen Beck told Medina in a radio interview that he had received emails from listeners saying that she was a 9/11 truther, that is, a ...
Shocking revelations about the sinking of the RMS Titanic have just come to light. U.S. officials have long kept this information secret on grounds of national security.
It turns out that after the Titanic hit the ...
John Limbert, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for Iran, is asking the UN to investigate human-rights abuses in Iran by that country’s dictatorial regime. Ever since protests against Iran’s fraudulent presidential elections broke out, ...
For years, liberals and conservatives have played this little game in which they imply that they hold opposing philosophies. Nothing could be further from the truth. There’s not a dime’s worth of difference, philosophically speaking, ...
In a February 6 editorial, the mainstream newspaper the New York Times took note of the dangers of out-of-control federal spending and soaring debt. In 2011 alone, the projected deficit is $1.3 trillion, an amount that ...
Among the things about the Iraq War that I have never been able to understand is how American Christians have been able, in good conscience, to support this war. After all, no one can deny that ...
Both liberals and conservatives have long lamented that Americans have not been bearing their fair share of the costs of the U.S. Empire’s longstanding imperialist escapades in Iraq and Afghanistan.
That’s ridiculous.
Consider the ever-increasing debt that ...
What happens when the military is used in a police capacity? You get a “war on terrorism,” one in which people think that the laws of war now apply to the situation. But in actuality, nothing could be further ...
Over the years, I’ve had conversations with Europeans about gun control. Not surprisingly, they have been very critical of America’s “gun culture” — that is, the widespread ownership of guns among the American people. They have ...
If you’d like a good picture of where American socialists are leading our country, consider the situation in North Korea, which is the world’s best model of a socialist society. In North Korea, everyone is equal ...
Consider this opening paragraph from a New York Times article regarding the U.S. government’s arms sales to Taiwan:
“For the past year, China has adopted an increasingly muscular position toward the United States, berating ...
Would someone please explain to me how it’s possible that millions of Toyota vehicles have that accelerator problem? I thought the federal government was supposed to keep us safe from these sorts of things. Consider, for ...
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
One of the strangest aspects of the investigation into John Kennedys murder was the reaction of federal officials.
Whenever government officials are assassinated, the normal reaction of law enforcement is to pull ...
Brian Wilson Interviews Jacob Hornberger at CPAC (Audio)
02/18/2010 Freedom Watch: Live fromCPAC w/ ...
Friday, February 26, 2010
Ron Paul vs. Big Government Conservatives
by Jacob G. Hornberger
An op-ed entitled “Conservatives’ Isolationist Dalliance” in the Washington Times today by Jeffrey T. Kuhner, president of the conservative Edmund Burke Institute, is an excellent example ...
President Obama’s tiff with the Supreme Court over the Court’s ruling in the corporate-spending case brings to mind what President Franklin Roosevelt, one of Obama’s icons, did when the Supreme Court began declaring some of his socialist and fascist ...
An interesting and revealing exchange regarding rights and the Constitution took place recently between defense attorney Bruce Fein, who spoke at FFF’s 2008 conference “Restoring the Republic: Foreign Policy and Civil Liberties ,” and Guantanamo military ...
One of the things about statists that fascinate me is how they look to the federal government to solve problems facing society, especially when it’s the federal government that is the cause of the problems. Such ...
It’s amusing to watch U.S. officials protest the Chinese government’s surveillance of its own citizens. After all, isn’t it the U.S. government that secretly and illegally conspired with private telecom companies to record telephone conversations ...
A good example of one of the things that is wrong with conservatives is provided by a conservative named Rich Lowry, who has an article today about the Detroit bomber case on nationalreviewonline.com, one ...
U.S. officials can claim another “success” with their sanctions against Iran. A Russian-made Tupolev airplane crash-landed in Iran, injuring 42 passengers.
Those passengers were much luckier than those traveling on an Iranian flight to Armenia last summer. All 168 passengers ...
One of the amusing parts of all the crises facing our nation — immigration, the dollar, Social Security, healthcare, Iraq, drug war, terrorism, foreclosures, and the rest — is when a supporter of the socialism and ...
Reaction to Scott Brown’s Senate win in Massachusetts has been glee for conservatives and depression for liberals. Conservatives have reason to be happy because Brown’s victory might spell the death knell for Obama’s socialist national ...
As President Obama and his cohorts struggle over what to do now with their socialist health-care plan in response to the Democratic defeat in Massachusetts, now would be a good time to point out one of the biggest reasons ...
President Obama and other U.S. officials, who purport to be good and caring people through their delivery of U.S. taxpayer money to Haiti, have a message to the Haitian people. It’s the same message that President ...
In my blog last Friday (Jan. 15), I made the point that U.S. government compassion for Haiti wasn’t compassion at all, given that the money is taken by force by the IRS and distributed by federal politicians and ...
The New York Times has another silly editorial on gun control. The paper’s editorial board is calling for a renewal of the assault-weapons ban, which expired in 2004.
The paper’s justification? “A survey of more ...
With President Obama’s promise to help the Haitian people, Americans are once again confronted with a basic moral question: When the U.S. government gives money away to people in need, who are the good, compassionate, caring ...
A statement by a Chinese woman in response to the Chinese government’s censorship of Google reveals the statist mindset perfectly, both in China and here in the United States. Here is what she said: “The government ...
American liberals have long extolled Cuba as a model of their economic philosophy, which entails government control of economic activity, socialized health care, government-provided education, and equalization of wealth. While Cubans correctly call this socialism, ...
We libertarians just might be winning the battle over whether terrorism cases belong exclusively in federal court, as compared to a dual system in which the feds can, at their option, prosecute suspected terrorists in the ...
Two of the most important debates facing the American people involve two particular issues, one in domestic policy and one in foreign policy. Both debates are critically important because they entail diagnosing two major woes ...
The alleged attempt by that passenger to explode a bomb on that flight to Detroit confirms how much conservatives hate America. Oh, I’m not saying that conservatives don’t love their federal government. Of course they do. ...
Conservatives are using the Detroit terrorist incident to demand that President Obama stop releasing prisoners from Guantánamo, especially those set to be released in Yemen. They’re also pointing to the fact that some of the prisoners ...
Conservatives are once again on the rampage, this time with respect to the alleged Detroit bomber. They’re saying that he should be treated as an enemy combatant rather than prosecuted as a criminal defendant. Ironically, as ...
For those who think that the U.S. Empire is good, holy, sacrosanct, and above reproach when dealing with foreigners, here is a little bit of reality for you.
Last September the Obama administration suddenly imposed an enormous ...
Part 1 | Part 2
When it comes to economic policy, liberals suffer from two major weaknesses.
One, they believe that all that matters with respect to policy are good intentions. As long as liberals mean well, they think that ...
Friday, January 29, 2010
The Constitution Doesn’t Give Rights to Anyone, including Americans
by Jacob G. Hornberger
An interesting and revealing exchange regarding rights and the Constitution took place recently between defense attorney Bruce Fein, who spoke at FFF’s 2008 ...
Once again, the U.S. government’s 112-year obsession with controlling Cuba rears its ugly head. This time, it involves the arrest by Cuban authorities of an American subcontractor who works for a company named “Development Alternatives, ...
Do you ever wonder why it is that so many Americans steadfastly refuse to acknowledge that our nation’s terrorist woes are rooted in U.S. foreign policy? Why not simply acknowledge the obvious rather than come up ...
To justify the federal government’s massive post-9/11 infringements on civil liberties, the proponents of Big Government have sometimes said, “There hasn’t been another major terrorist attack on the United States since 9/11. ”
I have responded with ...
In December 2001 — three months after the 9/11 attacks — I wrote an article entitled “A Foreign-Policy Primer for Children: The Fable of the Hornets.” The article provides a good description of what is now taking place ...
With Christmas approaching, perhaps this would be a good time to remind ourselves of the moral difference between government welfare and private charity.
Government welfare is based on the force of government. The IRS forces people to ...
Greece is in a severe economic crisis arising from excessive government spending and ever-increasing government debt. Reflecting concerns of a possible default in the payment of Greece’s bonds, the credit-rating agency Fitch has downgraded the ...
Following up on my last two blogs regarding the important debate over what has motivated people to commit terrorist acts against the United States, two questions arise:
First, why does the U.S. government persist in his claim ...
A friend of mine telephoned me about yesterday’s blog and made an excellent point about the five young American men who were recently arrested in Pakistan on suspicion of conspiring to kill U.S. soldiers. My friend ...
Some people are befuddled over the 5 young American men who allegedly traveled to Pakistan to take up arms against American troops. The men have been described by high school friends as friendly, ordinary students of Muslim faith who ...
Two of my blog posts this week have caused me to ponder the similarities of the mind-sets of the people in Augusto Pinochet’s secret intelligence force (known as DINA) and those in George W. Bush’s and Barack Obama’s CIA. ...
Thirty-five years after military strongman Augusto Pinochet took power in a coup in 1973 in Chile, the Chilean people have just discovered that Pinochet ordered the murder of former Chilean president Eduardo Frei Montalva. Even though ...
The core problem in the health-care debate is that most everyone just assumes the existence of Medicare and Medicaid and medical licensure. Then, they come up with some sort of reform plan that works around these socialist and interventionist ...
Permit me to show you an example of why the U.S. government’s occupation of Afghanistan provides a continuing threat to the well-being of the American people. The example is a microcosm of U.S. foreign policy.
The December 3 issue of ...
Iraqis and Afghanis are not the only ones who are protesting military occupation. According to Reuters, “Thousands of people dressed in white demanded soldiers leave Mexico’s most violent city on Sunday, accusing troops of ...
Last Wednesday provided another great evening in our Economic Liberty Lecture Series, which we hold at George Mason University in conjunction with the students in the GMU Econ Society. As a matter of fact, that night ...
The Washington Post carried a nostalgic article about Virginia’s state-wide smoking ban, which just went into effect. The article reminded people of Virginia’s long heritage of tobacco growing.
Not surprisingly, however, the Post failed to mention a ...
Pity the socialists. Their grandiose federal plans to “rebuild” Iraq and Afghanistan have turned out to be fiascoes.
But heck, at least the socialists retained the hope of pointing to grandiose rebuilding programs at home to ...
Part 1 | Part 2
Liberals say that they love the poor, needy, and disadvantaged. Unfortunately, however, the economic philosophy that liberals favor constitutes a direct assault on the economic well-being of the poor, along with nearly everyone else ...
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Fight Cuban Tyranny with American Freedom
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Once again, the U.S. government’s 112-year obsession with controlling Cuba rears its ugly head. This time, it involves the arrest by Cuban authorities of an American subcontractor who ...
I was once delivering a lecture to a group of students at a local public (i.e., government) high school and I made the point that one of the biggest reasons why government officials love to control the educational system ...
The Future of Freedom Foundation is one of the most important organizations in the liberty movement. FFF does great work educating the public in the principles of free-market economics, individual liberty, and a noninterventionist foreign policy. — Congressman Ron ...
President Obama has decided to up the ante in Afghanistan by acceding to his generals’ request to send an additional 34,000 troops to that beleaguered nation. What better proof that those of us who opposed the ...
The following is a non-verbatim transcript of a speech I delivered on November 23, 2009, at the End the Fed rally in Philadelphia.
With the possible exception of the Internal Revenue Service, the federal agency that is the greatest threat ...
An American couple charged several months ago with spying for Cuba have pled guilty. Walton Myers, 72, a former State Department official, agreed to a mandatory sentence of life in prison. His wife Gwendolyn, ...
Yesterday’s New York Times carried an interesting article about how more conservatives are joining libertarians and liberals in the defense of civil liberties. This is a remarkable development, one that threatens to split the conservative movement.
For decades, ...
A front-page article in today’s New York Times entitled “Wave of Debt Payments Facing U.S. Government” details what conservatives and liberals have done to our country with their out-of-control federal spending for their welfare-warfare ...
Federal Judge David Ezra has sentenced Las Vegas businessman Robert Kahre to serve 15 years in the federal penitentiary. What a travesty of justice. The man no more belongs in jail than, say, Plaxico Burress, the ...
I don’t know how President Bush and the Pentagon came up with the idea of establishing a new judicial system for trying terrorists, but there is the distinct possibility that they got the idea from German ...
Speaking about the Ft. Hood killings, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs stated, “The investigation is ongoing to figure out what would motivate an individual to carry out the type of act that this major carried out.”
As the investigation into ...
This week has started out with a bang. Early yesterday morning, I appeared on radio station KTRH in Houston to discuss President Obama’s attempts to move America in the direction of socialism. I pointed out that ...
The Trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (Video from Judge Andrew Napolitano’s Freedom Watch FoxNews.com)
The opening lines of a New York Times story last Saturday about President Obama’s trip to China pretty much says it all: “When President Obama visits China for the first time on Sunday, he will, in ...
Yesterday, I was involved in a lively debate on Afghanistan on Alan Colmes’ Internet show. Among the questions Alan asked me whether I was “justifying” what the Ft. Hood killer did and what the terrorists did ...
One of the fascinating aspects of the invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan is how so many Americans, prodded by their rulers, have convinced themselves that U.S. troops are killing and dying to “protect our ...
Suppose President Obama expressed disapproval with the Vatican’s method of electing the Pope. It’s not democratic enough, the president says. Why should a small group of Catholic cardinals be the only voters? Why shouldn’t all Catholics ...
Amidst all the debate over whether the Ft. Hood killer is a terrorist, murderer, enemy combatant, traitor, sleeper agent, or insane person, there is one glaring fact staring America in the face: what happened at Ft. Hood is more ...
While U.S. officials celebrate the 20th anniversary of the demise of the Soviet Union, they simultaneously celebrate their post-9/11 power to arrest people anywhere in the world without a warrant, kidnap them, transport them to overseas ...
Last night we held a special evening event featuring British writer Andy Worthington, one of the world’s most knowledgeable experts on the Pentagon’s Guantanamo Bay prison camp and its post-9/11 alternative “judicial” system for trying ...
With the massacre at Ft. Hood, we once again see the consequences of gun control.
Remember what the gun controllers say: that once gun control is imposed, would-be murderers will obey the gun-control law by resorting to ...
A major federal appeals court ruling pretty much sums up what the U.S. government’s pro-empire and pro-interventionist foreign policy has done to our nation.
The decision involves the case of Maher Arar, a man who holds dual ...
If there was ever an area in which public-school indoctrination has been effective, it’s with respect to the Great Depression and Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. It is impossible for any student to escape public school without having his mind ...
Those who are complaining that government officials shouldn’t be controlling what companies pay their executives need to be reminded of an important point: He who pays the piper calls the tune. Or to put it another ...
In an editorial today, the Washington Times takes federal Judge Michael M. Mihm to task for showing “mercy” to convicted terrorist Ali al-Marri by sentencing him to 8 years of prison instead of the ...
To combat the town-hall protests that sprang up around the nation against President Obama’s health-care plan, one of the favorite tactics employed by liberals was to question the sanity of the protesters. Anyone who showed up at such meetings ...
Scott Horton Interviews Jacob Hornberger (Audio)
Statist Follies (Video from Judge Andrew Napolitano’s Freedom Watch FoxNews.com)
Debate: Do We Need Stricter Gun Control Laws? (Video)
Monday, November 30, 2009
The U.S. Government Is Taking Us Down
by Jacob G. Hornberger
President Obama has decided to up the ante in Afghanistan by acceding to his generals’ request to send an additional 34,000 troops to that beleaguered nation. What ...
President’s Obama’s much-ballyhooed campaign promise of “change” has received yet another setback. This time it’s respect to the U.S. embargo against Cuba, which has been in existence for some 50 years. Obama, who wowed and wooed ...
Yesterday, I participated in one of the most exciting and enjoyable libertarian events in the 30 years since I discovered libertarianism. The event was the first-ever live broadcast of Judge Andrew Napolitano’s Internet program “Freedom Watch,” which was broadcast ...
The U.S. government has now extended its assassination program to the drug war. According to the New York Times, the Pentagon now has an assassination list for suspected drug dealers in Afghanistan.
No arrests. No hearings. ...
A few days ago, New York Times columnists Bob Herbert and David Brooks engaged in an online conversation in which they lamented that the American people are not doing enough to support the troops who ...
One of the fascinating things about liberals is how they create their own false realities and then simply ignore or block out of their minds facts that conflict with that reality.
We have witnessed this phenomenon, ...
If there were a Nobel Audacity Prize, former Vice-President Dick Cheney would deserve to win it, hands-down. This guy is unbelievable. He’s taking President Obama to task for “dithering” by not immediately sending 40,000 more troops ...
Jane Mayer, author of the great book The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals, was interviewed yesterday on NPR on ...
A fundamental principle of interventionism holds that one government intervention inevitably leads to more interventions, in order to “fix” the problems of the previous interventions. At the end of this road lies omnipotent government and ...
For decades libertarians have been arguing that the only way to put drug gangs out of business is by legalizing drugs. There is no way that drug gangs could compete against legitimate drug producers in a ...
Last Friday, October 16, the New York Times, for the first time, shined a light onto the JFK-CIA-Joannides scandal with a story entitled “C.I.A. Is Still Cagey About Oswald Mystery.” The story soon began ...
The race for governor here in Virginia is reaching new heights of boredom with a new battle between the candidates. This time the raging battle is over which candidate can better “manage the economy.”
How ridiculous is ...
Anthony Placido, head of intelligence for the DEA, wants the 35-year-old drug war to continue because drugs are “mind-altering substances that destroy human life and create violence.”
Ponder carefully the first part of Placido’s statement — ...
People from around the country should be happy that they are being spared having to undergo the sheer boredom of Virginia’s race for governor. Wow, what a yawner.
Oh, that’s not to say that Democrats and Republicans ...
In my recent blog post on Lee Harvey Oswald and the CIA, I raised the possibility that Oswald was working deep undercover for the CIA when he defected to the Soviet Union and then returned to the United ...
For the life of me, I still don’t understand what Lee Harvey Oswald’s motive was for killing President John F. Kennedy. The lone-assassin theorists say that he was a lonely and disgruntled communist sympathizer who sought ...
Here’s an update on our Economic Liberty Lecture Series, which is turning out to be a very exciting program.
In September our first speaker, Lew Rockwell, president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute and head of Lew Rockwell.com, attracted an ...
The U.S. Army has partially surrendered in the case of Lt. Ehren Watada by allowing Watada to resign from the army and avoid further court-martial proceedings. The Army had been prosecuting Watada for refusing orders to deploy ...
Pity the imperialists. What do they do? They must realize that the longer they continue occupying Iraq and Afghanistan, the more they weaken the Empire. Hey, they don’t call Afghanistan the “graveyard of empires” for nothing.
America’s ...
The principal argument for continuing the 8-year occupation of Afghanistan is that if the Taliban regain power, they will provide a “sanctuary” for al-Qaeda. It is a fallacious rationale for the continued killing of Afghanis and the continued sacrifice ...
Fox News legal commentator Judge Andrew Napolitano’s Internet program Freedom Watch is one of the most fascinating phenomena in the history of the libertarian movement. There’s never been anything like it and if it were ...
Given the surge in interest in libertarianism during the past few years, it is amazing to me that one must still lecture the New York Times on the subject but, alas, such is the case. In ...
The Harrison, Arkansas, Daily Times reports that FedEx has covered the $11,000 bill for an air ambulance to take 7-year-old Jada Harper from Houston to her home in Arkansas. The girl has terminal cancer ...
Freedom Watch 44 w/ Jacob Hornberger and Wayne Allen Root
In late July, the New York Times disclosed a secret plan by the CIA to assassinate suspected terrorists around the globe. According to the Times, the agency decided against implementing the plan, possibly because of the risk of being prosecuted for ...
Friday, October 30, 2009
Why Do Liberals Hate the Poor in Cuba?
by Jacob G. Hornberger
President’s Obama’s much-ballyhooed campaign promise of “change” has received yet another setback. This time it’s respect to the U.S. embargo against Cuba, which has been in ...
Following in the footsteps of his predecessors, President Barack Obama is threatening to impose even stricter sanctions on Iran, in an attempt to bend Iranian leaders to his will.
Let’s examine two major cases in which the U.S. government has ...
Telecom Wiretap Immunity (Video from Judge Andrew Napolitano’s Freedom Watch FoxNews.com)
A federal judge has ruled against the ACLU’s motion to quash a subpoena that federal prosecutors had issued against the Las Vegas Review Journal in the Robert Kahre legal-tender/tax resistance case in Las Vegas.
During the trial (see my commentaries ...
Talk With Ron Williams — 9/29/09 Hour 1 (Audio)
The U.S. government has just received the ultimate put-down from one of its Guantanamo prisoners. Arkin Mahmud, a Chinese Uighur who has been held at the prison camp for 8 years, stated ruefully, “In ...
Last week I had the good fortune of appearing on Judge Andrew Napolitano’s Internet program “Freedom Watch.” You can see the video here. The topic was “Auditing the Fed” but most of the discussion revolved around ending ...
The Right is in an uproar over a video that has surfaced on YouTube showing schoolchildren at a public elementary school in New Jersey being trained to sing a paean to President Barack Obama. Conservatives say ...
The second-best solution for the health-care crisis? Do nothing.
Of course, that drives the interventionists crazy. “Do nothing?” they cry! “Don’t you realize that we’re in a crisis? We can’t afford to do nothing!”
What they fail to ...
According to a recent article in the New York Times, a private attorney has been reprimanded by the Florida Bar Association for describing a local judge as an “evil, unfair witch” on his blog. The ...
Consider this excerpt from The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy by David E. Hoffman that appeared in yesterday’s Washington Post:
Gorbachev had concluded ...
Suppose the world had awakened this morning to the news that the Russian army had attacked and invaded Bolivia. Thousands of Russian paratroopers have landed in the country, securing airports, permitting hundreds of ...
It seems as though every statist has his favorite health-care reform and, more important, is convinced that his particular reform is the one that is finally going to make socialism and interventionism succeed.
I hate to burst ...
Writing about the recent resignation of Van Jones, President Obama’s appointee to be green-jobs czar, Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer says good riddance.
What set Krauthammer off was not that Jones had once used profanity ...
Several years ago, neocon supporters of the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions didn’t pay much heed to how their adventures were placing our nation in a very precarious financial condition. Ironically, a liberal president, through his ...
The U.S. government’s primary justification for continuing the occupation of Afghanistan is to prevent the Taliban from regaining power and providing a sanctuary for al-Qaeda. Ironically, however, this is another example of the disastrous consequences ...
Liberal George McGovern has a simple solution to the health-care crisis. In an op-ed in Sunday’s Washington Post, McGovern recommended that we simply extend Medicare, which currently is limited to people over ...
Whenever libertarians suggest that America’s socialist programs should be immediately repealed, rather than reformed or gradually reduced, statists inevitably react with shock and horror. The statists feel that Americans could never survive if their welfare-state ...
The inanity of gun control is manifesting itself in the case of former New York Giants’ wide receiver Plaxico Burress. Thanks to New York City’s strict gun laws, which carry a mandatory minimum sentence, Burress is ...
A standard liberal argument for opposing the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan is that if the federal government wasn’t spending so much money over there, it could afford to pay for a national health-care program.
Conservatives look ...
Yesterday, I blogged about the indoctrination that is an inherent part of any government school system, whether in Cuba, the U.S., England, North Korea, or any other country. Government officials have a vested interest in ensuring ...
You can always count on conservatives for injecting a bit of humor, albeit unintentionally, into any national political debate. The latest example involves their railing against President Obama’s plan to deliver a speech to the ...
As Americans are gradually discovering, the 8-year occupation of Afghanistan is about opposing the Taliban’s attempt to regain political power, not about capturing or killing Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda.
Thus, the occupation is about empire. ...
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is embroiled in a tiff with the Poles over World War II. Like U.S. interventionists, Putin takes the position that World War II constituted a great victory for the ...
Close your eyes, let your mind roam, and imagine the following: You are living in a country where the government has the power to round up whomever it wants, incarcerate them for as long it is ...
An interesting question arises in the case of Phillip Garrido, the man who allegedly kidnapped 11-year-old Jaycee Lee Dugard, raped her, and kept her captive for almost 20 years: Did the drug war play a role ...
Part 1 | Part 2
This two-part essay discusses ten tenets of freedom toward which we must continue to strive in our efforts to restore freedom to our land. Part 1 of the essay discussed the first five tenets ...
09/25/2009 Freedom Watch 37 w/ Dan Ikenson, Jacob Hornberger
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Free Speech Loses Out in Kahre Case
by Jacob G. Hornberger
A federal judge has ruled against the ACLU’s motion to quash a subpoena that federal prosecutors had issued against the Las Vegas Review Journal in the Robert ...
An August 29 Washington Post article entitled “How a Detainee Became an Asset” details how the CIA’s “harsh interrogation techniques” caused Khalid Sheik Mohammed to become a CIA “asset,” meaning that he sung like ...
It’s interesting to see conservatives calling for the U.S. Attorney General to ignore evidence that people have knowingly violated federal criminal laws against torture. Aren’t conservatives usually the law-and-order crowd in this country?
The argument that ...
If there was ever a classic example of a quagmire, it has got to be Afghanistan. Hey, they’re going on 8 or 9 years of killing the terrorists and just now getting a good start. What ...
If we’re going to let federal officials who have violated federal criminal statutes against torture off the hook, then why shouldn’t drug users and tax resisters be pardoned at the same time? After all, what the ...
Let’s assume that a U.S. president authorizes the CIA to rape the family members of suspected terrorists as a way to get them to talk. He also authorizes his subordinates to place the suspected terrorists on ...
The conservative masses are railing against the socialism coming out of the Obama administration, and rightfully so. Socialism has proven to be the bane of mankind. With its resurgence under the Obama administration, it continues ...
Liberal columnist David Sirota is scared, and he believes that the First Amendment is intended to eliminate his fear. In a column entitled “Freedom from Fear — and the Second Amendment,” Sirota argues that ...
In separate op-eds, liberals Marie Cocco and E.J. Dionne are exclaiming against those people who have the audacity to exercise their right to keep and bear arms at political rallies.
Cocco says that ...
Statists argue that people have a right to health care. They say the same thing about housing, education, clothing, food, and retirement pay. Maybe a car too.
Well, if someone has a right to such things, then ...
In a recent article entitled Gunning for Health Care,” New York Times columnist Gail Collins made a catty remark about libertarians. Referring to William Kostric, the New Hampshire libertarian who was openly carrying a ...
Last week, Las Vegas businessman Robert Kahre, the man who paid his workers in gold coins and silver coins, was convicted on all 57 counts of tax evasion. Forty-eight years old, he now faces the rest ...
The liberals are back. For proof, just check out the antics of two noted liberals, MSNBC commentator Chris Matthews and Salon.com editor in chief Joan Walsh. This week both of them went apoplectic over a ...
I have respect for Bernie Sanders, the U.S. Senator from Vermont. Why? Because he’s honest about what he is. He says “I’m a socialist and proud of it.”
How can you not admire that honesty, even if ...
Today’s issue of FFF Email Update links to an article about a rancher from my hometown of Laredo, Texas, who is complaining about abuses at the hands of the U.S. Border Patrol.
I know what ...
Attorney General Eric Holder is considering appointing a special prosecutor to investigate whether crimes relating to torture were committed by federal personnel during the Bush administration. There’s one big problem, however, with what Holder is ...
Senior citizens are frightened over the possibility that President Obama’s health-care plan will adversely affect their Medicare coverage. Their attitude reflects how socialistic programs have converted a once-proud, strong, and independent people into weak, frightened, dependent wards of the ...
Socialists who proudly proclaim the great success of the socialistic welfare state, including Social Security and Medicare, block out of their minds the fact that socialist programs are not free. The federal government is not an ...
The United States has long had a tradition of prohibiting the military from serving as the domestic police. We Americans consider a bad thing to have the military serving in that capacity. This tradition is reflected ...
As you no doubt know, our nation is mired in a socialist morass, one that is moving our country into financial bankruptcy. At the center of this mess are Social Security and Medicare, two socialist programs ...
Most everyone who is not a libertarian misses the central point in the health care debate. It’s the same point, by the way, in the Social Security debate. The point is the one that involves a ...
The real battle taking place in America is between the lovers of liberty and the lovers of government. That’s what the healthcare debate is all about. The lovers of government want the federal government to operate ...
I recently received a note from a former supporter of FFF telling me that the reason that she had stopped donating after 9/11 was because we had blamed “the USA” for the 9/11 attacks. She had ...
While we’re discussing whether a special prosecutor should be named to investigate and prosecute CIA officials for violations of federal laws against murder, kidnapping, and torture, why not use the occasion to do the same in the matter of ...
Part 1 | Part 2
Even while resisting the steady erosion of liberty in America, it is important that we keep in mind an overall vision of what a free society looks like. For if people lose sight of ...
Monday, August 31, 2009
Torture Works. Just Ask U.S. POWs from the Korean War
by Jacob G. Hornberger
An August 29 Washington Post article entitled “How a Detainee Became an Asset” details how the CIA’s “harsh interrogation techniques” caused Khalid ...
In a July 29 editorial entitled “The Military Is Not the Police,” the New York Times stated, “It was disturbing to learn the other day just how close the last administration came to violating laws ...
Neighbors of Daniel Boyd, a son of a Marine, are befuddled over his federal indictment on terrorism-related charges. Boyd, who attended a public high school here in Northern Virginia and who now lives in North Carolina, runs ...
A couple of weeks ago, the New York Times carried a fascinating article that detailed the pride that a particular torturer took in doing his job well. The man expressed “pride in the efficiency” ...
The CIA’s assassination plan, which it chose to keep secret from Congress, brings to mind Operation Condor, a similar plan run by DINA, which was Chile’s counterpart to the CIA under the dictatorial regime of ...
Amidst all the hubbub regarding racism and the cops arising out of the arrest of Harvard University scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr., we should at least mention the biggest outlet for cops who happen to be ...
A logical consequence of having permitted the Bush administration to treat terrorism as either an act of war or a criminal offense, came to the forefront last week when the New York Times revealed that top ...
Since everyone is discussing the socialism of the Obama administration, it seems to me that this would be a good time to discuss the Pledge of Allegiance.
Why the Pledge?
Well, because the pledge was written by a ...
While we’re on the subject of a one-party political system in places like Iran and China, we would be remiss if we didn’t remind periodically remind ourselves that for all practical purposes, the political situation isn’t ...
The pro-torture crowd sure seems quiet about the plight of 23-year-old private Bowe R. Bergdahl, the American soldier being held captive by the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Why the silence?
For eight years the pro-torture crowd has been ...
I have published three blog posts regarding the abusive grand-jury subpoena that federal prosecutors in the Robert Kahre case served on the Las Vegas Review Journal:
Kahre’s Prosecutors Are Going Nutso (June 12)
Federal Prosecutors Buckle on Abusive ...
Washington insiders are agog over what seems to be a rather dramatic flip flop of principles by conservatives at the American Conservative Union, which touts itself as America’s oldest conservative lobbying organization. Like other conservative ...
The debate over the health-care monstrosity that Congress is considering enacting raises some fundamental issues about our lives, liberty, and health.
There is one reason why there is a health-care crisis in America: socialism and interventionism, ...
One of the interesting aspects of the Honduran coup debate is with respect to the economic policies of ousted President Manuel Zelaya. Those who defend Zelaya’s ouster are quick to criticize his leftist philosophy and programs, ...
Among the most shocking aspects of Barack Obama’s presidency so far has been his embrace of the power that George W. Bush assumed to incarcerate people suspected of terrorism for the rest of their lives, without ...
There are two interesting developments in Jose Padilla’s lawsuit against former Justice Department lawyer John Yoo, who was one of the authors of the infamous torture memos.
First, the Justice Department is no longer defending Yoo ...
I can’t help but be amused by sentiments being expressed by liberals regarding Robert McNamara’s tenure at the World Bank. The notion is that, hey, McNamara wasn’t so bad. Even though he was responsible for the ...
I’ve got good news and bad news about the coup in Honduras. The good news is that the U.S. government has suspended $16.5 million in military-assistance programs to Honduras and threatened that another $180 million in ...
Lest anyone believe that the war on terrorism began on September 11, 2001, take a look at this article from the July 20, 1959, issue of Time magazine, one of the premier examples of the establishment ...
In yet another effort to continue the policies of the Bush administration, the Obama administration is targeting American companies that hire illegal immigrants. But to demonstrate that being a compassionate liberal is better than being ...
Lost in all the debate over whether the coup in Honduras was a coup or not is the great big elephant sitting in the room that no one is talking about. What in the world is ...
According to the New York Times, Iranian officials have announced that they have secured confessions from top reformers to a conspiracy to bring down the Iranian government. The paper stated that such confessions are ...
The true revolutionary aspect of the Fourth of July was not the military battles that the English colonists waged against the British Empire. Instead, it was the notion that was expressed in the Declaration of Independence: ...
One of the aspects of the Iraq War that has fascinated me the most is how CIA agents and U.S. soldiers could actually bring themselves to kill, torture, and sexually abuse Iraqis. After all, don’t forget ...
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
On April 5, 1933 — about a month after taking office — President Franklin Roosevelt issued an executive order commanding every American to turn in his ...
Friday, July 31, 2009
The New York Time’s Failure of Understanding
by Jacob G. Hornberger
In a July 29 editorial entitled “The Military Is Not the Police,” the New York Times stated, “It was disturbing to learn the other day ...
Amidst all the health care debate, there is one underlying assumption that hardly anyone challenges: the notion that people have a right to health care. The truth is that it’s a nonsensical notion. People no more ...
The military coup in Honduras, which some U.S. conservatives are already hailing as a pro-democracy coup, as they did after military strongman Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s military coup in Chile, brings to mind a fantastic ...
Many Europeans love to look down their noses at Americans over the issue of gun rights. They just cannot understand how Americans can be so uncivilized as to leave people free to own guns.
Whenever I discuss ...
As Christopher Maietta, the Justice Department prosecutor in the current trial of Las Vegas businessman Robert Kahre, was making his opening statement, the following sentence appeared on a screen inside the courtroom: “This is a ...
While the Ayattolahs in Iran are intimidating people into ceasing their criticism of the government, U.S. Justice Department prosecutors are doing the same here in the United States, specifically in the trial of U.S. vs. Robert Kahre, which ...
Conservatives are protesting a federal judge’s ruling that torture victim Jose Padilla’s civil lawsuit against former Justice Department attorney John Yoo be permitted to continue. The conservatives feel that Yoo, who authored some of the ...
The situation in Iran is providing liberals with a harsh lesson about the First Amendment and the Second Amendment. It’s a lesson that our American ancestors understood very well.
Here’s the lesson: Without the right to ...
Now that the Democrats are in charge of the White House, liberals are doing all they can to suppress criticism of big government. The newest strategy is to link criticism of big government to unlawful acts ...
The Washington establishment is agog over the arrest of Kendall and Gwendolyn Myers on charges of spying for Cuba. He’s the great-grandson of Alexander Graham Bell who worked for 30 years at the State Department, and she’s a housewife ...
American interventionists are upset with Barack Obama for not taking a more aggressive stand in favor of the protestors in Iran. Alas, the interventionists just don’t get it. While they themselves are lovers of the ...
Dear Friend of Freedom:
I am writing to ask you to help us fund a special project that involves reprinting in booklet form an 11-part essay entitled Economic Liberty and the Constitution, which I wrote for ...
Last Friday in my blog “Kahre’s Prosecutors Are Going Nutso,” I blogged about the abusive subpoena that federal prosecutors had served on the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
The newspaper had published a news story about the trial of Robert ...
Notwithstanding its occupations of two nations — Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. Empire is at it again, fulfilling its role as the world’s international policeman, this time with respect to North Korea. Americans should hope that ...
Former Justice Department lawyer John Yoo, who authored some of infamous torture memos for the Bush administration, has just received an adverse ruling in a federal lawsuit brought by Jose Padilla, the American citizen who was ...
I have a hunch that things are not going well for the prosecution in the case of U.S. vs. Robert Kahre, which I blogged about last week. The reason that I say that is that it would seem ...
The news media is reporting that an armed man shot and killed a security guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum yesterday with a 22-caliber rifle.
That’s impossible. It just cannot be true.
Don’t the media know ...
The Pentagon and the CIA are opposing the release of photographs that depict the torture and sex abuse of prisoners and detainees while in their custody. The basis for their objection is “national security.”
Their argument goes ...
In the debates leading up to the enactment of the U.S. Constitution, our American ancestors made a demand. If we accept the Constitution and the federal government it is calling into existence, they said, then we ...
When I was kid growing up on a farm outside Laredo, Texas, I had the rather unfortunate experience of having to rid our lawn of weeds. The important thing I learned about weeds is that to get rid of ...
President Obama is in Cairo to deliver a major address to the Muslim world, which no doubt will explain that the U.S. government loves the people of the Middle East and is doing all sorts of good things to ...
For the life of me, I cannot figure out what Las Vegas businessman Robert Kahre has done to deserve a federal criminal indictment. From what I can tell, Kahre is the victim of a brutal, heavy-handed ...
Hope springs eternal, at least for the socialists. Despite the fact that socialism has failed all over the world to raise people’s standard of living, socialists continue to hope that someone will finally prove that socialism ...
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt were the two presidents most responsible for the abandonment of sound money in the United States. These two U.S. presidents opened ...
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Seven Days in May
by Jacob G. Hornberger
The military coup in Honduras, which some U.S. conservatives are already hailing as a pro-democracy coup, as they did after military strongman Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s military coup in ...
A few days after 9/11, a friend of mine at the conservative Heritage Foundation proudly exclaimed to me that Heritage had immediately jumped out in favor of the Bush administration’s war on terrorism, with positions papers ...
As a libertarian, it’s hard for me to get all worked up over President Barack Obama’s nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, as conservatives and liberals are now doing. The only time I’d ever ...
The Chinese government’s strict control over the Internet will come in handy during the upcoming 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, when Chinese troops, faithfully following orders of their superiors, opened fire on tens of ...
U.S. defenders of the war on terrorism are agog over the fact that a Spanish judge, Baltasar Garzon, has initiated a criminal investigation of the Justice Department lawyers who prepared the infamous torture memos. Garzon is ...
There are those who argue that U.S. officials who authorized waterboarding and who performed waterboarding should not be held criminally accountable, notwithstanding the fact that the U.S. government prosecuted Japanese military personnel who waterboarded U.S. ...
While Barack Obama was delivering his flowery speech justifying the indefinite imprisonment without trial of people suspected of violating laws against terrorism, the New York Times and Bloomberg were reporting on the financial consequences of ...
An editorial in yesterday’s New York Times entitled “Myanmar’s Cowardly Generals” excoriates the brutal military regime in Myanmar, aka Burma, for threatening the country’s pro-democracy leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, with additional criminal charges ...
As part of the much-vaunted change that Barack Obama said that he was bringing to America as president, Obama has announced that he is dropping President Bush’s use of the term “enemy combatant” from his lexicon. ...
An increasing number of articles (see here and here and here and here) are pointing to evidence that U.S. officials tortured detainees to force them to disclose a ...
According to an article in yesterday’s New York Times, illegal immigration from Mexico into the United States has plummeted, to the tune of about a quarter-million people, a 25 percent decline. The article states:
“The ...
Recall that immediately after 9/11, U.S. officials put out the official version of what had motivated the terrorists. “They hate America for its freedom and values,” they cried. The anger and hatred that had motivated the ...
The case of Lt. Erin Watada provides a good example of why our American ancestors opposed a standing army. You’ll recall that Watada is the U.S. military officer who refused orders to deploy to Iraq on ...
In another embrace of President Bush’s war-on-terrorism policies, President Obama has announced that he might retain the Pentagon’s military-commission system to try people accused of terrorism. Apparently, the president, like the U.S. military, lacks confidence in ...
The soul-searching and handwringing within the conservative movement continues apace. Dick Cheney has entered the controversy by suggesting that Colin Powell should leave the Republican Party owing to Powell’s pre-election campaign endorsement of Barack Obama. ...
Desperate for money and exposing the naked force of government, the socialist regime of Hugo Chavez is seizing the assets of foreign oil companies operating in Venezuela. At the same time, Chavez is implicitly acknowledging that ...
U.S. officials are now concerned not only with a Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan but also a Taliban takeover in Pakistan. These problems, however, were caused by the U.S. Empire itself.
While most Americans now ...
While he says he remains opposed to legalizing marijuana, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger just declared that he would welcome a debate on the issue.
In the 20 years Ive been running The Future of Freedom Foundation, I have never seen ...
The New York Times is reporting that there has been a surge in the sales of foreclosed homes in Sacramento. The article was accompanied by a photograph of Chris and Rebecca Whitman, a young couple who just ...
John Ashcroft, who served as U.S. attorney general from 2001 to 2005, has an op-ed in the New York Times today where he exclaims, “The government must hold accountable any individuals who acted illegally in the ...
Pity the poor Republicans. Having suffered massive losses in the political process, they are now in search of a “new message” that they hope will restore them to political power. Their problem, however, is that given ...
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
The Framers had experienced the ravages of paper money during the Revolutionary War and under the Articles of Confederation, and they were fully aware of how ...
Friday, May 29, 2009
The Sotomayor Nomination Is another Yawner for Libertarians
by Jacob G. Hornberger
As a libertarian, it’s hard for me to get all worked up over President Barack Obama’s nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, as conservatives ...
Not surprisingly, immigration warriors are using the swine flu outbreak to buttress their case for closing the borders to the outside world. In the process, they miss a big problem, however, one that I have raised ...
The omnipotent power claimed by the CIA was dealt a major blow Tuesday by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in the case of Binyam Mohamed et al v. Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc.
The five plaintiffs are victims of the ...
It is refreshing to see that speakers at our 2007 and 2008 conferences “Restoring the Republic: Foreign Policy and Civil Liberties” have continued speaking out in the defense of civil liberties and in opposition to the pro-empire, pro-intervention ...
Among the major obstacles to both criminal prosecutions and a truth commission regarding the CIA’s torture program is the underlying reluctance of U.S. officials to focus attention on the super-secret operations of the CIA.
A criminal prosecution, after all, could ...
While we’re on the subject of criminal prosecutions and congressional investigations for the CIA’s kidnapping, torture, sex abuse, rendition, and disappearance program, is it too late to ask the same for the case of Charles Horman? ...
In an article I wrote in September 1990 entitled “Letting Go of Socialism,” I pointed out how public schooling is a model of a socialistic program. I also addressed the issue of ...
Advocates of the war on immigrants often claim as a justification for their war that illegal aliens steal jobs away from Americans. Of course, it’s a spurious claim. No one has a right to any particular ...
A friend of mine who is a piano instructor was telling me that a parent of one of her students told her that her child loves the piano so much that she has trouble pulling him ...
So, let me see if I have this right. The members of the Gestapo would have been let off the hook for the brutality and murders they committed because they were simply following orders. And those ...
In obvious response to growing calls for the prosecution of Bush administration personnel who tortured people or who authorized the torture of people, former Vice President Dick Cheney has called on the CIA to declassify information ...
While there’s always room for hope, so far it is clear that Barack Obama is just a standard political hack from Chicago who made it to the presidency, primarily through his gift of gab and through ...
Amidst all the failures and destructiveness of U.S. socialism, interventionism, and imperialism, U.S. officials can claim 3 recent successes in their war on immigrants.
Success Story Number 1.
The first success story involves a man named Keith Eckel, a ...
In its self-proclaimed role as world cop, the U.S. military is now assuming the role of protecting U.S.-owned vessels — and maybe even ships owned by foreigners — from Somali pirates. Actually, the U.S. Navy should butt out of ...
Of course, it’s just a coincidence but isn’t at least a bit ironic that all the hullabaloo about piracy has occurred near April 15? After all, is the IRS really any different, in principle, from the pirates?
Sure, it’s true ...
Through executive decree, President Obama is graciously easing restrictions on travel to Cuba and restrictions on sending money to Cuba. The decree, however, applies only to Cuban-Americans who have family members in Cuba. The rest ...
To gain a good perspective on how the Pentagon and the CIA view the Constitution, all one has to do is consider what they’ve done with their prison camps in Cuba and Afghanistan.
Keep in mind, first ...
Among the arguments that libertarian advocates of border controls often use is the sovereignty argument. It goes like this: Since government is the owner of the highways, it can legitimately control who travels on them, much ...
If President Bush and Vice-President Cheney think that time is on their side with respect to crimes committed by their administration, this week’s criminal conviction of former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori should put those thoughts ...
If you had any doubts that the Pentagon lives in a bizarre world all its own, such doubts will surely be dispelled when you read this blog post by Glenn Greenwald. The post concerns ...
Last night I saw one of the greatest speeches I’ve ever seen, which took place at our Economic Liberty Lecture Series at George Mason University. The speech was by Bruce Fein, whose Washington Times column we often link to ...
Students at the University of Maryland are receiving a valuable lesson about the welfare state and, specifically, the education dole that state officials provide institutions of higher learning. The students had scheduled a showing of ...
Have you ever wondered how it is that Americans today have such a completely different attitude toward the federal government than the people who founded our country?
Our ancestors looked upon the federal government as the greatest ...
What was momentous about the 9/11 attack was not the attack itself, given that there had been other terrorist attacks in response to U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East (e.g., the 1993 terrorist attacks on ...
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
Among the major threats facing the American people today is out-of-control spending at the hands of the U.S. government. It is a grave danger that people ...
Thursday, April 30, 2009
The Ninth Circuit v. the CIA
by Jacob G. Hornberger
The omnipotent power claimed by the CIA was dealt a major blow Tuesday by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in the case of Binyam Mohamed et al ...
Supporters of the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan cite the U.S. occupation of Iraq to buttress their case for staying in Afghanistan. “The surge! The surge!” they cry, reminding people that increasing the level of U.S. troops ...
The presidential advisor for press affairs to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has an interesting op-ed in the Los Angeles Times today. Pointing out that Barack Obama’s offer to talk to the Iranian regime is nice, ...
In an article on CNN.com, Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the NRA, reminds us of how conservatives and liberals share a common philosophical framework with respect to the role of government in our ...
The mainstream press is adding its two cents worth of drug-war inanities to those being issued by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during her trip to Mexico. Both the Los Angeles Times and New York Times ...
The following is a modified version of the opening statement FFF president Jacob Hornberger delivered at a recent debate in New York City on Afghanistan sponsored by the Donald and Paula Smith Foundation.
With ...
Hillary Clinton’s comments on the violence along the U.S.-Mexico border are so inane that I feel compelled to write about two government programs: the war on drugs and public (i.e., government) schooling.
On her way to Mexico ...
As we were pulling together today’s FFF Email Update, two points from two different articles struck me for their truthfulness and insightfulness.
Simon Jenkins writes: “This war remains what it was from the start, aggression ...
The U.S. Postal Service has announced that another in its endless series of rate increases will take effect in May. The announcement raises a question that unfortunately too few Americans ever ask themselves: Why not simply ...
Over the weekend, I finished reading a really interesting book on the JFK assassination, JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters by James W. Douglass, a Catholic theologian. Its theme is that ...
A federal judge in Alexandria, Virginia, Leonie M. Brinkema, recently sentenced four young people to terms in the penitentiary ranging from 46 months to 20 years. The four, whose ages ranged from 19 to 21, were ...
Last night I participated in a great debate on Afghanistan sponsored by the Donald and Paula Smith Family Foundation in New York City. There were about 150-200 people in the auditorium. I assume that the video ...
It’s nice that people are angry and upset over those bonuses paid by taxpayer-bailout beneficiary AIG, but what fascinates me is the lack of anger and outrage over the really horrific things the federal government has ...
The state of Virginia has just enacted a smoking ban for restaurants and bars. At the same time, Virginia’s governor, Timothy Kaine, plans to veto a bill authorizing people with concealed-carry permits to carry weapons into ...
The U.S. government is sending heavily armed destroyers to the South China Sea after a standoff between five Chinese boats and a U.S. spy ship operating in the area. Before the destroyers have even arrived, however, ...
Among the various justifications that border-control advocates use to justify their support of regulated or sealed borders is that border control, they say, is necessary to protect us from terrorists.
The problem with this position is ...
Liberals are saying that President Obama isn’t really a socialist because he doesn’t favor complete government ownership and control of everything, which is the strict definition of socialism. Since he “only” favors massive government involvement ...
As the Berlin Wall came crashing down, the Pentagon was desperately in search of a mission. Given the demise of the Soviet Union, which had been the excuse for an ever-growing military-industrial complex for decades, the ...
If Barack Obama’s handling of the Ali al-Marri case was supposed to show his credentials as a major change-agent as president, he has flunked the test. Except for some procedural differences, his handling of the al-Marri ...
Amidst all the devastation from the latest economic crisis, there have been some really funny moments. Among the most humorous has got to be what happened this past week with President Obama and the New York Times.
Recall that ...
In the wake of President Obama’s decision to not seek criminal prosecutions of U.S. officials who violated criminal statutes against torture, maybe this would be a good time to revisit the case of Tomoyuki Yamashita. He ...
Advocates of the U.S. government’s war on immigrants are no doubt celebrating the 23-month sentence in a federal penitentiary that Martin de La Rosa-Loera received this week. His “crime”? As supervisor of a meat-packing plant in ...
Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson is agog that people are calling Barack Obama a socialist. Socialism, he says, is when the government owns everything. Apparently, such things as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, stimulus ...
I know that it’s been considered improper to bring up Hitler in the context of what the Bush administration did for the past 7 years, but I wish someone would explain to me how Bush’s powers, ...
Another war-on-terrorism success story comes out of Afghanistan, where U.S. troops have been battling The Terrorists for some 7 years (and, if things go according to plan, will be battling Them for at least another 7 years). Heavily armed ...
One of the most ludicrous policy prescriptions issued by federal officials is the one that exhorts the citizenry to spend more money to get the nation out of a recession. That’s the key to national economic prosperity, government officials ...
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Neo-Cons and Moral Degeneracy
by Jacob G. Hornberger
The presidential advisor for press affairs to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has an interesting op-ed in the Los Angeles Times today. Pointing out that Barack Obama’s offer to ...
In an editorial this morning sarcastically entitled “The Drug Cartel’s Right to Bear Arms,” the New York Times is climbing aboard the drug-war/gun-control bandwagon.
Here’s how the reasoning goes: The Mexican drug-war cartels are killing ...
For the last several months, we have witnessed one of the core principles of interventionism in economic affairs — that one government intervention inevitably leads to more interventions to deal with the crises and chaos that the previous intervention ...
Did you ever think you’d see the day when a U.S. Secretary of State would be pleading with a communist regime to continue lending money to the U.S. government? Well, that’s what Hillary Clinton has been ...
U.S. presidents spend a lot of time obsessing over whether they should talk to foreign regimes that are not-so-friendly to the U.S. government. The issue usually arises in the context of U.S. restrictions on trade that ...
There is one thing that American statists cannot deny: their beloved paternalistic state has failed to protect people and keep them safe and secure. The statists can declaim against deregulation, free enterprise, capitalism, speculators, CEOs, ...
Soon after the Pentagon lost its longtime Official Enemy — The Communists — with the fall of the Berlin Wall, all the talk about a “peace dividend” caused Pentagon officials to go into overdrive developing reasons ...
Have you ever wondered how countries such as Cuba, North Korea, and China became completely socialist? It’s really not a mystery. Government officials, most of whom suffer from an insatiable thirst for power, seize upon some ...
Let’s assume that there are two banks in society, with Bank A paying an interest rate on deposits of 5 percent and Bank B paying 25 percent. Let’s also assume that there is no FDIC and no banking regulations ...
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has won his quest to abolish the constitutional barrier against his running for reelection when his term expires in 2013. Last Sunday, Venezuelan voters approved the measure, which had gone down to ...
I highly recommend reading a fantastic article in today’s Wall Street Journal: “Capitalism Needs a Sound-Money Foundation” by Judy Shelton. I also recommend forwarding it to all your friends and acquaintances. It provides the means by which ...
Ever since Barack Obama’s election, gun and ammo sales have skyrocketed. Many online gun stores report “out of stock” for AK47s and AR15s, along with the ammunition for such assault rifles. Demand for these products, it ...
Former Vice President Dick Cheney, obviously in perpetual fright mode, is continuing to do his best to frighten the American people. He claims that 61 of the inmates that have been released from Guantanamo have “gone ...
Among the fascinating aspects of the many crises facing America is the refusal of the statists to face an uncomfortable possibility — that it is their beloved welfare state and controlled economy that has failed. Instead, ...
Permit me to make my proposal for Afghanistan: Get out. Now. No handwringing and no delays. President Obama should issue an immediate order that all U.S. troops withdraw from Afghanistan and return to the United States ...
One of the justifications that liberals give for their support of the socialistic welfare state is their purported love for the poor, needy, and disadvantaged. Having been raised a Democrat (Republicans were rare in South ...
People are shocked — shocked! — over the revelation that Democrats and liberals do their best to keep from paying taxes.
Come on! Give me a break! How long have we libertarians been pointing out that liberals ...
Last night the speaker at the Economic Liberty Lecture Series, which The Future of Freedom Foundation co-sponsors with the student-run George Mason University Econ Society, was Thomas DiLorenzo, whose most recent book is Hamilton’s ...
One of the distinguishing characteristics of 19th-century Americans and modern-day Americans revolves around the issue of faith. Our ancestors placed their faith in freedom and God. Americans of today place their trust in socialism and ...
A good place for Barack Obama to begin his program of change would be U.S. policy on Cuba. The change would move America toward three important principles on which our country was founded: economic liberty, civil liberty, and a ...
Friday, February 27, 2009
Legalize Drugs Instead of Banning Guns
by Jacob G. Hornberger
In an editorial this morning sarcastically entitled “The Drug Cartel’s Right to Bear Arms,” the New York Times is climbing aboard the drug-war/gun-control bandwagon.
Here’s how the ...
Francesco Insolia must soon report to a federal penitentiary to begin serving a one-year sentence. His crime? Hiring illegal aliens from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras in his leather-goods company in New Bedford, Massachusetts. He ...
While Barack Obama’s Justice Department is deliberating over what to do in the al-Marri case, the same Justice Department is defending Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, former Justice Department attorney John Yoo, and other Bush ...
I can’t help but wonder how drug-war proponents explain the violence in Mexico that has killed some 6,000 people in the last year and 16,000 after Mexican President Calderon, with the full encouragement of U.S. officials, ...
We should not underestimate the powerful role that public — that is, government — schooling plays in the current economic crisis roiling American society. From the first grade through the 12th grade, most American children ...
Among the executive orders President Obama issued upon assuming the presidency was one ordering the Justice Department to review the case of Ali Saleh al-Marri, a case that involves the enemy-combatant doctrine in terrorism cases that the U.S. government ...
Last Friday’s FFF Email Update linked to my September 2008 Freedom Daily article entitled “Seven Years of Darkness, Tyranny, and Oppression.” On that same day, my daily blog post was entitled “Afghanistan and Big Government.”
The point of ...
Conservatives are criticizing President Obama’s decision to close the Pentagon’s prison camp at Guantanamo, saying that this will result in more terrorism in the United States. They are being false and disingenuous. If there is ...
Let’s give credit where credit is due. President Obama deserves credit for the new direction he appears to be taking with respect to civil liberties. That is reflected by his plans to shut down the Guantanamo Bay prison camp ...
The mainstream press is aglow over President Obama’s call for Americans to sacrifice for the common good. Obama’s plea mimics that of President Franklin Roosevelt, who asked Americans to do the same thing as part of his New Deal ...
It seems that Barack Obama is going to take his time withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq. Actually this shouldn’t surprise anyone, given that Obama is as much a welfare-state man as George W. Bush.
Welfare state, you ...
With the Bush administration behind us and with the advent of the Obama regime, conservatives are despondent and depressed while liberals are aglow with hope and optimism. Actually both sides might have their feelings misplaced, ...
Although the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) and its agency the National Recovery Administration (NRA) were among Franklin Roosevelt’s proudest accomplishments, they were also among the New Deal’s biggest fiascos. To call the NIRA and ...
Among the things that pro-New Deal advocates hardly ever bring up is one of the most shameful acts by a president in U.S. history. That’s the infamous “court-packing” scheme that President Franklin Roosevelt proposed when the ...
In the ongoing debate over Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, there are important things that pro-New Dealers would prefer not be mentioned, such as the similarities between Roosevelt’s philosophy and programs and those of Mussolini, Stalin, ...
Barack Obama is implying that he isn’t likely to pursue criminal investigations and prosecutions of President Bush, Vice-President Cheney, and other high U.S. officials for purported violations of criminal laws as part of their “war on ...
The political and economic situation in the United States has the feel of a runaway train.
Federal spending continues to go through the roof, both in foreign and domestic affairs. That means more federal borrowing, which means ...
Ludwig von Mises pointed out that one government intervention will inevitably lead to more interventions. The reason is that the initial intervention produces a crisis, which then leads public officials to call for a new intervention ...
Ever since the advent of the welfare state, liberals have argued that it is essential that the federal government tax the rich in order to give to the poor. Otherwise, they claim, in a free-market economy, ...
A good example of the power of ideas occurred recently in El Paso, where the City Council unanimously passed a resolution calling on the federal government to consider legalizing drugs as a solution to the drug-war violence in Mexico. ...
As commentators such as Salon’s Glenn Greenwald and Cato’s Gene Healey have reported, the U.S. military has deployed combat-tested troops to a homeland-defense mission here in the United States. The unit is the 3rd Infantry ...
Americans might well rue the day when they trusted the federal government to spend the nation into prosperity. It just isn’t going to happen. All that Barack Obama’s massive public-works spending spree is going to accomplish ...
Liberals befuddle me. When it comes to matters of privacy and civil liberties, they correctly exclaim against trusting Big Brother. Yet, when it comes to matters relating to economic liberty and well-being, they take an opposite ...
Part 1 | Part 2
During the recent presidential race, Republican John McCain accused Democrat Barack Obama of being a socialist, owing to Obama’s belief in using the federal government to “spread the wealth.” Obama, for his part, expressed ...
Friday, January 30, 2009
Jail for Businessmen, a Pass for Torturers
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Francesco Insolia must soon report to a federal penitentiary to begin serving a one-year sentence. His crime? Hiring illegal aliens from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras in ...
I can already hear the pro-empire, pro-intervention crowd making their announcement after a terrorist attack in the United States by a victim of the Israeli bombing in Gaza: “The attack had nothing to do with anger ...
Those Americans with socialist propensities, including, of course, Barack Obama, are surely having their hearts warmed by recent actions of fellow traveler Hugo Chavez, the democratically elected dictator of Venezuela. Faced with falling oil revenues, ...
Two separate articles in yesterday’s New York Times reflect the meaning of private property. One article was about white farmers in Zimbabwe and the other was about a woman in Seattle named Edith Macefield.
In Zimbabwe ...
The $50 billion fraud allegedly committed by Wall Street money manager Bernard Madoff has got to be false. After all, we’ve got the SEC. Right? It’s been in existence since the 1930s. Right? Its purpose is ...
After being severely beaten by government officials in the free nation of Iraq, Iraqi journalist Muntader al-Zaidi, the Iraqi man who threw his shoes at President Bush, is being charged with the crime of attacking ...
A short paragraph in an editorial in today’s New York Times provides an excellent symptom of the cancer that infects the body politic in America. The editorial addresses Caroline Kennedy’s bid to replace Hillary Clinton as ...
Notice an important aspect of the shoe-throwing incident in Iraq: No one is suggesting that the reason that the Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at President Bush did so because of his hatred for America’s “freedom and values.”
That ...
American schoolchildren are receiving some valuable lessons in democracy, American-style.
There is the matter of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who is accused of soliciting bribes in return for the appointment of a U.S. Senator to replace Barack ...
Throughout the decades-long history of the drug war, its proponents have had a favorite line when confronted with the abject failure of the war: “Well, it really hasn’t been waged at all. If they really fought ...
In the 1951 sci-fi movie “When Worlds Collide,” a giant asteroid is headed toward our solar system and is going collide with Earth, destroying the planet and everyone on it. However, a smaller ...
Some Americans favor the federal government’s post-9/11 assumption of power to arrest Americans and treat them as “enemy combatants” in the “war on terrorism.” It doesn’t matter to them that the Pentagon now has the power ...
As part of his plan to revive the economy, President-elect Obama is promising the largest public-works project since the Interstate Highway System. I realize that some people get upset when comparisons are made to Adolf Hitler but wouldn’t we ...
Last Friday the U.S. Supreme decided to hear the Ali al-Marri case, about which we have written extensively during the past several years. See my November 25 blog post entitled “The al-Marri Case Affects Us All,” which includes ...
Saddam Hussein’s cousin Ali Hassan al-Majeed, also known as “Chemical Ali,” has just received a death sentence by an Iraqi court. According to the Washington Post, the punishment was for “his role in crushing a Shiite revolt in 1991, ...
How pathetic to see the executives of American automobile companies on their knees before the members of Congress, begging them to use taxpayer monies to bail them out of their financial difficulties. What a fine example ...
The pro-torture advocates claim that torture is an important tool in the arsenal of the U.S. military that is necessary to keep us safe from terrorist attacks. The idea is that if the military captures a ...
In reflecting on his war on Iraq in an interview this week with ABC, President Bush made some revealing statements. He first said that “the biggest regret of all the presidency has been the intelligence failure in Iraq. I ...
Part 1 | Part 2
The massive federal bailout of U.S. financial firms reflects everything that’s wrong with the economic system of welfare and interventionism under which the United States has operated since at least the 1930s. There are ...
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Stop Foreign Aid to Israel (and Everywhere Else)
by Jacob G. Hornberger
I can already hear the pro-empire, pro-intervention crowd making their announcement after a terrorist attack in the United States by a victim of the Israeli bombing ...
In the wake of the terrorist attack in Mumbai, I can already hear the U.S. gun-control crowd calling for new gun-control measures here in the United States. There will be several big problems with their pleas.
One, ...
You may have noticed the many articles detailing the big run-up in the sale of guns and ammunition since the November elections. Apparently gun owners are concerned that President-elect Obama and the Democratic-controlled Congress ...
Today the U.S. Supreme Court decides whether to consider what is quite possibly the most important legal case in our lifetime. While the case involves a foreign citizen, Ali al-Marri, its outcome affects the freedom of every single American, ...
Given all the talk about bailing out U.S. automakers, Citigroup, AIG, American banks, and others, the focus has primarily been on whether the bailouts will be successful, at least in terms of resolving the economic and ...
In June 2001 I wrote an article entitled “Drug-War Killings in Peru,” which condemned the CIA’s participation in the drug-war killings of a 35-year-old missionary named Veronica Bowers and her 7-month-old baby Charity. They had been flying in ...
Two readers have sent me emails objecting to my blog post yesterday, “Free Mark Cuban and Abolish the SEC,” in which I opposed the SEC’s action against Mark Cuban for supposedly violating insider-trading laws. The readers said that insider ...
Billionaire Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, has been targeted by the SEC for insider trading. According to the SEC’s complaint, in 2003 Cuban was the owner of about 6 percent of the stock ...
One of the criticisms sometimes directed toward libertarianism is that our philosophy is impractical because it fails to provide solutions to the woes produced by socialism and interventionism.
For example, consider the current financial crisis. People ...
Never has the need been greater for an organization that advances the consistent moral, philosophical, and economic case for individual liberty, free markets, and constitutional government. Thats what The Future of Freedom ...
Among the first things that President Obama will have to decide when he assumes office is whether to continue President Bush’s and the Pentagon’s plans to install missile interceptors in Eastern Europe. Let’s hope that he ...
We had another great time at the second meeting of our Economic Liberty Lecture Series last night. 125 students and non-students came together for an evening of pizza, a movie, socializing, and a great talk by ...
I suspect that the malaise that has afflicted the conservative movement is not simply due to the defeat of John McCain and Sarah Palin. I think that their despondency goes much deeper than an electoral defeat. ...
The Chinese government is placing many American statists in a very interesting position. It has unveiled a “stimulus plan” involving a massive expenditure of $586 billion dollars of government money.
Sounds familiar, uh?
As the Washington Post ...
In July 2003, I wrote an article entitled “Crossing the Rubicon,” which addressed what the federal government was doing to a man named Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, a citizen of Qatar who was residing in the United States. ...
The debate over the future of the GOP is beginning. Already, there is a spate of articles written by conservatives calling for a return of the Republican Party to its traditional mantra of “free enterprise and ...
The worldwide outpouring of support for Barack Obama brings to mind the worldwide outpouring of support for the American people after 9/11. That post-9/11 support didn’t last for long. It disappeared with George W. Bush’s war ...
While the nation is on the subject of socialism, we really ought to talk about public schooling. With the possible exception of the military, it’s the best example of a socialist institution one ...
Not surprisingly, conservatives are depressed and despondent over the election of Barack Obama to the presidency. But as I wrote yesterday, the Republicans deserved to lose. For the last 7 years, they have plunged our country ...
If the Democrats win the presidency, it will not be because they deserve to win but because the Republicans deserve to lose.
When it comes to domestic policy, there really isn’t a dime’s worth of difference between ...
It’s kinda fun watching Republicans and Democrats suffering so much angst over whether John McCain or Barack Obama will be elected president.
Part of people’s anxiety, I suspect, is rooted in the realization that the candidate from ...
Given that most people agree that the drug war has failed to achieve its supposed purpose after decades of warfare, an important question arises: Why is the drug war still being waged, especially when we consider all the collateral ...
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Guns and Ammo Deter Tyranny
by Jacob G. Hornberger
You may have noticed the many articles detailing the big run-up in the sale of guns and ammunition since the November elections. Apparently gun owners are concerned ...
According to the Associated Press, South Texans might soon be experiencing the same type of drug-war violence that people on the Mexican side of the border have been experiencing. As most everyone knows, the drug war ...
The U.S. government’s incarceration of 17,000 Iraqis without charges confirms why the Framers included the guarantee of habeas corpus within the Constitution.
While the Framers used the Constitution to call the federal government into existence, they ...
Given all the political talk about socialism and the redistribution of wealth, we would be remiss if we didn’t notice how effective the market process is in redistributing wealth.
The rationale for the progressive ...
President Bush has been making a big hullabaloo over the fact that the Iraqi regime has not signed on to an agreement that would authorize U.S. forces to remain in Iraq after December 31. Bush says ...
One of the popular post-9/11 sentiments has been the one that holds that Muslims are bent on conquering the world. The notion is that Muslims hate Christianity and Western freedom and values and that such hatred ...
The Pentagon’s legal response to Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld’s crisis of conscience shows, once again, what a farce the “judicial proceeding” is that it has established at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Vandeveld, a military prosecutor and ...
It seems that President Bush’s wish to enter into an agreement with Iraqi officials to extend the U.S. occupation of Iraq is reaching a point of desperation.
After all, for years Bush has steadfastly opposed a fixed ...
Among the solutions for dealing with the mortgage crisis is a government-imposed moratorium on foreclosures. Lost in all the discussion is the principle of sanctity of contracts.
When two sides voluntarily enter into a contract for ...
Amidst all the gloom and doom of the financial crisis, the presidential race is providing a bit of hilarity. Conservatives John McCain and Sarah Palin are calling liberal Barack Obama a socialist because he believes in ...
Thousands of Iraqis marched in Baghdad on Saturday to protest the draft agreement between President Bush and the Iraqi government that provides for the continued U.S. occupation of Iraq and the ultimate withdrawal of U.S. forces. ...
The war on drugs can claim three more major victories. No, I’m not referring to how U.S. officials have busted another drug lord or made another record drug bust. We’re all accustomed to those types of ...
I’ve got a fantastic idea! It will almost certainly appeal to two large segments of American society — those who thirst for security and those who thirst for political control. My hunch is that both John ...
The Great Immigration Debate between Peter Brimelow and me that was held at the Heartland Institute’s recent anniversary dinner has now been posted on Heartland’s website. It is here. The theme of the ...
In his book The Crisis of Interventionism, Ludwig von Mises pointed out that one government intervention will inevitably lead to more interventions. Why? The initial intervention will inevitably produce a crisis that public officials will ...
I find it fascinating that so many people devote so much of their time and energy to getting McCain or Obama elected to office. If there were differences in philosophy between McCain or Obama, it might ...
Amidst massive financial losses being suffered by the American people in the current financial crisis, at least they can take solace in one comforting point — that the U.S. government is rebuilding Iraq. While people are seeing their savings ...
Americans who have suffered harm during the current financial crisis should be counting their lucky stars. At least U.S. officials haven’t taken them into custody as enemy combatants and tortured them, as U.S. officials have ...
The inaugural session of the Economic Liberty Lecture Series, which FFF and the George Mason University Econ Society, a student-run group, hosted was a great success. The event took place on Monday evening and attracted about ...
One of the things the mainstream pundits have failed to understand in the current financial crisis is the important role that savings play in a society. They keep talking incessantly about the “credit squeeze” but hardly ...
Last Thursday I debated Peter Brimelow at the Heartland Institute’s annual dinner in a beautiful ballroom at the Hilton Hotel in Chicago. What a fantastic evening! Since Heartland has been such an enormously positive force for ...
’m on my way to Chicago to debate Peter Brimelow at the Heartland Institute’s annual dinner. Heartland is one of the nation’s finest free-market think tanks that address state public-policy issues. Peter is the author of ...
The purpose of the Bill of Rights was twofold: first, to ensure that certain fundamental rights were protected from federal infringement and, second, to ensure that the American people were expressly guaranteed certain ...
Friday, October 31, 2008
Drug-War Violence Is Spreading to Texas
by Jacob G. Hornberger
According to the Associated Press, South Texans might soon be experiencing the same type of drug-war violence that people on the Mexican side of the border have been ...
Generally speaking, people can be divided into 3 groups: (1) Those who thirst for power; (2) Those who thirst for freedom; and (3) Those who are fairly indifferent to both power and liberty.
The real battle that ...
The congressional rejection of President Bush’s bailout bill came as a shocker to me. As I was writing my blog yesterday about how one can always count on conservatives to cave in and abandon any semblance ...
It’s not surprising that many conservative House Republicans, after railing against socialism and interventionism, are caving in and embracing the $700,000 billion (probably more like $1.5 trillion after all is said and done) bailout of their Wall Street friends ...
Ever since the dawn of the New Deal in the 1930s, statists have told us that government regulators are needed to “stabilize free enterprise” and protect depositors and investors. Thus, for the last 80 years or so, we’ve lived ...
You’ve got to hand it to Bush and Cheney. They are loyal to their friends.
They commuted Scooter Libby’s prison sentence after a jury convicted him of perjury and obstruction of justice.
They secured criminal immunity for ...
One of the characteristics of the modern-day welfare state is the refusal of statists to take responsibility for the damage and destruction their philosophy has wrought on the people of the world.
Consider Iraq. How many ...
During the recent crisis in Georgia, conservatives reveled in comparing Russia’s actions to those of the former Soviet Union. But did you notice that not once did they remind people of how Ronald Reagan supposedly brought ...
It’s amusing to see liberals exclaiming against the bailout of the Wall Street big wigs. After decades of using government to take from the rich and middle class to give to the poor, did they honestly ...
Liberals who have operated under the quaint notion that the welfare state is only for the benefit of the poor, needy, and disadvantaged have had a rude awakening during the past week. With the bailouts of ...
The amusing part of the current financial crisis is how liberals are blaming it all on “the free market” or on “unfettered capitalism.” Not surprisingly, their solutions call for socialist and interventionist measures, in order to “save freedom and ...
It must be hurricane season because we’re once again being subjecting to complaints about price-gouging. In the finest communist and socialist tradition, some Americans are turning in businesses to the state that significantly raise prices ...
In my September 10, 2008, blog post, I explained that one of the great benefits of public (i.e., government) schooling and government-approved schooling is the political indoctrination to which most children in society are subjected. ...
Mackenzie Phillips, daughter of the founder of the Mamas and Papas pop group and a former star in the television sitcom “One Day at a Time,” was arrested last week and charged with possession of narcotics. ...
While people in the McCain camp are on the attack over Obama’s comment about lipstick and pigs, some of the mainstream pundits are asking why so much time is being spent on what seems to be ...
Seven years after 9/11, shouldn’t Americans ask if there was a better way to respond to those attacks? After all, look at where we are today as a result of how President Bush chose to respond ...
One of the great benefits of public schooling, from the standpoint of government officials, is the power to indoctrinate people with myths and false beliefs. Oftentimes, these myths and false realities retain control over a ...
A reader advised me that in my blog yesterday, I had misinterpreted Sarah Palin’s statement to the Assembly of God Church in Alaska. The reader said that Palin wasn’t actually saying that the Iraq invasion and occupation were ...
In an address to an Assembly of God Church in Alaska, Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin suggested that church members pray “that our national leaders are sending on a task that is from ...
The campaign season is abuzz with all four of the presidential and vice-presidential candidates exclaiming how they’re going to “reform” Washington. Not surprisingly, the establishment media is excited about the theme, calling on the candidates ...
As I’ve watched the storm of controversy surrounding Sarah Palin, a thought ocurred to me. What the Republicans ought to do is reverse their candidates, making Palin their presidential candidate and McCain their vice-presidential candidate.
After ...
We just returned from Ron Paul’s Rally for the Republic at the Target Center in Minneapolis, where FFF’s program director, Bart Frazier, and I manned a booth for FFF. What an exciting event! ...
Conservatives and the neo-cons seem to be growing increasingly agitated over the possibility that Barack Obama is going to win the November election. Part of this agitation is, of course, over the likelihood that federal spending ...
The year 1989 was a year of a great celebration. For that was the year that that hated and reviled symbol of tyranny, empire, and oppression, the Berlin Wall, came crashing down. Not only were ...
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Restore a Free Market to America
by Jacob G. Hornberger
The congressional rejection of President Bush’s bailout bill came as a shocker to me. As I was writing my blog yesterday about how one can always count on ...
I just finished reading Let Them In: The Case for Open Borders by Jason L. Riley, which is one fantastic book on the immigration debate. Riley’s book, combined with Phillipe Legrain’s book Immigrants: Your Country ...
A case before the Six Circuit federal Court of Appeals in Cincinnati demonstrates how our American ancestors relied on gold to protect themselves from U.S. officials.
The case involves a long-term lease entered into in ...
Americans have long been taught to view the federal government as a parent. While the government is sometimes abusive to American child-adults (e.g., IRS, DEA, torture, Waco, etc.), Americans know that that’s a trait that is common to many ...
In a move that is certain to leave American anti-militarist liberals (i.e., leftists) in a quandary, the Pentagon has sent a U.S. Navy destroyer to Georgia to deliver “humanitarian aid” in the form of such things ...
One cannot help but be amused over the negotiations taking place between President Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki over how long U.S. troops will be permitted to stay in Iraq and whether occupation ...
In my August 19 blog, I pointed out how President Bush knowingly and intentionally ignored Russian President Putin’s warning that pushing to admit Georgia into NATO would cross Russian “red lines.”
At the urging of the U.S. government, NATO, ...
If anyone still has any doubts about whether President Bush is exercising powers that any self-respecting dictator would relish, all he has to do is consider the military pact that Bush is entering into with Iraq. ...
According to today’s New York Times, two Chinese women, both in their 70s, have been sentenced to reeducation camp. The charge? Applying for a permit to protest, in accordance with rules previously established by Chinese ...
Uh, oh! Problems in socialist paradise land. It seems that one of the primary bastions of socialism is considering moving away from its welfare-state principles. According to the Financial Times, “Cuba, one of the world’s ...
Yesterday, I wrote about how U.S. foreign policy ignites and engenders a variety of crises, especially since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Empire. Such crises are then used to ...
With the Russian invasion of Georgia, Americans are able to capture a glimpse of another U.S. foreign-policy “success” story.
The most shocking event in the history of the U.S. military-industrial complex, which President Eisenhower said was ...
Referring to Russia’s incursion into Georgia, President Bush says that invading a sovereign country that poses no threat is “unacceptable in the 21st century.” John McCain echoes that sentiment with, “In the 21st century, nations don’t ...
This month marks the 63rd anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
U.S. officials have long justified the nuclear attacks on the rationale that the attacks shortened the war. If the ...
Amidst the death and destruction in Georgia, the neo-conservative reaction here in the United States is a sight to behold.
Aggression, the neo-cons are screaming. The Russians are waging an unprovoked war of aggression, they’re exclaiming. ...
In 2007 and 2008 The Future of Freedom Foundation hosted two important conferences, “Restoring the Republic: Foreign Policy & Civil Liberties.”
The final collection of 45 speeches — delivered by a unique combination libertarians, ...
In the first trial held in the Pentagon’s “judicial” system at Guantanamo Bay, Salim Hamdan, Osama bin Laden’s driver, was acquitted of conspiracy, convicted of providing “material support” to a U.S.-named terrorist organization, and given ...
While criticizing Chinese authorities for lack of religious and political freedom, President Bush was caught flat-footed by the rebuke issued by Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang, who responded, “We firmly oppose any words or acts ...
This past week, Americans have had the opportunity to witness another glorious day in the life of the 35-year-old war on drugs.
A few minutes after the mayor of Berwyn Heights, Maryland, Cheye Calvo, returned home from ...
I just received an interesting letter from officials of Montgomery County, Maryland, advising me that I owed the county $40. The reason? The letter advised me that surveillance cameras had caught me speeding — 43 mph ...
So, the FBI was prepared to indict U.S. Army scientist Bruce Ivins for terrorism before he committed suicide. The specific act of terrorism for which Ivins was to be indicted was employing weapons of mass destruction, ...
The Pentagon’s model “judicial” system at Guantanamo Bay has many fascinating features, virtually all of which are contrary to the rights and guarantees in the federal system established by the Constitution. Among the features in ...
A Washington Post poll reveals that most Americans doubt whether John McCain or Barack Obama will be able to “fix the ailing economy” or “improve the healthcare system.”
The problem with Americans is that they fail to ...
There are two important points to remember about the Bill of Rights. First, the Bill of Rights does not give any rights to the American people and, second, the Bill of Rights was ...
Friday, August 29, 2008
The Protection Provided by Gold
by Jacob G. Hornberger
A case before the Six Circuit federal Court of Appeals in Cincinnati demonstrates how our American ancestors relied on gold to protect themselves from U.S. officials.
The ...
Sheldon Richman, who authored FFF’s great book Separating School & State: Liberating America’s Families received the following email from his daughter Emily:
“Jennifer and I met a couple of people at this sushi place in Little Rock on ...
Conservatives must be ecstatic over what is happening in China. Joining the U.S. government in its crusade against terrorism, the Chinese communist government is adopting measures that would make any U.S. conservative proud.
For example, the Chinese government ...
I have a confession to make: I love being dependent on foreign oil. In fact, I love being dependent on domestic oil too. For that matter, I love being dependent on other people for all the ...
Pat Buchanan’s new book Churchill, Hitler, and “The Unnecessary War”does an excellent job of demolishing the myths surrounding World War II, commonly called “the good war” in American public school textbooks. Here are ...
Sunday’s Washington Post published an op-ed advocating a position that we have held here at The Future of Freedom Foundation ever since the 9/11 attacks: that terrorism cases rightfully belong in federal court. The article, ...
With its coming bailout of homeowners and mortgage lenders, the federal government refortifies its role as daddy for the American people and the people’s role as child-adults who are dependent on their daddy to take care ...
In my blog entry yesterday, I pointed out one of the crucial differences between the judicial system that our ancestors brought into existence with the Constitution and the model “judicial’ system that President Bush and the ...
Seven years after the Bush administration declared its “war on terrorism,” the first trial of an accused terrorist is now underway at Guantanamo Bay. The Gitmo trial involves the new-fangled “judicial” system that the president and ...
In last Sunday’s edition, the New York Times carried an article about pro-China advertisements that Western companies are running in China during the Olympic Games. McDonald’s is running a “Cheer for China” ad. Pepsi, ...
Over the weekend, I read Bananas!: How the United Fruit Company Shaped the World by Peter Chapman. The book details the history of the United Fruit Company and specifically its deep involvement in the history ...
A recent experience in kangaroo court at Guantanamo Bay provides an excellent example of how things operate in that surreal, unjust world of military tyranny and oppression.
Accused terrorist Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who is representing himself, ...
With the recent appointment of former Wall Street Journal editor Marcus Brauchli to the post of editor of the Washington Post, the Post will inevitably continue to move further in the direction of the Wall Street ...
Led by conservative judges, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals has just affirmed the Bush administration’s “enemy combatant” doctrine, a doctrine that allows President Bush and his military forces to designate anyone anywhere in ...
Last Sunday, the New York Times carried an article about a 31-year-old Iranian dissident, Ahmad Batebi, who successfully escaped imprisonment in Iran, where he was being tortured. Making his way through Iraq and ultimately ...
The Washington Post carried an interesting article on Sunday by a photojournalist in Iraq whose photograph of a U.S. soldier carrying an injured Iraqi child at the outset of the U.S. invasion of Iraq made ...
One of the amusing things about liberals and conservatives is how they sometimes lock themselves in their own little conservative-liberal paradigm and carry on a silly debate over the causes of America’s economic woes.
For example, liberals ...
Those who think that the election of Barack Obama will save the nation from its many foreign-policy/civil-liberties woes got smashed and dashed with a cold dose of reality. Flip-flopping in the finest political tradition, Obama ...
The political world has been abuzz over McCain advisor Charlie Black’s statement that another terrorist attack on American soil before Election Day would benefit McCain’s chances for winning the election.
Since rational thinking will be in ...
A front-page article in last Saturday’s Washington Post detailed an inside account of how Zimbabwe’s thuggish president Robert Mugabe ensured his victory in the country’s recent presidential run-off election. The account provides a good refresher course on ...
Everyone is complaining and crying about the high gasoline prices and, well, the rising prices of most everything else, especially food.
The problem is that hardly anyone wants to admit that it’s all part of the cost ...
Contrary to popular myth, the men who signed the Declaration of Independence were not great Americans. Instead, they were great Englishmen. In fact, they were as much English citizens as Americans today are ...
While Americans are celebrating pre-revolutionary efforts by the English colonists to avoid taxes imposed by their government (e.g., the Sugar Act, Stamp Acts, Townshend Acts, and Tea Act), the IRS is celebrating a federal court ...
Do you recall how outraged U.S. officials appeared to be when people were comparing the Pentagon’s prison camp at Guantanamo Bay to the Soviet communist gulags? Well, the outrage might have been a bit fake and ...
There are two important things to keep in mind with respect to the immigration crisis: first, the crisis is rooted in socialism and interventionism and, second, the only solution to the immigration crisis lies in open borders and free ...
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Is China a Model for U.S. Conservatives?
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Conservatives must be ecstatic over what is happening in China. Joining the U.S. government in its crusade against terrorism, the Chinese communist government is adopting ...
Supporters of the U.S. occupation of Iraq sometimes point out that U.S. soldiers are doing good deeds there, such as establishing electricity, water, and other essential services. They also say that the U.S. government liberated the ...
Whenever a libertarian calls for the dismantling of the U.S. government’s overseas military empire and the end of foreign interventionism, the standard response of the pro-empire, pro-intervention crowd is, “We cannot return to isolationism. That ...
In a 5-4 decision yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court declared unconstitutional Washington, D.C.’s, ban on possession of handguns in people’s homes. Rejecting the ridiculous argument of the gun controllers that the Second Amendment is intended to protect the “right” ...
The situation in Zimbabwe provides an excellent example of how U.S. foreign policy should operate all over the world.
Like most public officials everywhere, Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe is desperately trying to ...
It seems that American statists are conjuring up new scapegoats for America’s economic woes, what with speculators, oil companies, and OPEC becoming the new national boogeymen. I suppose this was inevitable given that it might be difficult to blame ...
Let’s give credit where credit is due. In the midst of its invasions, occupations, bombings, sanctions, killing and maiming, torture and sex abuse, kidnappings and renditions, and kangaroo judicial proceedings, the U.S. government ...
All too many liberals continue to extol the virtues of the minimum wage despite the fact that it hurts the very people liberals want to help — the poor. A recent example of this ...
The following are photos from day 3 of The Future of Freedom Foundation's conference “Restoring the Republic 2008: Foreign Policy & Civil Liberties.”
Not surprisingly, the Democratic-controlled Congress has once again capitulated to the president, this time agreeing to a “compromise” bill that grants immunity to telecom companies that knowingly and intentionally broke the ...
In his dissent in Boumediene, Justice Scalia pulls an old trick from the interventionist hat — that Americans will be safer if they surrender their fundamental rights and liberties to the government. What he’s saying ...
The following are photos from day 2 of The Future of Freedom Foundation's conference “Restoring the Republic 2008: Foreign Policy & Civil Liberties.”
While it might be tempting to blame George W. Bush for the last 7 years of darkness, tyranny, and oppression in America, such would be a big mistake. While Bush has presided over ...
Conservatives are berating the U.S. Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision in the Boumediene case, where the Court held unconstitutional the federal government’s attempt to cancel habeas corpus rights to the detainees held at Guantanamo ...
Suppose the Chinese people were able to overthrow their communist regime and install a democratic republic. Suppose the new Chinese officials asked Americans to help them implement a new criminal-justice system for China.
Some ...
The following are photos from day 1 of The Future of Freedom Foundation's conference “Restoring the Republic 2008: Foreign Policy & Civil Liberties.”
Yesterday, in a stunning rebuke of President Bush, the Pentagon, and Congress, the U.S. Supreme Court declared unconstitutional the cancellation of habeas corpus for foreigners accused of terrorism. The Court’s decision in Boumediene v. Bush nullified the provision in ...
The central point of Barack Obama’s economic plan is to tax the rich in order the give money to the poor. Of course, this is nothing more than the core philosophy of the welfare ...
A front-page article in the New York Times today describes how the economic policies advocated by both John McCain and Barack Obama are the same old tired ideas that Republicans and Democrats have ...
Our conference “Restoring the Republic 2009: Foreign Policy and Civil Liberties” was a resounding success! The 21 speeches were among the best I’ve ever heard. In fact, I have never participated in a ...
A rare Gallup poll conducted in 2006 in Havana and Santiago, Cuba, reflect that Cubans have a good grip on reality regarding the two root causes of the horrible economic misery under which ...
Among the biggest myths in economics is that government intervention is needed to ensure a minimum wage for workers. In fact, not only is such intervention unnecessary, it is actually harmful to those ...
An op-ed in yesterday’s conservative Wall Street Journal provides another example of how there isn’t a dime’s worth of difference between Republicans and Democrats, especially when it comes to foreign policy. The op-ed, ...
Americans received a good dose of conservative idiocy over the weekend.
The dose, which almost defies belief, involves noted conservative commentator Michelle Malkin, who got upset with a television advertisement by Dunkin Donuts that ...
With all the campaign talk about the various wars in which America is involved — the war on Iraq, the war on drugs, the war on poverty, the war on illiteracy, the war on ...
Go to FFF's Flickr page to view photos
Monday, June 30, 2008
Isolationist Options for the United States
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Whenever a libertarian calls for the dismantling of the U.S. government’s overseas military empire and the end of foreign interventionism, the standard response of the pro-empire, pro-intervention crowd ...
Jacob G. Hornberger on "From Empire and Intervention to Freedom and Republic" at the Future of Freedom Foundation's Restoring the Republic, 2008.
In an op-ed entitled “The Libertarian Jesus” by Michael Gerson in today’s Washington Post, Gerson provides an excellent example of the moral blind spot that afflicts the conservative movement.
Gerson, who served as a ...
Our exciting June 6-8 conference “Restoring the Republic 2008: Foreign Policy and Civil Liberties” begins next week! There’s still time to register. We have now opened up the conference to daily registration — ...
Black-market principles are posing a new obstacle for advocates of the wars on drugs and immigrants. According to a front-page article in the New York Times, an increasing number of Customs ...
The Future of Freedom Foundation is pleased to announce that Congressman Ron Paul, who has just been added to the roster of speakers at the Foundation’s upcoming June 6-8 conference “Restoring the Republic 2008: Foreign Policy ...
The healthcare system in the Czech Republic has a valuable, albeit perhaps discomforting, lesson for Americans.
For decades, Americans have convinced themselves that they live in a free-enterprise country. For such Americans, ...
Drug warriors are lamenting the high number of deaths of Mexican officials at the hands of Mexican drug lords. The latest victim was Edgar Millan Gomez, the acting chief of the federal ...
After five years of sacrificing thousands of American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi people in a war of aggression and military occupation of a country that never attacked the United States, ...
From this week’s New York Times: “President Bush announced Wednesday that Americans would soon be allowed to give their relatives in Cuba cell phones to use.”
Now, doesn’t that just say it all? ...
If I were asked to rank libertarians for integrity, courage, and devotion to principle, I would place James Bovard and Sheldon Richman in a tie for first place. One of my personal highlights of ...
After the 9/11 attacks, President Bush assured the American people, “We don’t torture.” By “we” he meant people working for the federal government, including those in the CIA and the military.
Since then, we’ve ...
U.S. officials might want to think twice before imposing price controls ever again in the United States, given what Iraqi officials are doing to Tariq Aziz, who served as deputy prime minister in ...
To gain a good sense of how conservatives view the federal government, all one has to do is examine the words that conservative political commentator Tucker Carlson directed toward David Ray Griffin, ...
On his recent trip to Israel, President Bush ignited a political firestorm within the Obama, Clinton, and McCain camps by suggesting that it would be wrong to “appease” the Ahmadinejad regime in Iran.
Unfortunately, ...
With their third straight loss of a House seat in a special election, Republicans are discovering that they’re in crisis.
Well, duh!
After all, here you have a political party that preaches the old ...
Under ordinary circumstances, accused terrorist Mohammed Qahtani would be pleased that all criminal charges have been dismissed against him, especially since the Pentagon has alleged that he is one of the many “20th ...
An increasing number of newspaper articles are reflecting that Latino immigrants nationwide are suffering from the U.S. economic downturn. For example, an article in Tuesday’s New York Times entitled “A Tenuous Prosperity Lost” ...
It seems that the mainstream media might finally be coming to realize that the soaring prices of commodities is not so much due to reduced supplies or increases in demand but instead to ...
The Framers understood the most important point about the nature of government: It constitutes the biggest threat to the freedom and well-being of the citizenry. Unfortunately, it is a point that has been ...
Laurence Vance is one of the most courageous libertarians I have ever known. A devout Christian, he has been relentless and uncompromising in emphasizing two important points about U.S. foreign policy: (1) Since ...
Apparently not having enough to do to keep illegal immigrants from entering the country, U.S. officials are now also spending their time looking for illegal immigrants leaving the country. According to an article ...
Americans ought to pay attention to what Cuban President Raul Castro is doing in Cuba because he is providing them with excellent insights into realities about America’s economic system.
According to the ...
Last February a federal court in Richmond sentenced a Roman Catholic priest, Rodney L. Rodis, to five years in prison for wire fraud and money laundering arising out of his embezzlement of hundreds ...
In an editorial published last Saturday, the Washington Post celebrated the killing of a man in Somalia who the Post said “deserved the label of ‘evildoer.’” The man was killed when a U.S. ...
In his new book Our Man in Mexico: Winston Scott and the Hidden History of the CIA by Jefferson Morley, a former Washington Post columnist, Morley delves into an interesting and revealing aspect of the ...
Ever since I discovered libertarianism, two of my foremost heroes have been — and continue to be — Lew Rockwell and Bob Higgs, who will both be speaking at our exciting upcoming June 6-8 ...
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
Americans who have supported the invasion and occupation of Iraq, including U.S. soldiers who have killed people in Iraq, might say, “Look, I thought there were going to be WMDs, ...
Friday, May 30, 2008
Compassionless Conservatism
by Jacob G. Hornberger
In an op-ed entitled “The Libertarian Jesus” by Michael Gerson in today’s Washington Post, Gerson provides an excellent example of the moral blind spot that afflicts the conservative movement.
Gerson, who ...
I just finished reading a very interesting book entitled Our Man in Mexico: Winston Scott and the Hidden History of the CIA by Jefferson Morley. The book is a biography of Winston ...
Just as Eastern European and Russian dissidents who opposed the Soviet Empire’s tyrannical system are today celebrated as heroes, so it will be with those Americans who have opposed the Pentagon’s system at Guantanamo Bay. Among ...
One of the principle differences between the Pentagon’s military-tribunal system and the U.S. federal-court system for prosecuting accused terrorists involves the presumption of innocence. In the federal-court system, the accused is presumed innocent while in the ...
Ever since invading U.S. troops failed to find those infamous WMDs that Saddam was supposedly about to unleash on the United States, U.S. officials have claimed that their primary objective in invading and occupying Iraq, a predominantly Muslim country, ...
Joseph Margulies is one of the nation’s leading attorneys in the defense of civil liberties, especially since 9/11. Future generations of Americans will forever be indebted to him for his courageous and principled ...
Ever since 9/11 the U.S. government has maintained a criminal-justice system that enables it to treat suspected terrorists in two alternative ways: as criminal defendants in federal district court or as unlawful enemy combatants in the Pentagon’s military system. ...
Conservatives are reigning supreme in Afghanistan and the United States, especially in their advancement of censorship.
In Afghanistan, a country whose regime was installed thanks to the U.S. invasion of that country several years ago, the minister for ...
Ecuador’s president Rafael Correa may not be long for this world, both in a political sense and in genuine life-or-death sense. He recently fired his defense minister, army chief of intelligence, and commanders of the army, air force, and ...
A front-page article in yesterday’s New York Times reminds us of the ominous 1961 warning of President Dwight Eisenhower, a warning that unfortunately the American people decided to ignore. Eisenhower wrote:
“This conjunction of an immense military establishment ...
While recently appearing as a guest on a radio talk show on the subject of immigration, a listener called to say, “We already have open borders in this country, as evidenced by the 13 million illegal aliens ...
Unfortunately, during his private meeting with President Bush yesterday, it doesn’t seem that Pope Benedict repeated the sentiments on the president’s war on Iraq that he expressed prior to the president’s invasion of Iraq five years ...
Twenty-six CIA agents are scheduled to go on trial today for kidnapping. Unfortunately, all of them will be tried in absentia because the Bush administration, which has long claimed to be against torture, refuses to send ...
Ironically, the war on drugs has some interesting parallels with the war on terrorism and sometimes integrates with the war on immigrants.
Recently, Norberto Ramirez, a 44-year-old Mexican father of five in the isolated village of Nocupetaro, Mexico, was kidnapped ...
Uh, oh! It seems as though U.S. official are preparing the mindsets of the American people to accept a new official enemy in Iraq — Iran.
You’ll recall that when the U.S. government invaded Iraq five years ago, ...
Uh, oh! There is a big immigration problem occurring in Italy, specifically with Italian food being served in Italian restaurants. You see, it might not be Italian food after all. Why? Well, that’s where the immigration ...
This week’s speaker spotlight is on Joanne Mariner and Alexander Cockburn, both of whom will be speaking at our upcoming June 6-8 conference “Restoring the Republic 2008: Foreign Policy and Civil Liberties.”
Joanne Mariner ...
American colleges and universities are discovering that there’s a price to be paid for going on the dole: federal control over their activities.
According to an article in Army Times, the Defense Department is implementing a new ...
Last Sunday’s New York Times Sunday Styles section had an article entitled, “After War, Love Can Be a Battlefield” by Leslie Kaufman. The article was about the stresses and strains that the invasion and occupation of Iraq ...
Immediately after 9/11, U.S. officials, led by President Bush and Vice-President Cheney, announced that the attacks were motivated by hatred for America’s freedom and values.
Not so, responded we libertarians. Instead, the anger and hatred that people have in ...
In her Sunday column yesterday, St. Petersburg Times columnist Robyn Blumner tells an ominous story that describes the Bush administration’s attitude toward criminal-defense attorneys, an attitude that is remarkably similar to that held by Bush war-on-terrorism ...
According to a front-page article in today’s New York Times, more than 1,000 Iraqi soldiers and policemen, including military officers as high as colonel, refused orders to participate in the Iraqi government’s assault on Basra.
The deserters either had no ...
One of the positions of Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul that mainstream pundits find “wacky” is his call to abolish the Federal Reserve System. Never mind that two Nobel Prize-winning economists — both ...
A snapshot of the opening scene in the U.S. invasion of Iraq provides an excellent insight into the immorality and horror of the entire operation, from start to whenever it finally finishes.
According to an article in yesterday’s New York ...
One of the common laments of the anti-immigration crowd is that illegal immigrants are coming to the United States just to get on welfare.
I suppose the idea is that illegal immigrants are willing to pay hundreds ...
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
The demise of conscience among the American people is even more pronounced in the context of the warfare state than it is in that of the welfare state. The best ...
Ahmed Khalfan Ghailana, a citizen of Tanzania, is learning first-hand what it’s like to be the victim of the U.S. government’s post-9/11 regime of the “rule of men,” as compared to the “rule of law.”
Some people believe, ...
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
The Heroes at Guantanamo
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Just as Eastern European and Russian dissidents who opposed the Soviet Empire’s tyrannical system are today celebrated as heroes, so it will be with those Americans who have opposed the ...
As most everyone knows, since last week the Iraqi government, supported by U.S. troops and warplanes, has been engaged in fierce battles for control of Basra.
The question, of course, is: Why now, and why is control over ...
Two new articles in the mainstream press demonstrate a problem that afflicts conservatives. The two articles are “Tax Tyrannies” by Richard Rahn, which appears in today’s Washington Times, and “Stop Those Checks” by Bruce ...
The federal government has indicted an American man from Detroit, Muthanna al-Hanooti, for working on behalf of the Saddam Hussein government to help get the brutal sanctions.
lifted that the U.S. government was enforcing against Iraq for more than ...
The Justice Department has consented to the proposed merger between satellite radio providers XM and Sirius.
Well, isn’t that nice — government officials giving private businesses permission to combine their operations? I suppose that’s what government officials ...
In his Washington Post column today, “The Ultimate Casualty,” Richard Cohen makes a reference to a fascinating book entitled “Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland” by Christopher R. Browning, published in 1992. ...
At the five-year anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, the U.S. government has hit another milestone — 4,000 U.S. soldiers dead.
And what have those soldiers died for? They died for the same thing that 58,000 soldiers died ...
U.S. officials often look down their noses at the corruption in the Mexican government, especially with respect to the war on drugs, where drug laws have long enriched the coffers of Mexican officials through bribery, extortion, ...
We are extremely honored to have David Henderson speaking at our upcoming June 6-8 conference “Restoring the Republic 2008: Foreign Policy and Civil Liberties.” Not only is David one of the most brilliant ...
During his recent trip to Iraq, Republican presidential candidate John McCain proclaimed,
“Well, it’s common knowledge and has been reported in the media that Al Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming ...
Throughout the race for the Democratic Party presidential nomination, Barack Obama has taken Hillary Clinton to task for her 2002 vote authorizing President Bush to attack Iraq. Obama says that Clinton’s vote reflected poor judgment on ...
In yesterday’s Washington Post, there was an article about gun traffickers who are robbing gun stores in Virginia in order to sell the guns to people in Washington, D.C. The story is timely given that the U.S. ...
A fascinating aspect of government intervention is how it induces people (1) to get embroiled in the crisis environment that the intervention produces, and (2) to feel a vested interest in coming up with a solution to the crisis.
Consider ...
More federal chickens are coming home to roost every day. Yesterday — yes, Sunday — the Federal Reserve, in obvious panic over the state of the financial markets, was working overtime to come up with a bailout ...
Glenn Greenwald, who is speaking at our upcoming June 6-8 conference Restoring the Republic 2008: Foreign Policy and Civil Liberties, writes one of the finest political blogs on the Internet. Every day, with sharpness and clarity he brings peoples ...
Farmers in California have suffered enormous economic losses due to a shortage of labor to harvest their crops. It’s just another devastating consequence of immigration controls.
Now, small businesses as far away as New England are suffering the ...
In a further attempt to preserve his legacy, President Bush delivered a rousing speech in Nashville in which he said that he invaded Iraq to bring freedom and democracy to the Iraqi people. According to the ...
American conservatives should be really proud of how the feds caught New York Governor Eliot Spitzer patronizing a prostitute. It all has to do with patriotism, conservative-style. After all, it was the USA Patriot Act itself ...
If there is another terrorist attack on American soil, it would be natural to ask the same two questions that libertarians asked soon after 9/11:
(1) Is the attack another instance of blowback from U.S. foreign policy, for example, from ...
Throughout the long history of the Iraq War and occupation, the measure of success for many Americans has been the number of U.S. soldiers killed in the conflict. As long as the number of U.S. deaths ...
While I have never personally met Bruce Fein, he is an attorney who has become one of my modern-day heroes. In the post-9/11 environment in which so many lawyers have rolled over and succumbed to the Bush administrations war ...
Last night I attended a talk by Stephen Kinzer, who is one of the speakers at our upcoming June 6-8 conference “Restoring the Republic 2008: Foreign Policy & Civil Liberties.” The talk was held at the Washington, D.C., campus ...
President Bush recently took Barack Obama to task for Obama’s willingness to meet with Raul Castro, the newly elected president of Cuba. Bush suggested that it was important for a U.S. president to establish preconditions before ...
U.S. officials are hopping mad over the outcome of a criminal prosecution in Iraq. Two Iraqi officials who had been accused of kidnapping and murder walked out of an Iraqi court Monday as free men ...
Amidst all the hoopla over whether the surge in Iraq has been a success, Americans might have missed the latest development in the Iraq mess — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s historic and much-acclaimed visit to Iraq, ...
While making a campaign stop in Waco, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton praised the U.S. military for “defending and protecting our country.”
I couldn’t help but wonder whether she was talking about the military’s role in Iraq ...
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
As libertarians have long pointed out, both the welfare state and the warfare state have brought immeasurable damage to our country.
With its various programs of confiscatory taxation of income and ...
Monday, March 31, 2008
Attacking Basra on the Way to Iran?
by Jacob G. Hornberger
As most everyone knows, since last week the Iraqi government, supported by U.S. troops and warplanes, has been engaged in fierce battles for control of Basra.
The question, ...
In my blog yesterday, I noted that contrary to a popular refrain in the controversy over the John Kennedy assassination, government officials can, indeed, keep secrets. I pointed out that if three district attorneys in Dallas ...
We have just gone live with the schedule for our upcoming June 6-8 conference Restoring the Republic: Foreign Policy & Civil Liberties. See it here: Conference Schedule.
I know Ive said it before, ...
The Dallas County district attorney, Craig Watkins, recently held a press conference in which he announced a big surprise about the John Kennedy assassination. Watkins disclosed the existence of a secret vault in his office ...
The U.S. government’s policy toward Cuba is a textbook example of the malevolence and hypocrisy of U.S. foreign policy.
In the wake of Fidel Castro’s resignation as Cuba’s president, U.S. officials, led by President Bush and members of ...
One of the silliest campaign attacks so far has come out of Bill Kristol, a neo-conservative who now has a regular column in the New York Times. Pulling out the old “patriotism” canard from his neo-con ...
For an excellent summary of what is wrong with America, both morally and politically, all you have to do is read an editorial in the February 22 issue of the Galveston County Daily News. The newspaper’s reasoning reflects ...
As economic conditions in America continue to degenerate, Americans would be wise to use this period of time to reflect on the role that the federal government plays in their economic affairs, especially in comparison to ...
The situation in Pakistan provides another good reason why the American people should put a stop to the U.S. government’s meddling in the affairs of other countries.
For years, U.S. officials have had a close, working partnership with ...
In the wake of Fidel Castro’s resignation as president of Cuba, President Bush is, not surprisingly, lecturing the Cuban people as to what they now need to do to achieve a free society.
But Cubans — and, for ...
Last Saturday’s Washington Post had an interesting story about the federal government’s land grab along the Rio Grande to build its anti-immigrant Berlin Fence. Not surprisingly, Texas landowners, many of whom have owned their property ...
If you want a great insight into how the lobbying game works in Washington, D.C., take a look at a very insightful article entitled “Mickey Goes to Washington” by Jeffrey H. Birnbaum, which appeared in last ...
I don’t know anything about Virginia Republican Delegate Jeffrey Frederick’s educational background but based on his understanding of economics, my hunch is that he is a product of public schools and state-supported universities, many of which, as a general ...
Justice Scalia’s remarks about torture reflect a fundamental problem with conservative judges. While oftentimes sound on economic liberty, they are absolutely atrocious with respect to civil liberties.
Scalia’s approval of torture in certain circumstances ignores an important ...
Fury has erupted in Britain over letting a 12-year-old Afghan boy attend school. The boy had trained as a suicide bomber in Afghanistan because after his father, who had a member of the Taliban, was shot and ...
Conservatives and neo-conservatives sometimes claim that libertarians are “isolationists” because we oppose empire and interventionism. Their suggestion is that if the U.S. government did not have the unrestrained power to drop bombs on countries around the ...
The next time some conservative or neo-conservative tells you that inflation is a good thing for Americans because it makes “our” exports less expensive for foreigners, ask him why the citizens of Zimbabwe are having a ...
For those of you looking for something patriotic to do to celebrate George Washington’s birthday, you might want to consider traveling down to my hometown of Laredo, Texas, on the weekend of February 22.
Laredo, a city along ...
After years of hearing President Bush proudly proclaim to the American people and the world that “We don’t torture,” yesterday the American people and the world learned that it was just one more lie on top ...
In a Washington Times article on the drug war today, Steve Chapman points out that Barack Obama was for decriminalization of marijuana before he was against it. According to Chapman, who cites a Washington Times story ...
One of the most common myths is that businessmen favor free enterprise — that is, enterprise that is free from government interference. Historically businessmen have been among the biggest proponents of government interference in market transactions, ...
In my article “Brace Yourselves,” I pointed out that owing to the refusal of the American people and U.S. officials to slash either welfare-state spending or warfare-state spending, federal spending will continue to soar out of control. That ...
Friday, February 29, 2008
Did the CIA Effect Regime Change in November 1963?
by Jacob G. Hornberger
In my blog yesterday, I noted that contrary to a popular refrain in the controversy over the John Kennedy assassination, government officials can, indeed, ...
The debate between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton over Iraq, along with the positions on Iraq taken by the Republican presidential candidates (except for Ron Paul) reflect what the presidential race is all about. It might ...
Part 1 | Part 2
Another revolutionary aspect of the enemy-combatant doctrine was how the discretionary power to treat suspected terrorists, including Americans, as enemy combatants was acquired by the president and the Pentagon. Despite the assumption of this ...
Among the more amusing political mantras in the presidential race is that of Mitt Romney. "Washington is broken," he declares, inevitably bringing cheers from Republican audiences. It's as amusing as the popular mantra employed by the ...
One of the most disappointing parts of the Democratically controlled Congress has been its refusal to conduct a formal investigation into whether President Bush, Vice-President Cheney, and other U.S. officials knowingly, deliberately, and intentionally presented false rationales for invading ...
I’m befuddled by those people who are worried about a conspiracy regarding a super-highway between Canada, Mexico, and the United States.
It seems that what concerns the super-highway opponents is the possibility that the governments of Canada, the ...
Make no mistake about it: the central economic problem facing the United States is out-of-control federal spending and the massive federal debt that continues to pile up. As welfare-state spending and warfare-state ...
President Bush is advising the members of Congress not to load up his “economic-stimulus” package with a bunch of lard and pork. Unfortunately, he didn’t explain why. After all, if $800 in the hands of each ...
Lost in the furor over the so-called immigration crisis is that the war on immigrants is a direct assault on both free enterprise and freedom of association, freedoms on which our nation was founded.
Despite the often-heard canard ...
Yesterday the presiding judge in the Jose Padilla case sentenced Padilla to 17 years in jail. Supporters of the “war on terrorism” might be tempted to smugly believe that the conviction and sentence vindicated what the government did to ...
Last night, CNN television commentator Lou Dobbs was commenting on the recent death of a Border Patrol agent at the hands of drug dealers along the border. The agent had used his vehicle to try to stop ...
Obviously becoming increasingly concerned about the U.S. economy, President Bush is offering a band-aid solution: an “economic-stimulus package” entailing a federal welfare check of $800 being sent to every taxpayer. Oh, sure, he’s not calling it ...
It’s quite amusing to watch U.S. officials, presidential candidates, and mainstream-media types presenting their pet plans to “revive the economy.” Except for Ron Paul, they all operate on the assumption that a recession, like terrorism, ...
On June 4, 2007, Jacob Hornberger gave the following speech at FFF’s conference Restoring the Republic: Foreign Policy and Civil Liberties. The speech can viewed below in its entirety.
One of the things that has long fascinated me about conservatives is how eager they always are to criticize foreign regimes while, at the same time, steadfastly maintaining a blind eye to wrongful policies and practices of the U.S. ...
On January 15, the Wall Street Journal carried a strange article entitled “Ron Paul and Foreign Policy” by Bret Stephens, a member of the Journal’s editorial board, which criticized Ron Paul’s libertarian foreign-policy views.
Taking libertarians to task for ...
During his current trip to the Middle East to spread peace and democracy, President Bush announced that the U.S. Government is selling 900 satellite missiles to Saudi Arabia as part of a $20 billion arms sale ...
Have you noticed that the anti-immigrant crowd is remaining remarkably silent about the latest battle over their beloved Berlin Wall that they are constructing along the entire Southern border of the United States?
The battle ...
When U.S. intelligence agencies recently surprised the nation with their National Intelligence Estimate announcement that Iran had ceased its nuclear-weapons program several years ago, many people, including ardent supporters of the president, felt that the announcement ...
Yesterday, I wrote about the U.S. military offensive that is currently taking place against Iraqi insurgents in Diyala Province in Iraq. The New York Times is reporting that six U.S. soldiers were killed yesterday in that operation. Let’s examine the ...
No matter how the election results continue to go in the Democratic and Republican primaries, one thing is clear: The U.S. government is going to continue occupying Iraq for the indefinite future and killing ...
One of the unfortunate aspects of the presidential race, so far, has been the refusal of the media to bring up one of the most important issues of our time — the drug war, especially given its ...
Last week television commentators Greta van Susteran and Shepard Smith, treading cautiously and with a bit of trepidation, wondered aloud why their employer, Fox News, was banning Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul from its New ...
Amidst all the claptrap about “change” among both Democratic and Republican presidential candidates, perhaps we should remind ourselves what the candidates (except Ron Paul) mean by the term “change.” What they mean is simply a change ...
Last Saturday, the Washington Post reported a statistic that cannot possibly be true. The Post said that gun violence rose in Washington, D.C., in 2007, resulting in 181 killings. Non-fatal shootings were also up.
How can that possibly be ...
Since yesterday, I caught snippets of interviews by two well-known Fox News conservatives — Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity. The interviews showed once again what strange and unusual creatures conservatives are.
Both of them were criticizing the libertarian position of ...
A year ago, I was attending a Christmas church service while visiting my brother and his family in Dallas. In the middle of that service, the minister asked the congregation to close their eyes for a couple ...
Part 1 | Part 2
Since an attack on Iran could result in heightened “war-on-terrorism” emergencies here in the United States, this would be a good time to review the issue of “enemy combatants,” especially as the concept applies ...
Thursday, January 31, 2008
An All-Abiding Faith in the Welfare-Warfare State
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Among the more amusing political mantras in the presidential race is that of Mitt Romney. "Washington is broken," he declares, inevitably bringing cheers from Republican audiences. It's ...
It’s interesting to compare the attitude of the U.S. mainstream press toward the assassination of Benazir Bhutto with its attitude toward the assassination of President John Kennedy.
The immediate reaction of the American press (and U.S. government ...
If you want a good example of the real purpose of the regulated economy, watch the Patriots-Giants game tonight. It will be broadcast on both NBC and CBS, compliments of the strong-arm tactics of government officials ...
In the wake of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the New York Times is calling on the Bush administration to intervene in the Pakistani crisis to “fortify Pakistan’s badly battered democratic institutions.”
I’ve got a better idea: the U.S. government ...
The New York Times is now admitting that Virginia Heffernan’s article about Ron Paul, which I blogged about yesterday, “contained several errors.” The Times also says, “The original post should not have been published with these unverified assertions and without any ...
I couldn’t help but be struck by the vicious smear of Ron Paul by a Virginia Heffernan in the New York Times. You can read it here.
Sure, politics is a nasty business but I just couldn’t help but ...
Neo-con supporters of the U.S. government’s war of aggression against Iraq are undoubtedly holding their collective breath in the hope that U.S. military forces have finally smashed any further violent opposition to their conquest of Iraq. ...
CIA torture-tape scandal is becoming more interesting. It now turns out that White House personnel played a major role in the decision on whether to destroy the tapes. While it is still unclear what everybody’s position ...
Conservatives are strange and fascinating creatures. Their minds operate in a strange, Bizarro-like universe in which delusion and deception seem to be considered normal.
Consider, for example, the most recent Republican presidential debate. Let’s leave Ron Paul out ...
Amidst all the debate in which President Bush and his neo-con supporters are trying to convince people that waterboarding, forced isolation, sex abuse, sleep deprivation, stress positions, freezing temperatures, and other “harsh alternative interrogation methods” do ...
In its weekend edition, the Wall Street Journal carried an editorial criticizing Russian President Putin’s attempt to extend his power in Russia. Putin has rigged things so that one of his younger lackies will replace Putin as ...
One of the things that fascinate me about the immigration debate is those people who say that they favor closed borders but simultaneously oppose the police-state programs that are necessary to enforce such a policy.
For example, ...
The new chief judge of the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay, Marine Col. Ralph H. Kohlman, is being confronted with a paper that was written back in 2002 at the Naval War College criticizing President Bush’s ...
The latest CIA scandal will once again teach Americans a valuable lesson: It is the CIA, not the Congress, that is the ultimate governing authority in this nation. No one messes with the CIA, and the CIA ...
Let’s compare the two recent murder rampages in the Omaha, Nebraska, shopping mall and the Colorado Springs church camp.
The shopping mall was a “gun-free zone,” a place where people, including murderers, are prohibited from carrying weapons.
As we have long ...
CIA Director Michael Hayden is saying that the reason that the CIA destroyed the videotapes of the CIA’s harsh interrogation of suspected terrorists was because he wanted to protect the identity of CIA agents from possible ...
The Guantanamo case heard by the Supreme Court on Wednesday raises an important constitutional conflict that the Court will have to resolve.
On the one hand, the Constitution guarantees the privilege of habeas corpus for everyone, foreigners and ...
President Bush’s “agreement” with the mortgage industry to freeze interest rates is a reminder of the point that Ludwig von Mises made about interventionism. It is also a reminder of Benito Mussolini’s government-business partnerships that inspired ...
One of the issues that hasn’t surfaced in a big way in the presidential race is education, which is unfortunate given that it is such an important part of our lives. There are two primary sub-issues ...
Well, well, well. It seems that President Bush might have to fall back on a democracy-spreading rationale for attacking Iran, just as he did with Iraq when those scary WMDs that Saddam was going to use to ...
Donald Rumsfeld — you remember him, right? He was U.S. Secretary of Defense (sic) during the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Well, he popped up in the news over the weekend with an op-ed in the Washington Post entitled “
Since it is presidential campaign season, we will inevitably be treated to the usual discourse about tax cuts. Some candidates will call for tax cuts, undoubtedly as a way to bribe voters into voting for them. Others will resist ...
Whatever else might be said about Venezuela’s president Hugh Chavez, no one can deny that he is an astute politician. For example, at election time he hands out federal grants to the voters, knowing that this ...
Monday, December 31, 2007
Bhutto, JFK, and Conspiracies
by Jacob G. Hornberger
It’s interesting to compare the attitude of the U.S. mainstream press toward the assassination of Benazir Bhutto with its attitude toward the assassination of President John Kennedy.
The immediate reaction ...
Mexican officials are all aglow over the seizure of a record 23 tons of cocaine, which they promptly burned in the hope of receiving $1 billion in U.S. taxpayer monies from U.S. officials.
When will the American ...
It is important that we keep in mind that military dictator Pervez Musharraf’s round-ups of lawyers, judges, and protestors in Pakistan are a logical consequence of President Bush’s “war on terrorism.”
After all, don’t forget that under Bush’s ...
Federal prosecutors are undoubtedly celebrating the one-year sentence doled out to 83-year-old Houston oilman Oscar Wyatt by a federal district judge. Wyatt committed the heinous federal “crime” of violating the federal government’s infamous “oil-for-food” program by paying a ...
Neo-cons often complain that the American people haven’t made any sacrifices as part of President Bush’s much-vaunted “war on terrorism.” For his part, President Bush likes to say that he opposes tax increases to fund his ...
According to the Washington Post, “President Bush yesterday offered his strongest support of embattled Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, saying the general ‘hasn't crossed the line’ and ‘truly is somebody who believes in democracy.’
If that doesn’t ...
Dear Friend of FFF,
The Future of Freedom Foundation is seeking your end-of-year financial support. We are fighting harder than ever to move our country in a better, freer, and more peaceful, prosperous, and harmonious direction. We need your generous ...
I would venture to say that most Americans have no idea of the economic roots of Thanksgiving. When the colonists landed at Plymouth Bay, they established a socialist system. Being highly religious, they believed that a ...
It would be difficult to find a better example of federal heavy-handedness than the recent six-hour federal raid on NORFED, the National Organization for the Repeal of the Federal Reserve and Internal Revenue ...
The Supreme Court has agreed to decide the gun-control case arising out of Washington, D.C.’s, ban on handguns. You know — the city in which there are no murders with handguns because criminals obey gun-control laws. ...
As the presidential campaign heats up, be prepared for the standard neo-con attacks against libertarians for being “unpatriotic.” The attacks will come not only from statist candidates in both major parties but also from the likes ...
What is happening in Venezuela provides a textbook example of how askew President Bush’s thinking is regarding democracy and dictatorship.
For Bush, as well as his neo-con supporters, democracy is everything. In their minds, democracy equals freedom, which ...
We mustn’t forget one of the most important aspects of the Musharraf crackdown in Pakistan — that the post-9/11 “enemy combatant” doctrine assumed by President Bush and the Pentagon empower the feds to conduct the same ...
It is fascinating the way that reality sometimes has a way of breaking through the walls of falsehood and deception that form around people’s minds. What is happening in Pakistan is a textbook example of this ...
It seems like the U.S. Military might be let off the hook by a federal judge’s ruling in case of Lt. Ehren Watada. The judge has issued a preliminary injunction enjoining the military from prosecuting Watada, ...
Members of Congress are upset with Yahoo officials for giving Chinese officials confidential online information about one of their customers in China. The Chinese authorities used the information to send the Yahoo customer to jail for ...
What a great time I had at the immigration debate at Pomona College last Thursday! Since I was debating the president of the “Minutemen,” Marvin Stewart, the event was rife with controversy on campus. You’ll recall that when the ...
President Bush’s advice to Pakistani military dictator Pervez Musharraf is quite revealing. In the face of Musharraf’s brutal crackdown on civil liberties, Bush is telling Musharraf that he needs to have elections.
Whoop-dee-do!
Never mind that Musharraf’s military ...
One of the amusing aspects to the Musharraf crackdown in Pakistan is the air of silence it is producing among American neo-cons. The crackdown is an absolutely perfect model of dictatorship and tyranny. And the resistance ...
What a fantastic credit to the legal profession that lawyers and judges are playing the leading role in resisting tyranny in Pakistan.
Thousands of lawyers are defying Pakistani military dictator Pervez Musharraf’s imposition of martial law by street ...
Pakistan is providing another good example of the bankruptcy of the U.S. government’s foreign policy of empire and intervention, which has brought so much damage to our country. Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf has declared a national ...
One of the most inane arguments I’ve ever heard came this week from one of the 10 judges serving on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, which is reputedly the most conservative federal appellate court in the ...
Friday, November 30, 2007
Drug-War Idiocy
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Mexican officials are all aglow over the seizure of a record 23 tons of cocaine, which they promptly burned in the hope of receiving $1 billion in U.S. taxpayer monies from ...
As I have argued ever since 9/11, there was absolutely no reason to let the Pentagon hijack America’s criminal-justice system in the area of terrorism. Terrorism is a federal criminal offense, not an act of war. ...
Part 1 | Part 2
No matter how much we address the socialism and interventionism that pervade our nation on a domestic level, it will all be for naught if we fail to address the great big elephant in ...
A perfect example of the integrated threat that U.S. foreign policy and federal domestic regulations pose to the freedom, privacy, and well-being of the American people is the current telecommunications controversy.
Soon after the 9/11 attacks, the ...
In today’s FFF Email Update, I have an article about the federal war on telephone privacy, the government program in which certain telephone companies allegedly turned over people’s private telephone records to the feds.
A common bromide among some Americans ...
Liberals and conservatives argue that the income-tax, welfare-state way of life is necessary to redistribute wealth so that people will be more “equal.” The free market, they have long suggested, results in enormous concentrations of power ...
As most everyone knows, President Bush has now placed that dreadful label — “Terrorist!” — on the government of Iran — well, actually on a piece of the government. That’s the magic word that enables the U.S. ...
Immediately after he denounced Fidel Castro for being a dictator, President Bush unilaterally decreed new sanctions against Iran, moving the United States closer to war against Iran. Would someone please tell me how it is that ...
Give President Bush credit for chutzpah. Yesterday, he delivered a speech decrying tyranny and economic oppression by Fidel Castro while continuing his gulag at Guantanamo Bay and his brutal embargo against the Cuban people.
First of all, ...
Every day brings more proof as to why the American people need to reject the federal government’s pro-empire, pro-interventionist foreign policy in favor of a pro-freedom, limited-government republic envisioned by the Founding Fathers.
U.S. Empire officials are ...
The value of the right of trial by jury once again became apparent yesterday. A jury in Dallas, Texas, acquitted defendants of most charges in a war-on-terrorism federal criminal prosecution and deadlocked on a few remaining ...
Conservatives are all aglow over President Bush’s selection of Michael B. Mukasey to replace Alberto Gonzalez as U.S. attorney general. The conservative love-fest for Mukasey comes as no surprise, especially given his positions:
1. Mukasey says he’s ...
In an unusual moment of candor, President Bush revealed why so many people around the world hate and resent the U.S. government for its foreign policy. In his news conference this week, Bush pointed out how ...
Since President Bush seems to be revving up his military engine and preparing Americans for another war of aggression, this time against Iran, it might be wise to revisit this famous quote by German Herman Goering:
“Naturally ...
The former commander of coalition forces in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, has joined the growing list of generals and admirals who are coming out against the Iraq occupation. You’ll recall that he was the U.S. ...
U.S. Empire gall is manifesting itself once again in Iraq. President Bush is telling Turkish officials to “show restraint.” Turkey is threatening to send troops into northern Iraq to suppress cross-border raids that Iraqi Kurds have ...
I was watching the 1965 movie Shenandoah last night and it reminded me of how differently 19th-century Americans viewed the concept of liberty and the role of the state, compared to today’s Americans.
Keep in mind that ...
The federal government’s war on immigrants would be comical if it weren’t so tragic. At the same time that the feds are cracking down on illegal immigration nationwide, they’re “quietly rewriting federal regulations to eliminate barriers” ...
The Supreme Court has declined to consider the appeal of Khaled el-Masri. He’s the German citizen of Lebanese descent who was kidnapped by agents of the U.S. government, whisked away to a secret overseas prison camp, ...
The New York Times is reporting that U.S. officials are reacting with “contented silence” to the enormous drop in the value of the dollar. Well, of course they are. This is the way they are able ...
Last week, the New Hampshire Union Leader went on the attack against Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul’s foreign-policy views, making the standard pro-empire, pro-intervention arguments that unfortunately have come to characterize ...
If things are going as swimmingly in Iraq as U.S. officials say they are, then how come U.S. officials have to be escorted around the country by the gun-toting cowboys from Blackwater who are shooting innocent ...
A federal judge has issued a stay in the Army’s court martial of Lt. Eric Watada, which had been scheduled to begin tomorrow. The reason: despite Army objections the trial might violate the double-jeopardy clause of the Constitution, ...
Amidst all the talk about whether President Bush is going to wage another war of aggression — this time against Iran — it’s important that we keep one fact in mind: Under the U.S. Constitution, President Bush ...
As we have been saying for the last several years, the out-of-control federal spending to fund both domestic welfare-state programs and foreign warfare-state adventures, would ultimately threaten the economic and financial well-being of the American people.
Among ...
If President Bush decides to wage another undeclared war, this time against Iran, he will have at least two possible rationales by which to market the war to the American people — Iranian WMDs and Iranian ...
Washington, D.C., officials are undoubtedly jumping up and down in their offices exclaiming, “We’re No. 1! We’re No. 1!” after a new congressional report was published yesterday. The report declared that the United States has consolidated ...
In an op-ed in the July 17, 2007, issue of the Wall Street Journal, Georgetown law professor Randy Barnett stated that President Bush’s war on Iraq could be defended on libertarian principles. He argued that the president’s attack on ...
Last week I blogged about how the real purpose of government assistance — the dole —is to keep the dole recipient in line, ensuring that he doesn’t stray too far from supporting his dole provider. I ...
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Federal Blackmail, Privacy, and Conformity
by Jacob G. Hornberger
In today’s FFF Email Update, I have an article about the federal war on telephone privacy, the government program in which certain telephone companies allegedly turned over people’s private ...
During the recent Republican presidential debate, former Governor Mike Huckabee took Congressman Ron Paul to task for calling for a withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. Huckabee suggested that it was irrelevant whether ...
Part 1 | Part 2
Practically everywhere we look there is a crisis. Public schooling: crisis. The drug war: crisis. Social Security: crisis. Medicare and Medicaid: crisis. Immigration: crisis. Iraq: crisis. Terrorism: crisis. Federal spending: crisis. The dollar: crisis.
So ...
Friday, September 28, 2007
If Hispanics Had Committed the 9/11 Attacks
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Let’s assume that the 9/11 hijackers had been illegal immigrants from Mexico, Nicaragua, and El Salvador and that in retaliation, President Bush had ordered his military forces ...
On June 22, 2007, Jacob Hornberger was invited to speak before the Houston Property Rights Assocation. The speech can viewed below in its entirety.
It is impossible to overstate the fundamental differences between the foreign-policy philosophy of our American ancestors and the foreign-policy mindset that guides our country today. The philosophy of our ancestors was nicely summed up in the Fourth of July ...
Friday, August 31, 2007
Rotting Apples and the War on Immigrants
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Following in the footsteps of California and Colorado farmers, New York apple growers might soon face devastating financial losses thanks to the U.S. government’s war ...
A popular argument among advocates of immigration controls is that a nation has a “right” to control its borders. The argument is based on the supposed “right” of the U.S. government to station ...
The Fourth of July celebrations will undoubtedly bring forth pronouncements that U.S. troops in Iraq are defending the freedoms expressed in the Declaration of Independence. Nothing could be further from the truth. In ...
While most Americans have turned against the Iraq War, many of them still think that the war on Afghanistan was morally and legally justified. Their rationale is that the United States was simply defending itself by attacking Afghanistan and ...
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
More Perversity from the Other Failed War
Would you like to read about another perverse outcome of the other failed war that is being waged by the federal government?
The New York Times is reporting that California ...
We are still flying high here at FFF in the aftermath of our June 14 conference Restoring the Republic: Foreign Policy and Civil Liberties. I know Im a bit biased but I have never attended a more exciting conference ...
Friday, June 29, 2007
Separate School & State
Thanks to yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling in a government-school desegregation case, public-school supporters are now heavily embroiled in the latest debate on how to run the government schools. Yawn! Another “crisis,” just like ...
On April 1, 2007, the New York Times published a review of Brian Doherty’s new book, Radicals for Capitalism, an extensive history of the libertarian movement that focuses on such libertarian luminaries as ...
In one short answer to a moderator’s question in the South Carolina debate in which Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul suggested that U.S. foreign policy motivated the 9/11 terrorists, Paul produced an earthquake ...
14 days from today! Our conference Restoring the Republic: Foreign Policy and Civil Liberties kicks off! Its still not too late to register. With Ron Paul's star rising on the Republican presidential scene because of his non-interventionist foreign-policy views, ...
Ron Paul once again roiled Republican presidential politics on the issue of foreign policy during last night’s debate, finishing second in the post-debate poll conducted by Fox News and first in the poll conducted ...
Three more weeks to our June 1-4 conference Restoring the Republic: Foreign Policy and Civil Liberties. If you havent yet registered, you still have time to do so. This is sure to be one of the most exciting and ...
During the recent MSNBC Republican presidential debate, Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul made three profound points on U.S. foreign policy that the American people would be wise to heed. Needless to say, Paul’s three points, ...
This week we spotlight Congressman Ron Paul and Fox News Senior Judicial Analyst Andrew Napolitano, our two Sunday dinner speakers for our upcoming June 1-4 conference Restoring the Republic: Foreign Policy and Civil Liberties in Reston, Virginia.
If ...
The 9/11 attacks brought to the surface a dilemma that everyone, especially libertarians, must now confront: whether to choose a pro-empire, pro-intervention foreign policy or a free society.
No one can deny that we now live in a country in ...
Thursday, May 31, 2007
End Both the War on Terror and the Drug War
When President Bush declared his war on terror, I wrote that such a war would be no different than the war on drugs, in the sense that ...
Jury selection in the Jose Padilla case is now under way in federal district court in Miami, but the trial is nothing more than a sham. Why? Because no matter how the jury rules, Padilla ...
Because we have received many requests for daily registrations for our June 1-4 conference Restoring the Republic: Foreign Policy and Civil Liberties, we have decided to open up the conference to per-day registrations.
Note: Please forward this page to your friends.
Richard Vague, one of the nations leading CEOs, has been added to the roster of speakers at The Future of Freedom Foundations upcoming conference "Restoring the Republic: Foreign Policy and Civil Liberties." ...
This week were spotlighting Laurence Vance and Ted Galen Carpenter, both of whom are among the 24 speakers at our June 1-4 conference Restoring the Republic: Foreign Policy and Civil Liberties at the ...
To belabor the obvious, murderers do not obey restrictions on gun possession, contrary to the long-repeated suggestion of the gun-control crowd — that if we simply enact such restrictions into law, ...
Contrary to what some people are suggesting, the firing of Don Imus for his racist comments about the Rutgers University women’s basketball team did not constitute censorship and it did not violate Imus’s freedom ...
We are almost out of discounted hotel rooms for our June 1-4 conference Restoring the Republic: Foreign Policy and Civil Liberties.
If you plan to stay at the Hyatt Regency Reston, where the conference ...
A debate on immigration controls vs. open borders was recently scheduled to take place at Pomona College in California. On one side of the debate was a man named Jim Gilchrist, a ...
This weeks speaker spotlight for our June 1-4 conference Restoring the Republic: Foreign Policy and Civil Liberties at the Hyatt Regency Reston in Reston, Virginia, highlights Joseph Stromberg and Anthony Gregory, both of whom are speaking on Sunday.
There are ...
While Pentagon officials are celebrating the terrorism conviction of David Hicks in Guantanamo’s military-tribunal system, the process by which Hicks was convicted and sentenced only confirms that the Pentagon’s “judicial” system is as crooked as a ...
Part 1 | Part 2
The most remarkable part of the movie Sophie Scholl: The Final Days is the courtroom scene, which is based on recently discovered German archives. Sophie and her brother Hans, along with their friend Christoph ...
Monday, April 30, 2007
Is Tenet a “True Patriot?”
Former CIA Director George Tenet is upsetting the Washington establishment with insider revelations about the Iraq War in his new book . In the book, Tenet discloses that Bush and Cheney were ...
The two speakers at our June 1-4 conference Restoring the Republic: Foreign Policy and Civil Liberties who are being highlighted this week are Richard Vague and Joanne Mariner, two people whose lives can ...
The presiding judge in the Jose Padilla case has held that the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of a speedy trial does not protect American citizens from being indefinitely incarcerated by the Pentagon.
Padilla had filed a motion to dismiss ...
Previous Conference Updates:
Speaker Spotlight: Ivand Eland and Tom DiLorenzo
Student Scholarships and Speakers Robert Scheer and Richard Ebeling
Student Scholarships and Speakers Justin Raimondo and Karen Kwiatkowski
Conference 2007 Speaker Spotlight: Lew Rockwell and Bob Higgs
Conference 2007 ...
The case of accused terrorist Jose Padilla is moving toward a jury trial on April 16 in U.S. District Court in Miami. It is still unclear whether the presiding judge in the case, Marcia Cooke, will order ...
Also see:
“The Critical Dilemma Facing Pro-War Libertarians”
“The Pentagon's Power to Arrest, Torture, and Execute Americans”
“It Can't Happen Here”
In my three articles “The Critical Dilemma Facing Pro-War Libertarians,” “The ...
There is a big immigration problem that has been growing year after year. An increasing number of American citizens are moving to Mexico, and some of them are even becoming undocumented workers. Even ...
Another quick speaker spotlight for our big June 1-4 conference Restoring the Republic: Foreign Policy and Civil Liberties in Reston, Virginia.
Two of our Saturday speakers at the conference will be Ivan Eland and Tom DiLorenzo.
Ivan is senior fellow and ...
Also see:
“The Critical Dilemma Facing Pro-War Libertarians”
“The Pentagon's Power to Arrest, Torture, and Execute Americans”
“The Islamo-Fascist Rationale for Abandoning Liberty”
In my article “The Pentagon’s Power to ...
President Bush has decided that the U.S. government is now going to talk to Syria. The reason the president has steadfastly refused to talk to Syria before now is that Syria, he has repeatedly emphasized, is a ...
Part 1 | Part 2
It has long intrigued me why the German people supported Adolf Hitler and his Nazi regime. After all, every schoolchild in America is taught that Hitler and his Nazi cohorts were the very ...
Friday, March 30, 2007
Eminent-Domain Tyranny in Communist China and the U.S.
As the federal government continues to move in a pro-empire, pro-militarist direction abroad, rattling its swords against Iran thousands of miles away from the United States, we shouldn’t forget ...
Also see:
“The Critical Dilemma Facing Pro-War Libertarians”
“It Can't Happen Here”
“The Islamo-Fascist Rationale for Abandoning Liberty”
The president and the Pentagon now wield the omnipotent power to arrest, torture, and execute ...
As I pointed out in last weeks conference update, we have received a donation that enables us to give 5 free student admissions to our June 1-4 conference Restoring the Republic: Foreign Policy and Civil Liberties.
If you are a ...
Also see:
The Pentagon's Power to Arrest, Torture, and Execute Americans
It Can't Happen Here
The Islamo-Fascist Rationale for Abandoning Liberty
The 9/11 attacks exposed a major fault line in the libertarian movement.
On one side of the divide were those ...
We have received a donation of $2,500 to cover five student scholarships for our June 1-4 conference Restoring the Republic: Foreign Policy and Civil Liberties. If you are a student ...
The schedule for our big upcoming conference Restoring the Republic: Foreign Policy and Civil Liberties on June 1-4 at the Hyatt Regency Reston in Reston, Virginia, is now online. The updated schedule contains the titles of all ...
In Star Wars, Episode 3, in response to the Senate’s grant of sweeping powers to Chancellor Palpatine, Padme declares, “So this is how liberty dies: with thunderous applause.”
The same may be said about the Military Commissions Act (MCA) that was ...
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Empire or Freedom—That’s the Choice
by Jacob G. Hornberger
We have several important articles on civil liberties in today’s FFF Email Update. The core issue is this: There is no longer any way to reconcile the powers that ...
Two weeks ago, I profiled the first two speakers James Bovard and Ralph Raico at our upcoming June 1-4 conference: Restoring the Republic: Foreign Policy and Civil Liberties at the Hyatt Regency Reston in Reston, Virginia.
Jim and Ralph ...
Every Friday, Ill be writing to give you a brief update on our June 1-4 conference, Restoring the Republic: Foreign Policy and Civil Liberties, including a mini-bio of two of our featured speakers.
On Monday morning, June 1, Jim Bovard ...
On June 1–4, Friday morning through Monday noon, The Future of Freedom Foundation is hosting one of the most exciting and important conferences of our ...
We now live in a country in which the president wields the power to send the entire nation into war on his own initiative, without the congressional declaration of war required by the Constitution.
We live in a country in ...
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Why Bush Wants War with Iran
by Jacob G. Hornberger
First of all, please don’t fail to read Chalmers Johnson’s terrific new article that we link to in today’s FFF Email Update: “Why Nemesis Is at ...
Soldiers who join the military voluntarily sign a very unusual contract with the federal government. It is a contract that effectively obligates the soldier to go anywhere in the world on orders of the ...
As the debacle of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq continues to spiral downward, sucking countless more people into its death throes, some of those whose philosophy contributed to the fiasco remain ...
Friday, December 29, 2006
Yesterday, I blogged about a book entitled A Question of Torture by Alfred W. McCoy, which details how the torture that U.S. officials have engaged in has not been because of a few bad apples ...
Dear Friend of FFF,
We need your end-of-year financial support more than ever!
With the U.S. mired in the quicksand of Iraq, with out-of-control federal expenditures causing the dollar to plunge in international markets, and with civil liberties of the American ...
Amidst all the comparisons of the Vietnam War with the occupation of Iraq, people seem to be ignoring an important question: Why not invade Vietnam too?
After all, everyone knows that Vietnam is not ...
Dear Friend of FFF:
I have never been more excited about a conference in my life. Next June 14, 2007, The Future of Freedom Foundation is holding one of the most important conferences in the ...
I could, of course, be proven wrong but my hunch is that the United States will be trapped in Iraq for the indefinite future. Despite the recent election results and increasing demand among ...
I will leave it to others to remind people of the enormous contributions that Milton Friedman, who died yesterday, made to economics and liberty during his long life. I thought instead that I ...
Having lost control over the U.S. House of Representatives and possibly also the U.S. Senate, Republicans have no one to blame but themselves. They deserved to lose.
For years, Republicans have used libertarian rhetoric in their political campaigns. We favor ...
There are two major values of public schooling, from the perspective of government officials. One, this institution provides the means by which government officials can slowly but surely, over a period of 12 ...
Thursday, November 30, 2006
Newsweek has a good summary of the current status of the Jose Padilla case. It is quite possible that government lawyers might be caught lying, as they were in the infamous Ruby Ridge case.
Responding to ...
In determining whether someone has lied, circumstantial evidence can oftentimes be as critical as direct evidence. For example, suppose someone says, “I was outside all last night and it did not rain.” A ...
Anyone who hoped that U.S. military detention of Americans accused of terrorism expired with the transfer of American citizen Jose Padilla from military custody to Justice Department custody have seen their hopes dashed by the Military ...
Ever since 9/11, U.S. officials have been telling us that the “war on terrorism” has made it necessary for the U.S. military to hijack America’s criminal justice system by taking suspected terrorists into military custody and ...
In the recently enacted Military Commissions Act, Congress acceded to President Bush’s request to remove the power of federal courts to consider petitions for writ of habeas by foreign citizens held by U.S. ...
It should come as no surprise that conservative Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly is praising the military-detention bill that President Bush recently got through Congress. In a commentary dated September 29, 2007, which was posted on the ...
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
It is impossible to overstate the significance of the Franklin Roosevelt administration’s confiscation of gold and its nullification of gold clauses in contracts. It is one of the most sordid ...
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
There’s a good reason that the deadline for filing federal income tax returns is April and Election Day is in November — so that when federal incumbents use federal “free” money to purchase votes from the ...
Given all the glorification being bestowed on three U.S. senators for displaying “principle” in standing against President Bush’s plan to amend the Geneva Convention to permit torture of detainees, followed by their quick compromise abandoning any ...
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt revolutionized the monetary system of the United States and set the nation on the road of inflationary plunder that has characterized other nations ...
Friday, September 29, 2006
Do you recall when the neocons were justifying their war of aggression on Iraq and their subsequent military occupation of the country by saying, “The Iraqi people like our occupation because we’re bringing them peace and ...
Poor President Bush. According to the New York Times, the president is frustrated by the lack of public support ... in Iraq. Apparently he’s lamenting that thousands of Iraqis were recently ...
Don’t ever suggest that federal bureaucrats are not smart. Take, for instance, the DEA, the federal agency that has the responsibility of waging the war on drugs, a war that has obviously failed to achieve its ...
You’ll recall that immediately after the 9/11 attacks, U.S. officials declared that the attacks had been motivated by the terrorists’ hatred for America’s “freedom and values.” That refrain produced the “war on terrorism” ...
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice employed an interesting metaphor to describe the death and mayhem in Lebanon. She said that the world was witnessing the “birth pangs of a new Middle East.”
Why is ...
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
Given the rising price of gold and the fact that federal spending is totally out of control, the prospect of gold confiscation and criminalizing the private ownership of ...
Thursday, August 31, 2006
Obviously becoming more desperate given the ever-increasing degeneration of the situation in Iraq and the ever-increasing defections among previously pro-war and pro-occupation GOP congressional candidates, Vice President Dick Cheney has compared the Saddam Hussein ...
Of one thing we can be certain after decades of the U.S. government’s interventionist foreign policy in the Middle East: it has not brought peace to that part of the world.
Another thing we ...
Why do I remain convinced that the American people will return to their libertarian heritage, especially given the continued trend toward socialism and interventionism in Washington, D.C.? There are three reasons: freedom, morality, and pragmatism.
Freedom
Almost everyone prizes the concept ...
Monday, July 31, 2006
In a 230-180 vote, the House of Representatives voted to increase the minimum wage, a type of law that any reputable economist will tell you does nothing more than condemn people to unemployment.
After all, look at ...
Have you ever noticed how often both sides to an economic transaction say, “Thank you” to each other? For example, when the cashier at the grocery store says to the customer, “Thank you,” ...
In a short editorial, the Detroit News asked an interesting question:
“Some war critics are suggesting Iraq terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi should have been arrested and prosecuted rather than bombed into oblivion. ...
After several consecutive months of bad news for U.S. officials — the Marine massacre at Haditha, the disclosure of secret CIA renditions and torture camps in former Soviet-bloc countries, the weekly deaths of American troops, and ...
Immediately after the 9/11 attacks, U.S. officials announced that the terrorists were motivated by anger and hatred for American “freedoms and values.”
In other words, the terrorists hated the First Amendment and rock and ...
A few years ago, I was delivering a lecture on the Constitution to an assembly consisting of a couple hundred high-school students. I made the following observation, which threw the students into an uproar: “The First Amendment to the ...
Friday, June 30, 2006
Ever since the 9/11 attacks, The Future of Freedom Foundation has not wavered in its firm opposition to the Pentagon’s torture camp and its kangaroo military tribunals that it set up in Guantanamo Bay, ...
If there was ever a charge against the U.S. government on which most foreigners would agree, it is the charge of hypocrisy.
Most Americans continue to view their federal government as a beloved parent, one who ...
Writing about the Zacarias Moussaoui case in the Washington Times, Suzanne Fields displays one of the major maladies that typify conservatives — their propensity to create their own realities with respect ...
Uh, oh! A new study reveals that “fears that the deadly strain of bird flu would move through Africa and Europe in flocks of wild birds have so far proven unfounded....” That means ...
I’m always intrigued by people who complain that Latino immigrants who don’t learn English aren’t “assimilating” within American society.
Consider my hometown of Laredo, Texas, where I was practicing law in the 1970s. The ...
Amidst all the discussion and debate about whether President Bush has violated the law by ordering the National Security Agency (NSA) to record telephone conversations, we must not overlook an important fact: the United States is now traveling in ...
Wednesday, May 31, 2006
In a speech to a friendly audience at West Point, President Bush announced that the “war on terrorism” would ultimately rival the Cold War in its length and difficulty.
The corollary, which Bush didn’t mention, ...
One of the fascinating aspects of the Iraq War has been the way in which some people have permitted their sense of reality to shift and mutate as circumstances have changed.
Recall that the primary ...
The ideas and principles expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution brought into existence the greatest, freest, and most prosperous nation in history. It is to the restoration of those principles of liberty that The Future of ...
The Conservative:
I’m a conservative. I believe in individual liberty, free markets, private property, and limited government, except for:
1. Social Security;
2. Medicare;
3. Medicaid;
4. Welfare;
5. Drug laws;
6. Public schooling;
7. Federal grants;
8. Economic regulations;
9. Minimum-wage laws and price ...
The trouble with liberals is twofold: They have a horrible blind spot with respect to moral principles and they have an abysmal understanding of economic principles. Of course, I’m referring to “liberals” in ...
Friday, April 28, 2006
An article in yesterday’s New York Times about Vietnam holds a valuable lesson about U.S. foreign policy and the U.S. government’s related policy of trying to isolate the American people from the rest of ...
Once again, the federal government is proposing immigration “reforms” to address the immigration woes that confront our country. The proposals in Congress include extending a fortified “fence” (for some reason, government officials ...
Pardon me for asking an indelicate question. It’s a question, however, that is staring everyone in the face but hardly anyone, especially those in the mainstream media, wants to ask it. Here’s the question: If we’re ...
Some 30 years ago, I celebrated Christmas in a detention center outside my hometown of Laredo, Texas. The center was entirely devoted to holding illegal aliens, almost all of whom were from Mexico. Before I share this experience with ...
U.S. officials become angry and indignant when someone compares the Bush administration’s policies to those of the Hitler regime. Even government officials at the local level get upset over the comparison, as reflected ...
The trouble with conservatives is that they fail to live the principles of freedom that they expound. The problem, however, is not simply that conservatives set high standards and then fail to meet them after striving to do so. ...
Friday, March 31, 2006
It’s amusing to watch those members of Congress who claim, on the one hand, that the U.S. government invaded Iraq to help the Iraqi people, while, at the same time, are doing everything they can to ...
Here we go again. The reform game. In the wake of the federal government’s disastrous response to Hurricane Katrina, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff is unveiling “reforms” that will ensure that ...
Conservatives never cease to fascinate me, given their professed devotion to “freedom, free enterprise, and limited government” and their ardent support of policies that violate that principle. One of the most prominent examples is the ...
When U.S. officials condemn the violence arising out of the anti-Mohammed cartoons published by the European press, they fail to recognize that the anger in the Middle East goes a lot deeper than the ...
Hardly a week goes by without some free-market think tank or foundation’s publishing an analysis of some government program, pointing out its inevitable “waste, fraud, and abuse” and then issuing what has become ...
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
I wonder how U.S. officials reacted to the leaked draft of a report on Mexico’s “dirty war,” which was waged in part during the presidential regime of Luis Echeverria (1780-76) and three other Mexican ...
After singing the praises of democracy all over the world, not to mention bombing, killing, and maiming people in the name of spreading it, the overwhelming win in Palestinian elections by Hamas, which U.S. ...
Osama bin Laden undoubtedly infuriated President Bush with his most recent audiotape, which was played last week on Aljazeera, for four reasons:
First, bin Laden’s tape serves as a reminder to the American people that he is ...
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 ...
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
Quietly, Congress has once again bowed to the Pentagon and taken another fateful step toward military rule in America. The Washington Post reports that in a “little notice provision of the National Defense Authorization ...
Dear Friends of FFF,
As you may know, Freedom Daily contributor Doug Bandow was the subject of a Business Week story last week, which detailed payments he had received from Washington, ...
Dear Friend of FFF:
Sometimes people say that the situation in America is so far gone that there is no way that we can turn things around and restore individual liberty, free markets, and a constitutional republic to our land. ...
The primary function of the federal government these days is to help out others with federal welfare assistance. The assistance is dispensed in a variety of ways — directly, in the form of a money payment (Social Security); indirectly, ...
Saturday, December 31, 2005
Our government is mired in such wrongful conduct as torture, denial of due process, denial of jury trials, spying on Americans, warrantless recording of citizens’ telephone calls, military interference with the criminal justice system, military denigration ...
After U.S. troops failed to find weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) in Iraq, which had been the Bush administration’s primary reason for invading Iraq, one of the president’s alternative rationales for his war ...
Don’t let anyone ever tell you that President Bush isn’t a brilliant politician, one who has mastered the psychological intricacies of the welfare-warfare state that conservatives and liberals have imported to our nation. ...
One of the long-standing debates within the libertarian movement involves the Fourteenth Amendment. Some argue that it is detrimental to the cause of freedom because it expands the power of the federal ...
Wednesday, November 30, 2005
Sen. Hillary Clinton is among the growing number of congressional Democrats who are having second thoughts about the president’s war on Iraq. In a 1600-word email to her constituents, Clinton said, ''I take responsibility ...
How often do we hear the claim that American troops “defend our freedoms”? The claim is made often by U.S. officials and is echoed far and wide across the land by television commentators, newspaper ...
Some people remain mystified as to why Hillary Clinton and other Democratic members of Congress have supported the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
What’s the mystery?
After the infamous WMDs that the United ...
A recent decision by Southwest Airlines to throw two passengers, a husband and wife, off a flight holds a valuable lesson about private-property rights, censorship, and the Bill of Rights.
The reason the couple ...
Every U.S. soldier takes an express and solemn oath to “support and defend the Constitution.” That oath, however, is a sham because the troops do not support or defend the Constitution. Instead, when it ...
More than two years ago, I wrote a series of essays entitled “Obedience to Orders,” in which I suggested that graduates of the professional military academies were much more likely to blindly obey ...
As the situation in Iraq continues to deteriorate, an increasing number of Americans are now questioning the wisdom of President Bush’s decision to invade. While the primary reason for people’s increased level of dissatisfaction is the number of U.S. ...
Monday, October 31, 2005
Some people are suggesting that Scooter Libby’s allegedly false testimony to a federal grand jury was no big deal and possibly shouldn’t even be charged, at least since the grand jury didn’t charge an underlying crime.
They’re ...
FFF ALERT:
We just received a matching-gift offer of $10,000 from an FFF donor to help us with our radio-outreach program, which is explained in my letter below. Our supporter has committed to match ...
Among the most tragic scenes in the Hurricane Katrina disaster was that of the thousands of poor people — almost all of whom were African Americans — who were stranded at the New ...
A major adverse consequence of the 9/11 attacks has been a feeling of resignation that has come over some advocates of liberty. The feeling is that, given 9/11 and the “war on terrorism,” the omnipotent state is here to ...
Friday, September 30, 2005
Over the Pentagon’s objections, a federal district judge has ordered the release of Abu Ghraib photographs and videotapes that the Pentagon has been keeping secret from the American people. U.S. Senators who have viewed ...
Conservative Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson has stirred up a firestorm with his call for “taking out” Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. What’s all the fuss about? All that Robertson has done is state publicly what has long been an important ...
I don’t know how the Pentagon comes up with names for its military operations, but I do know that its recent name for a certain military operation in Iraq — “Operation New ...
Cindy Sheehan has asked President Bush an important question: Exactly what “noble cause” did her son Casey die for in Iraq? It’s a question that some Ohio parents whose children were ...
For a good example of the moral perversity of the budget-busting, pork-barrel highway bill, consider what recently happened in Bristol, Virginia. While on his annual statewide listening tour across the state, Republican Sen. George Allen ...
Understanding the true nature of a free society entails asking ourselves two basic questions: What does it actually mean to be free, and what is the legitimate ...
Wednesday, August 31, 2005
Maybe it’s too much to hope for rational economic thinking among Louisiana and Mississippi government officials, but residents in those hurricane-stricken areas ought to hope that their politicians don’t follow the lead of Hawaii politicians and ...
Iraq’s defense minister is assuring everyone that the military agreement that Iraq entered into with Iran last week does not provide that Iran would train Iraq’s troops. That job, he ...
Question: Why didn’t the terrorists strike Switzerland instead of England? After all, the two countries share the same “freedom and values,” don’t they?
Answer: The Swiss government didn’t attack Iraq. It doesn’t meddle in ...
It might be safe to say that Americans who have been supporting or pooh-poohing the torture, mistreatment, and sex abuse of detainees at the Pentagon’s infamous detention facility at Guantanamo Bay have been doing so because ...
The great methodological debate within the libertarian movement involves reform versus repeal. Libertarians are virtually unanimous in their opposition to such socialist welfare-state programs as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and public schooling, but the split occurs in how to ...
Saturday, July 30, 2005
I wonder if Martha Stewart, whom the feds convicted and punished for lying to a federal bureaucrat even though she wasn’t under oath at the time she supposedly lied, noticed the latest news about ...
Even though the Iraqi people and their ruler, Saddam Hussein, had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks, President Bush was correct in once again linking 9/11 to his invasion and occupation of ...
Max Boot, one of the most ardent boosters of the U.S. government’s invasion of Iraq and one of the most pro-empire proponents you’ll ever find, is lamenting the difficulty that military recruiters ...
A front-page article in the June 10, 2005, issue of the Los Angeles Times reported another disturbing feature about the 9/11 attacks:
A chilling new detail of U.S. intelligence failures emerged ...
A recent front-page story in the New York Times reported growing opposition among parents to the U.S. military’s efforts to contact and recruit their children to join the U.S. armed forces. ...
Without any doubt, the most dangerous threat to the freedom of the American people in our lifetime lies with what might be called the Padilla doctrine, an exercise of such raw military power that, if upheld, will totally transform ...
Thursday, June 30, 2005
Have you ever noticed that the august members of the U.S. House of Representatives, who are forever proposing a flag-burning amendment to the Constitution, never propose a Constitution-burning amendment along the same lines? You know — ...
There are four important pending U.S. terrorism legal cases, which separately and together present ominous and dangerous threats to the freedom of the American people.
The Jose Padilla case
Padilla is an American civilian ...
A friend recently sent me an article written a couple of years ago entitled “How to Destroy America,” which provided an account of a Washington, D.C., “immigration-overpopulation conference filled to capacity ...
The Constitution brought into existence the most unusual government in history. It was a government whose powers were limited to those enumerated in the document itself. If the power wasn’t enumerated, the government ...
The Oklahoma City bombing 10 years ago holds an important lesson regarding the 9/11 attacks. It is a lesson about terrorist motivation and the consequences of U.S. government policy.
After the Oklahoma City bombing, U.S. officials immediately ...
Tuesday, May 31, 2005
U.S. officials might be prematurely celebrating the death of Musab al Zarqawi, given a tape on which Zarqawi describes his wounds as minor.
The Zarqawi saga evidences the ease by which federal officials can mold ...
Republican attacks on the judiciary bring to mind what unquestionably was the fiercest attack on the independence of the federal judiciary in American history — the infamous “court-packing scheme” of Democrat President Franklin ...
Pop quiz! Two questions!
Exam Question No. 1: What two characteristics do the following things have in common?
Social Security
Medicare
Drug War
War on Terrorism
War in Iraq
Education
Budget Deficit
U.S. Dollar
Can’t figure out the answer? Here are some clues:
Far be it from me to attempt to explain why Pope John Paul II, who spoke out 56 times against President Bush’s War on Iraq, opposed the president’s war. But whatever his reasons ...
A common misconception among the American people is that their rights come from the Constitution. Even lawyers and judges are guilty of believing this, oftentimes suggesting that whether a right exists or not ...
Weve got a high-quality problem and we need your help.
Recently our Internet Service Provider, which has hosted our website for many years, gave us 45 days to transfer our website, including our shopping cart, to another ISP. The reason? ...
Saturday, April 30, 2005
One of the interesting twists of fate in Iraq involves Bush versus Bush with respect to the regime that would rule Iraq.
After U.S. military forces under Bush I ousted Saddams forces from Kuwait in the Persian ...
Contrary to popular opinion, the Schiavo case does not involve “judicial murder” or even euthanasia or assisted suicide. Instead, it is a case that turns on a factual determination in a court of ...
Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, is a smart man. Such being the case, why isn’t he able to recognize the real solution to the woes of public schooling?
Gates recently published an op-ed ...
My article “Why Save Social Security?” generated so much email, both pro and con, that I thought I would share some of the comments with you, along with my response to ...
When U.S. citizen Ahmed Abu Ali was recently returned to the United States to face criminal charges for terrorism, after some two years of detention in Saudi Arabia without being charged with a crime, ...
The feds are very upset with Walter Anderson, whom they’re accusing of being the “biggest tax cheat in American history.” They say he evaded taxes on $450 million in income, although he can’t be ...
In their desire to reform or save Social Security, some advocates of free enterprise display a reluctance to openly call for the repeal or dismantling of Social Security or even to suggest that ...
According to CNN, unnamed U.S. officials have branded the charge of Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chavez, that the U.S. government plans to oust him from office through assassination as “ridiculous.”
Ridiculous?
Maybe those ...
As I have been writing for the past two years, it is impossible to overstate the importance of the Jose Padilla case. The power assumed by the U.S. military and the Bush administration in ...
Like the Sixth Amendment, the Eighth Amendment deals with the administration of criminal justice. The Eighth Amendment reads as follows:
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
This is how ...
Thursday, March 31, 2005
According to the Pioneer Press, Dan Gartrell, a former Head Start teacher at Red Lake High School in Minnesota, said public-school student killer Jeff Weise
“would have been just fine if teachers ‘had time to ...
Unfortunately, the CIA “success” in Iran, which produced the CIA’s ouster of Iran’s democratically elected prime minister, bred a CIA “success” in another part of the world, Latin America. One year after the 1953 coup in Iran, ...
Are you familiar with the big “shock” that neoconservatives have experienced over the financial scandal arising out of the infamous “oil-for-food” government program, which was the subject of an investigative report ...
My very first exposure to libertarianism was provided by Ayn Rand, whose 100th birthday is being celebrated today.
One afternoon in the fall of 1974, I was sitting around watching television. At the ...
Among the legitimate purposes of government is the punishment of those who violate the rights of others through the commission of violent or forceful acts, such as murder, rape, robbery, theft, burglary, or trespass. As the Framers understood, however, ...
Monday, February 28, 2005
U.S. Attorney Paul J. McNulty, who is representing the government in the Abu Ali case (the case in which U.S. officials kept U.S. citizen Abu Ali in a Saudi jail for 20 months), should be given ...
When Iranians took U.S. officials hostage in the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979, Americans were mystified and angry, not being able to comprehend how Iranians could be so hateful toward U.S. ...
Last Wednesday, some two months after the U.S. presidential election, U.S. officials formally ended their two-year search for Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Perhaps this will finally put an end ...
While some people might believe that those on the Left wing of the political spectrum pose the bigger threat to the freedom and well-being of the American people, nothing could be further from the truth. Today, ...
Isn’t a central argument among those who argue for the continuation of America’s premier socialist program, Social Security, that Americans cannot be trusted to voluntarily take care of the needs of their elderly ...
The Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads in part as follows:
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the ...
Monday, January 31, 2005
While President Bush and the Pentagon continue their march around the world establishing “democracy” through military invasions and occupations, Americans would be wise to focus on democracy at home.
For example, yesterday’s New York Times
Stung by the suggestion that “we” (please note the quotation marks) are stingy because “we” (quotation marks again) were sending only $15 million to the tsunami victims, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell ...
In the wake of unrestrained U.S. federal spending, U.S. conservatives are no longer talking so loudly about how they brought down the Soviet Union — by making it spend the nation into ...
Amidst all the hubbub over Bernard Kerik’s decision to remove himself from consideration as director of Homeland Security owing to his reported hiring of an illegal-immigrant nanny, no one, including the press, ...
One of the most popularly held beliefs in American society is that state licensing of attorneys is necessary to ensure that they are competent. But you’d have a hard time convincing people accused ...
One of the bedrocks of a free society is a system of private property. The concept of economic liberty is founded not only on principles of free enterprise but also on the principle that people have the right to ...
Friday, December 31, 2004
In today’s FFF Email Update, we link to an interesting article in the drug-war section entitled “A Taste of the System” which details one of the perverse consequences of the ...
President Bush’s recent trip to South America provides a valuable foreign-policy lesson for Americans.
The president was greeted in Santiago, Chile, by some 30,000 angry demonstrators. But it was not only Bush’s invasion and war of aggression ...
Victory! The unelected dictatorial Iraqi regime of CIA-designee Iyad Allawi, with the assistance of the most powerful police force in the world, has killed 600 “insurgents” in Falluja, flattened and “pacified” ...
One of the most deeply rooted principles in American jurisprudence is the concept of due process of law, which is enshrined in the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: “No person shall . . . be deprived of life, ...
Tuesday, November 30, 2004
The last few weeks have not been kind to sons of prominent bureaucrats.
First, Howard Stern brought to public attention that Michael Powell, the head of the FCC, the American version of the Taliban’s Ministry for the ...
In the wake of his reelection, President Bush has announced that he remains committed to bringing democracy to the Middle East, which includes the indefinite military occupation of Iraq. In the presidents mind indeed, in ...
In determining whether the invasion of Iraq has been in the interests of America, two questions naturally arise:
One, has the invasion made Americans safer from terrorism? and
Two, has the invasion made Americans ...
Learning that the U.S. Supreme Court had upheld the rights of habeas corpus, right to counsel, and due process of law in the Yaser Hamdi, Jose Padilla, and Shafiq Rasul cases, U.S. ...
President George W. Bush’s handpicked investigator charged with investigating whether there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has now rendered his final report: There were no weapons of mass ...
Surrendering to the authority of the U.S. Supreme Court, the Pentagon and the Justice Department have decided to release “unlawful combatant” and accused “terrorist” Yaser Esam Hamdi from the bowels of ...
The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is rooted in the horrific government abuses arising from “general warrants” in English history and “writs of assistance” in British colonial history in America. With the aim of protecting the American people ...
October 30, 2004
Like a bad dream, Osama bin Laden is back, having released a videotape stating that terrorism against the United States is rooted in U.S. government foreign policy in the Middle East rather than in hatred ...
As one who refused to vote for some 20 years, I wield a credential in the debate currently taking place in libertarian circles as to whether people should vote or not vote. (See a sampling of the vote vs. ...
Sometimes the perverse consequences of federal government policies and programs are evident immediately and sometimes they take a bit longer. For example, at the end of World War I, statists, imperialists, and interventionists were in ecstasy ...
The Pentagon’s decision to admit hearsay evidence at its military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay flies in the face of one of the most important principles in the administration of criminal justice ...
The Third Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides that “no Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed ...
September 30, 2004
Our nation’s capital, Washington, D.C., is back in the news.
The city has just agreed to use its taxing power to plunder and loot D.C. residents to line the pockets of the baseball owners who have ...
It feels good when a public official, especially the president of the United States, speaks the truth, which is what happened on Monday when President George W. Bush uttered words that The Future of Freedom Foundation ...
It would be difficult to find a better example of the moral bankruptcy and hypocrisy of U.S. foreign policy — and why it has stirred so much anger, hatred, and terrorism against ...
Arguably, the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution should have been made first in the Bill of Rights because without the right to keep and bear arms, such rights as freedom of speech and freedom of the press would ...
Tuesday, August 31, 2004
Some pro-Vietnam War veterans are taking John Kerry to task for his antiwar positions after he returned from Vietnam. What these guys fail to understand is simply because soldiers fight in a war doesn’t make the ...
The Pentagon is learning that things work differently here in the United States than they do in Iraq. In this country, when the judiciary issues an order, the Pentagon is required to ...
President Bush claims that his war on Iraq has made Americans safer. His primary rationale is that by removing from power a foreign dictator who was supposedly bent on acquiring weapons of mass ...
Now that the Supreme Court has ruled that Yaser Hamdi and Shafiq Rasul (and other Guantanamo detainees) are entitled to seek habeas corpus relief in U.S. federal district courts to challenge their ...
When the Constitution was being proposed to our American ancestors in 1787, many people expressed the concern that the document failed to specify the fundamental rights of the people that would be immune from assault by federal officials.
The response ...
Saturday, July 31, 2004
Well, well, well—surprise, surprise—millions of dollars in Iraqi oil money that have supposedly been used to “rebuild” Iraq are unaccounted for, resulting in 27 criminal investigations for fraud—against U.S. officials. The Los Angeles Times
With the Supreme Court’s delivery of severe blows this week against the assumption and exercise of certain dictatorial powers by the president and the Pentagon, every American should feel freer, safer, and more secure. While the Court avoided issuing a ...
Given all the indignant neoconservative “outrage” over the financial misdeeds arising from the UN’s socialist oil-for-food program during the 1990s, when the UN embargo was killing untold numbers of ...
The debacle in Iraq might well provide a watershed period in the history of our country a period in which the American people engage in deep reflection on the problems facing our nation and reevaluation of them, not only ...
Critics of the federal government’s two-year incarceration of accused terrorist Jose Padilla without charges or trial correctly point out that the government has violated Padilla’s right to counsel and his rights to ...
Our nation is in deep trouble morally, economically, and politically. Practically everything in which the federal government has embroiled itself for the last several decades is in crisis education, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, inflation and the dollar, welfare, government ...
With military manpower shortages arising out of the war in Iraq, there is talk in the air that the federal government might reinstitute the draft, most likely sometime after the November election. Such a ...
Wednesday, June 30, 2004
The neoconservative commentators who believe that patriotism means blind support of government, especially during times of war, are stunned, shocked, and paralyzed over the Supreme Court’s decisions in the Hamdi, Guantanamo, and Padilla cases because they ...
A British citizen, Jamal Harith, who was held in Cuba for two years without trial by Pentagon officials, is alleging that U.S. troops committed the same kinds of
abuse in Cuba that they ...
Those who think that the U.S. Constitution is an antiquated document with no relevance to modern times might want to consider how federal officials would operate in the absence of constitutional restraints. ...
It’s nice that the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee has summoned the secretary and undersecretary of Defense and a string of generals to testify about policies and procedures established by the ...
Spain has now completed the withdrawal of Spanish troops from Iraq. Other countries that are following suit include the Dominican Republic and Honduras; El Salvador and Poland are contemplating doing the same. ...
The sex-abuse, rape, and torture scandal at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq might explain why U.S. officials have steadfastly opposed joining other nations in the formation of an ...
Ever since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the demise of the Soviet empire, it has been an article of faith among many Americans that an extensive overseas military empire and a massive domestic military-industrial complex are vitally ...
Monday, May 31, 2004
Today — Memorial Day — is a good time to begin reflecting on the future direction of our country, especially given the failure of the most recent foreign war waged by the federal government. I say ...
Although the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals paid the obligatory lip service to the Sixth Amendment in the Zacharias Moussaoui case, in an audacious act of judicial activism, its ruling effectively rewrote and negated the Sixth Amendment ...
Isnt it fascinating that so many conservatives steadfastly remain committed to the imperial role that the United States now plays in the world, even while claiming to support the limited-government republic of our ...
What fascinates me is how people at FOX News have convinced themselves that theyre supporting the troops while supporting the U.S. governments continued occupation of Iraq. After all, no one can honestly still claim that the troops are dying ...
In his press conference last night, President Bush said, As a proud and independent people, Iraqis do not support an indefinite occupation, and neither does America. We're not an imperial power, as nations such as Japan and Germany can ...
Well, those who were anguishing that the United States was without an official enemy after the capture of Saddam Hussein (the new Adolf Hitler) can sleep well again: America has a new ...
VIDEO: The Keys to Economic Development
Dear FFF Supporters,
I just returned from Porto Alegre, Brazil, where I delivered a speech entitled “The Keys to Economic Development” to a conference ...
Imagine that Chinese troops have invaded the United States with the stated goal of liberating the American people from the grips of the IRS, DEA, BATF, and the many other departments and agencies ...
Almost everything the federal government has touched for the last several decades is in crisis. The war on drugs: failure and destruction. Social Security: fraudulent and bankrupt. Foreign policy: led to 9/11 and massive assaults on civil liberties. Medicare ...
Friday, April 30, 2004
Two responses to my article “Is Fox News Supporting the Troops or the President?” and my rejoinders to these responses have been posted on Antiwar.com’s “Backtalk”:
Kari Mencik: “This is the most irresponsible article ...
In my March 24 article, “I Don’t Remember,” I pointed out that President Bush and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice had to be lying when they said that they could ...
Former U.S. Counterterrorism Chief Richard A. Clarke states that after he told President Bush at a meeting the day after 9/11 that al-Qaeda was responsible for the attacks, Bush responded, “I want you, as soon as ...
Lest anyone have any doubts that our federal daddy is carefully watching over his adult-children, the Food and Drug Administration has formally announced a campaign against obesity among Americans.
You remember the FDA, right? ...
So what’s wrong with the criminal conviction of Martha Stewart? She lied to federal officials, right? And it’s against the law to lie to federal officials, right? So what’s the problem?
From the ...
Whenever U.S. officials wish to demonize someone, they inevitably compare him to Adolf Hitler. The message immediately resonates with people because everyone knows that Hitler was a brutal dictator.
But how many people know how Hitler actually became a dictator? ...
Wednesday, March 31, 2004
Yesterday, President Clinton’s secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, told a group at Yale Divinity School that President Bush’s invasion of Iraq has fueled the hate of terrorist organizations against America. Too bad she didn’t ...
Last week, a federal judge in Virginia, Leonie M. Brinkema (the same judge presiding in the Zacarias Moussaoui case) acquitted a man whom the feds were prosecuting for terrorism. The judge dismissed ...
Democrats are taking President Bush to task for missing a year of monthly meetings in the National Guard, which he presumably joined in an attempt to avoid being sent to fight in the Vietnam War. Apparently believing that skipping ...
A small article on page A12 of the January 29 issue of the New York Times is revealing with respect to the extent of the power of the military-industrial complex in American life. ...
Amidst all the hubbub among the Democratic Party candidates for president over who supported President Bush’s invasion of Iraq and who didn’t, have you noticed that not one of them has brought up ...
Part 1 | Part 2
By 1996, an increasing number of people were speaking out against the sanctions against Iraq, which motivated U.S. officials to embrace a diplomatic fig leaf that would protect them from adverse public opinion while, ...
Saturday, February 28, 2004
British Prime Minister Tony Blair is angry and outraged over the public disclosure by his former cabinet member, Clare Short, that British officials secretly and surreptitiously spied on UN Secretary General Kofi ...
Well, no one can ever say that the retired army general and U.S. secretary of state, Colin Powell, doesn’t have gall. In Moscow, Powell criticized the Russian government for “certain developments in Russian politics and foreign ...
In view of President Bush’s State of the Union address, I’ve got a great idea as to how the president can guarantee himself reelection — dump Dick Cheney as his vice-presidential running mate and select Bill ...
Those who favor the U.S. government’s role as international policeman must be ecstatic that the feds are now expanding their jurisdiction in their decades-long war on drugs to include the entire world. How so? Well, despite ...
Saturday, January 31, 2004
Given the fact that thousands of innocent people, including more than 500 American soldiers, have been killed in the effort to “disarm Saddam” of weapons of mass destruction that he didn’t possess, in retrospect wouldn’t it ...
Part 1 | Part 2
Immediately after the September 11 terrorist attacks, President Bush and other U.S. officials announced that the attacks had been motivated by hatred for America’s “freedom and values.” Nothing could have been further from the ...
This past year has been our most productive yet in terms of spreading ideas on liberty. It has also been one of our most difficult in terms of the financial resources that are necessary to sustain our endeavors. Thus, ...
Subjective value theory in economics holds that value is subjective — that is, that the value of any item, like beauty, lies in the eyes of the beholder. Moreover, value is comparative, rather ...
Two U.S. courts of appeal have dealt severe blows to the Pentagon’s contempt for the U.S. Constitution and its assumption of dictatorial powers as part of its so-called war on terrorism. The Second ...
In his official statement celebrating the capture of Saddam Hussein, President Bush announced that “the former dictator of Iraq will face the justice he denied to millions.” Notably lacking from the president’s statement, however, was whether ...
Who would ever dream that the economic fallacies to which U.S. officials subscribe could turn deadly? Yet that’s what recently happened in Baghdad, where an American GI was shot dead while guarding ...
No American should be too enthusiastic about the Pentagon’s decision to permit accused terrorist Yaser Hamdi to speak to an attorney after some two years of incarceration in a military brig here ...
The crown jewel of the socialist welfare state in America is Social Security. Rooted in the socialist predilections of Otto von Bismarck, the iron chancellor of Germany in the late 1800s, Social Security is one of the most immoral, ...
Wednesday, December 31, 2003
Our federal daddy is once again taking care of his adult-children, this time by banning the diet and bodybuilding supplement ephedra, which daddy says is dangerous. No, adult-children cannot be expected to make this decision themselves ...
In response to an announcement that many Washington, D.C., residents would go hungry on Thanksgiving, a private company called Sodexho promptly delivered 1,000 turkeys to our nation’s capital. According to a
Forty years after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the debate over whether there was a conspiracy to kill him rages on, and the History Channels series suggesting that U.S. officials were involved in such a ...
The Pentagon has gracefully decided to reduce criminal charges brought against Army Sergeant Andreas Pogany from “cowardice” to “dereliction of duty.” That’s right — cowardice is a criminal offense under U.S. ...
Those who are still operating under the quaint and innocent notions that the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution are antiquated technicalities in the new era of the so-called ...
Recently the Ten Commandments were embroiled in controversy in the state of Alabama, where the chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court defied a federal order to remove a stone monument containing the commandments ...
Saturday, November 29, 2003
The federal government has shut down one of the top television networks in Iraq for broadcasting a tape by Saddam Hussein. Meanwhile, federal officials are having to reconsider their plan to “turn over” Iraq ...
To: Friends and Supporters of The Future of Freedom Foundation
From: Jacob G. Hornberger, president
Subject: The Ron Paul Liberty in Media Awards 2002
We are very pleased and honored to announce that The Future of Freedom Foundations website (www.fff.org) and two ...
During his campaign, California’s governor-elect, Arnold Schwarzenegger, got himself into hot water with his praise of Adolf Hitler’s oratorical skills. Maybe he should have reminded people of a dark secret that went ...
In a major reversal of position, it seems that the Washington Post has abandoned its position that the Justice Department should remove Zacarias Moussaoui from the jurisdiction of a federal district court ...
The Bush administration is at it once again — engaging in a new
public-relations campaign to scare the American people half to death with the possibility of terrorist attacks with weapons of mass destruction and to ...
Did you know that the United States has the highest per capita incarceration rate in the world, that the U.S. inmate population has quadrupled since 1980 to two million people, that $46 billion a ...
Gun-rights advocates sometimes defend the Second Amendment in terms of the right to defend themselves from criminals and the right to hunt. Those things are, of course, important but they miss the real purpose of the right to keep ...
Friday, October 31, 2003
Dear Friends of FFF,
Last week I traveled to St. Louis, Missouri, to deliver a speech entitled “The Moral Bankruptcy of U.S. Foreign Policy” to about 60 students at Washington University. What a great time that was! ...
Is it possible that the “We’re here to establish democracy” rationale being used to justify the continued occupation of Iraq is just as false and deceptive as the rationale that Iraq’s “weapons ...
Horrors! Sen. Edward Kennedy has thrown the Washington establishment into turmoil by making the shocking observation that the Bush administration is using U.S. foreign aid to bribe foreign governments to support its occupation of Iraq. “My ...
Five states have declared a state of emergency as a result of Hurricane Isabel. Citizens in the affected states should hope that government officials don't do what they often do during such emergencies — ...
As is widely known, the federal spigots in foreign affairs, as in domestic affairs, are now wide open: hundreds of billions of dollars will be spent in Iraq, not to mention the ...
In a 15-minute speech explaining why the American people should support the occupation of Iraq, President Bush offered another phony justification for the U.S. government’s invasion of Iraq: to fight the “war on ...
Labeling resisters to the U.S. occupation of Iraq as “terrorists” obfuscates an important point — that there are people in Iraq and all over the Middle East who hate the United States ...
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
Unfortunately, all too many Americans have swallowed — hook, line, and sinker — the Bush administration’s claim that the Iraqi people are now free. The U.S. invasion of Iraq has ...
Tuesday, September 30, 2003
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote an article entitled “Federal Spending Threatens Our Security,” in which I pointed out that uncontrolled federal spending threatens the economic security and well-being of the American people. Since ...
Several days ago, WorldNetDaily, a conservative website, published an article entitled “Libertarians Who Loathe Israel,” by Ilana Mercer (email), a self-described libertarian who is a WND columnist. In her article, Mercer wrote ...
The Declaration of Independence
In 1775 at Concord and Lexington, a small group of British citizens living in America took up arms against their own government, starting the American Revolution. Other British citizens chose to support their ...
Why has Congress been relatively quiet on the executive branch’s deception about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction? The answer is easy: By abrogating its constitutional responsibility regarding its constitutional power to declare war, Congress made ...
Given that conservatives threw in the towel on opposing socialism and central planning decades ago, it’s not surprising that they rarely raise moral arguments any more in their “free-market” articles.
It’s even more ...
Speaking of lies, we might want to remind ourselves of the one that was issued after the September 11 attacks — that those attacks were motivated by hatred for America’s “freedom and values” rather than by ...
U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema is expected to issue a critical sanction any day in the federal criminal case prosecution of Zacharias Moussaoui, who is charged with having conspired to participate in the September 11 terrorist ...
Despite the fact that the U.S. government so far is not applying military tribunals to U.S. citizens, the stakes have now gone up for the American people. What began as a life-and-death issue for the federal ...
Saturday, August 30, 2003
An article in the Atlanta Constitution-Journal points out that love is exposing the confusion within U.S. officials as to whether they invaded Iraq to liberate the Iraqi people or to occupy the country.
Two Iraqi ...
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
Most Americans are familiar with the political and civil aspects of liberty. They include such rights as freedom of speech and expression, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, the right ...
In claiming that 16 controversial words in his State of the Union address last January were technically correct, the president is implying that he didn’t actually deceive — or intend to deceive — the American people.
Nothing ...
Have you noticed how many Americans get upset over the comparisons that are increasingly being made between the United States and National Socialist Germany? After all, it’s not as though we’re living ...
Let’s not mince words: The “freedom” that Americans celebrate today is opposite to the freedom that Americans celebrated on, say, July 4, 1890.
Think about it: In 1890, Americans were celebrating a way ...
The following is the preface to The Failure of America’s Foreign Wars, published by The Future of Freedom Foundation in 1996.
For over one hundred years, the American way of life was unique: no income taxation, ...
Thursday, July 31, 2003
In view of the guerrilla warfare that is being waged against the U.S. military occupation of Iraq, perhaps this is a good time to remind ourselves of how President Lincoln dealt with a similar wartime situation ...
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
Given that U.S. forces have failed to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, U.S. officials have focused on an alternative justification for having invaded that country — to free ...
To: FFF Friends and Supporters
From:
Jacob G. Hornberger
President
The Future of Freedom Foundation
11350 Random Hills Road
Suite 800
Fairfax, VA 22030
Tel: (703) 934-6101
Fax: (703) 352-8678
jhornberger@fff.org
www.fff.org
Dear Friends and Supporters of FFF:
Im writing to give you an update on all the good things ...
Now, tell me if I have this right: It doesn’t really matter whether President Bush and his associates lied about Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction” or exaggerated the danger — even though ...
There is little difficulty, and there is often very little gain, in declaring the existence of a right to personal freedom. The true difficulty is to secure its enforcement. The Habeas Corpus Acts have achieved this ...
As everyone knows, the federal government has seized upon the September 11 terrorist attacks to expand its power to harass and spy on both immigrants and American citizens. “We must give up some liberty to protect ...
The federal government has announced that it intends to go forward with military tribunals for trials of suspected terrorists. The trials will not be held in the United States, however, but instead ...
The announcement that the U.S. government had relied on fake and false evidence in the attempt to secure approval of its invasion of Iraq was, by and large, met by a collective yawn from the American people, especially the ...
Monday, June 30, 2003
Dear Friends and Supporters of FFF,
As everyone knows, these are challenging times for the advocates of liberty and limited government. Which means that we just have to work a little harder to achieve our goal of ...
Given the failure of U.S. forces to find Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, the newest justification for the president’s invasion of Iraq has become the mass graves of Iraqis killed by Saddam ...
The Mists of Falsehoods
Wild Weapons Chase
Iraqi Arsenal Now Seems a Phantom Menace
Weapons Failure
Weapons of Mass Doo-Daa
The Absence of Weapons, ...
Prior to and during President Bush's recent war on Iraq, there were multitudes of old American men (i.e., men more than 40 years old) who eagerly supported sending American troops into battle. ...
The federal governments response to the deaths of those 18 illegal Latin American immigrants in South Texas was predictable because its the same response that the feds have made every time such a tragedy has occurred.
The governments ...
Monday’s terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia brings to mind the words of the famous New York Yankee catcher Yogi Berra: “It’s déjà vu all over again.”
During the 1980s, Iraqi president Saddam Hussein was a friend and ...
It really doesn’t matter whether U.S. military forces now find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq or not. From a moral standpoint, it’s too late for that.
As everyone knows, in the run-up ...
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 ...
Saturday, May 31, 2003
The feds have finally secured the conviction of Fabio Ochoa, who was a leader of one of the world’s most famous drug cartels in the 1980s -- the Medellin cartel, which was based in Colombia.
Assistant U.S. ...
Responding to the massive looting committed by Iraqis as part of their newly found “freedom,” Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld observed, “Stuff happens. It’s untidy. And freedom’s untidy. And free people are free ...
Iraqi POW Death Under Scrutiny" CBS News.
Rules of War Apply to Us Too, by Robyn E. Blumner St. Petersburg Times.
Guantanamo example may hurt POWs, by Ivan Roman Orlando ...
Fidel Castro recently did us the favor of showing how a communist regime wages a “war on terrorism.” Three accused hijackers were captured on the high seas attempting to escape communist tyranny and come to the ...
Let me see if I have this right. In the United States of America:
1. The president now has the unrestricted power to declare war against a country that has not attacked the ...
Amidst all the U.S. government outrage over Fidel Castro’s tyrannical treatment of Cuban citizens, U.S. officials unfortunately remain steadfastly committed to working with Castro to forcibly repatriate Cuban refugees back into Castro’s ...
Amidst all the U.S. government outrage over Fidel Castro's tyrannical treatment of Cuban citizens, U.S. officials unfortunately remain steadfastly committed to working with Castro to forcibly repatriate Cuban refugees back into Castro's communist tyranny. For ...
During the three weeks of the war on Iraq, Americans seemed to have been discomforted by accounts of Iraqis killed or injured, including both enemy soldiers and civilians. Perhaps that’s why the ...
Model Amendments
to the Iraqi Constitution of 2003
Whereas, the U.S. government has waged war on our land in which it has sacrificed the lives of dozens of its soldiers and those of thousands of ...
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Reader Responses | Jacob Hornberger vs. the Brass | Jacob Hornberger’s VMI Valedictory Addresss
To: Mr. Paul Maini
Executive Vice President
VMI Alumni Association
pmaini@vmiaa.org
Dear Mr. Maini:
My ...
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Reader Responses | Jacob Hornberger vs. the Brass | Jacob Hornberger’s VMI Valedictory Addresss
From Colonel #1 (Pentagon) to Hornberger:
Sorry, but I don't find ...
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Reader Responses | Jacob Hornberger vs. the Brass | Jacob Hornberger’s VMI Valedictory Addresss
The following emails are responses to Jacob Hornberger’s series "Obedience to ...
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Reader Responses | Jacob Hornberger vs. the Brass | Jacob Hornberger’s VMI Valedictory Addresss
Last week we posted my article Obedience to Orders, Part ...
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 ...
Wednesday, April 30, 2003
In the wake of televised tours of Saddam Hussein’s palaces, much ado has been made about his luxurious lifestyle, which might imply that the consequences of the economic sanctions that the U.S. government has enforced ...
Iraq: Paying the Price, by John Pilger
Cool War, by Joy Gordon
Iraqs Children Suffer As War Looms, by Caroline Hawley
Albright's Tiny Coffins, by ...
Iraq Used Many Suppliers for Nuke Program Associated Press
Iraq Got Germs for Weapons Program from U.S. in 80s by Matt Kelley (dead link: article no longer posted on line.)
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Reader Responses | Jacob Hornberger vs. the Brass | Jacob Hornberger’s VMI Valedictory Addresss
I couldn’t help but be struck by the photograph in the mainstream press last week in ...
President Bush’s most recent raison du jour, I mean reason of the day (sorry!), for invading Iraq is to “liberate” the Iraqi people. That’s why the Pentagon ultimately decided to name the invasion ...
I have a confession to make: I’m not afraid of Saddam Hussein. Not a bit. I have absolutely no fear that the man is going to come and get me or that he is going ...
View the many reader responses to this article.
Last weekend’s announcement that the U.S. government had relied on fake and false evidence in the attempt to secure approval of its upcoming invasion of Iraq was, by and ...
Last February, Robert Higgs published an essay on LewRockwell.com entitled “Nuke France”.
Higgs has it all wrong. We need to nuke Germany instead.
After all, let’s not forget: The Germans started both world wars! And everybody knows ...
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | ...
Its all fine and good that Trent Lott is no longer Senate majority as a result of his praise for Strom Thurmonds 1948 race for president, in which Thurmond endorsed segregation. Its also fine and good that Lotts fellow ...
On the eve of the U.S. government’s upcoming invasion of Iraq, we might want to ponder some important points:
1. The invasion will be illegal under the supreme law of the United States. Our Constitution, which is the law ...
The Iraqi government is throwing Fox News out of Iraq, apparently in retaliation for the U.S. government’s expulsion of a correspondent for the Iraqi News Agency (INA) for engaging in ...
In the midst of massive increases in federal spending and an enormous budget deficit, President Bush has proposed a large reduction ...
Isn’t the response of President Bush and other Washington officials to the NASA tragedy so very typical? Amidst charges that NASA officials have knowingly and intentionally ignored safety warnings for years, the ...
While Nazi Germany lost World War II, does that necessarily mean that we won it? Only if we ignore the specific objective of Great Britain and France when they initially declared war on Germany in 1939 and ...
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | ...
To: FFF Friends and Supporters From: Jacob G. Hornberger Subject: FFF Immigration Project Date: January 31, 2003
Whether Americans will admit it or not, American society is now being transformed in one of the most revolutionary fashions in American history. ...
President Bush’s recent advice to embattled Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez reflects Bush’s cavalier attitude toward constitutional restraints. In the midst of all the political turmoil in Venezuela, Bush, who apparently despises ...
More than a year prior to the September 11 attacks, we here at The Future of Freedom Foundation predicted that the U.S. government's interventionist foreign policy would ultimately produce terrorism on American soil:
“
Is terrorism rooted in hatred for our “freedom and values,” as the Bush administration has steadfastly maintained ever since the September 11 attacks, or is it instead rooted in a bankrupt foreign policy whose adverse effects ...
President Bush has just added another item to his smorgasbord of reasons to invade Iraq: An attack from Saddam Hussein or a surrogate of Saddam Hussein would, according to the president, “
Despite the fact that he is amassing an impressive display of military armament in the areas near Iraq, President Bush says that he still hasn’t made up his mind on whether to ...
... In other words, what I am telling you, my fellow Americans, is that the state of the Union is fine. And it will be made even better with our upcoming invasion of Iraq.
Keep your mind focused ... on ...
President Bush says he’s not going to submit to blackmail by North Korea, but apparently he has nothing against bribery because he’s now offering North Korea fuel, food, and an easing of U.S. sanctions in return ...
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | ...
Happy New Year from FFF!
As we enter this New Year, it is easy to surrender to thoughts of despair and despondency, given the prospect of perpetual war, perpetual terrorism against Americans, and perpetual governmental infringements on the civil liberties ...
President Bush made a grievous mistake by relying on a UN weapons report to go after Saddam Hussein. He should have instead required Saddam to file a federal income-tax return. It would ...
1951 — Iranian people democratically elect Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh as Iranian premier.
1953 — U.S. government, operating through the CIA, ousts Mossadegh in favor of shah of Iran, Reza Pahlavi, a cruel and tyrannical ...
No one can find a safe way out for himself if society is sweeping towards destruction. Therefore everyone, in his own interests, must thrust himself vigorously into the intellectual battle. None can stand aside with unconcern; the interests of ...
Without any shame whatsoever, President Bush has returned John Poindexter, Elliott Abrams, and Henry Kissinger to the federal government. Poindexter is in charge of “Total Information Awareness,” a government information-gathering operation straight out of George ...
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | ...
President Bush's "zero tolerance" for Iraqi violations of UN resolutions has apparently dropped to "two percent tolerance." According to administration officials, Iraqi forces have once again fired on U.S. planes patrolling the ...
President Bush’s reaction to the Iraqi parliament’s rejection of the newly enacted UN resolution authorizing renewed inspections in Iraq provides a fascinating insight into the direction in which our own nation is headed. ...
85th General Assembly
STATE OF INDIANA
House Concurrent Resolution No. 2
INDIANA needs no guardian and intends to have none. We Hoosiers — like the people of our sister states — were fooled for quite a spell with ...
Indonesian reaction to the recent bomb blast in Bali that killed 180 people is another example of the consequences of U.S. interventionist policies. According to an article in the Nov. 7 issue of the
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | ...
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | ...
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | ...
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | ...
I have great news for you! According to today’s Washington Post (March 22), world leaders meeting at a U.N. conference in Monterrey, Mexico, have come up with a new plan for ridding the world ...
The old Indian saying, “White man speaks with forked tongue” would have been more accurately expressed as, “U.S. government official speaks with forked tongue.”
In April, Hong Kong immigration officials denied Chinese-born, naturalized American ...
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | ...
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part ...
There might be one positive development arising from the U.S. government’s reaction to its failure to prevent the 9/11 attacks. The Washington Post reported today (May 29) that “the FBI will shift 480 agents from drug ...
Part 1 (June 2002) Introduction
Part 2 (July 2002) The Declaration of Independence; judicial review
Part 3 (August 2002) The ...
JUSTICE ANTONIN SCALIA is probably the smartest man on the Supreme Court. That makes him a living example of how bad political and philosophical premises can put great talent in the service ...
Immediately after the 9/11 terrorist attack, some people compared that attack to the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on 12/7/1941. It now seems that the comparisons might be more appropriate than anyone could have imagined.
Prior ...
Bowing to public pressure, the Bush administration has agreed to modify its rules for its military trials of accused terrorists captured abroad. Included among the new rules are: (1) the accused will be presumed innocent rather ...
The recently released movie Black Hawk Down raises interesting challenges to those who think theyre supporting American GIs when they support U.S. government decisions to send them into battle.
In 1993, the Clinton administration sent U.S. soldiers into the capital ...
Americans have come to believe that the IRS and the income tax are inevitable parts of our lives. After all, most everyone alive today has lived his entire life under federal income taxation.
It wasn’t always that way. For some ...
In a May 1 editorial, The Washington Post called on Cuban dictator Fidel Castro to honor a petition signed by 10,000 Cuban citizens demanding that a national referendum be called on freedom of expression, ...
The “Week in Review” section of the March 31 issue of the New York Times published an article containing a startling observation—that “today, America is no mere superpower or hegemon but a full-blown empire in the ...
Suspected pipe-bomb terrorist Luke J. Helder should be counting his lucky stars that he was captured by the American police before the U.S. military could intervene. Just ask Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who was recently the target of a ...
Jimmy Carter’s remarks during his recent trip to Cuba are a perfect reflection of the muddled mindset that characterizes both Democrats and Republicans when it comes to the subject of freedom. Carter raised ...
What’s with the love fest between U.S. officials and army generals? We have, of course, (retired) Army General Colin Powell serving as U.S. secretary of state. And we have (or will have) military tribunals manned by ...
Amidst not very much fanfare, President Bush has signed the new campaign-finance reform bill into law. This one closes the so-called soft-money loophole that permits large donations to be injected into federal campaigns through contributions to political parties.
There are ...
BOWING TO PUBLIC PRESSURE, the Bush administration has modified its rules for the trials of suspected terrorists captured abroad. Included among the new rules are: (1) the accused will be presumed innocent rather than guilty; (2) the government will ...
The U.S. government’s wars on drugs and terrorism are now coming together in Afghanistan, a nation famous for the production of opium. Prior to the Taliban regime, Afghanistan had been the world’s largest producer of poppies. ...
Excuse me for asking an indelicate question in the midst of war, but where does President Bush derive the power to send the United States into war against another nation? The question becomes increasingly important given ...
An Amish farm has come under attack from the paternalistic welfare state in Pennsylvania. According to a story in the New York Times, many Amish families are offering hungry tourists a home-cooked meal in return ...
Members of Congress are certainly licking their chops over the Enron affair. Now why would that be? Could it be that they cannot resist investigating a company that apparently lied to the public, ...
Congress has recently engaged in another flurry of activity over ampaign-finance reform. Yet, congressmen never ask a fundamental question: Why shouldn’t people be free to do whatever they want with their own money, including donating whatever amounts they want ...
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s recent admission that a U.S. raid in Afghanistan mistakenly killed 16 innocent people suggests how grateful Americans should be that their ancestors insisted on the inclusion of a Bill of Rights as ...
AFTER THE CONSTITUTION WAS RATIFIED in 1788, the states adopted the first 10 amendments, which became known as the Bill of Rights. Given the importance of the provisions in those amendments, an obvious question arises: Why didn’t the Framers ...
Wasn’t the bombing of Afghanistan supposed to make Americans safer and more secure? A just-released Gallup Poll might raise some doubts as to whether that goal is being achieved. Gallup conducted face-to-face interviews with 10,000 people ...
Included among the Bush administration’s new rules for the trials of suspected terrorists captured abroad is the right of the accused (or his attorney) to confront and cross-examine witnesses, a right guaranteed to ...
With President Bush's characterization of Iran, Iraq, and North Korea as an “axis of evil,” an obvious question arises: What makes a nation evil? Is it the evil nature of the ruler in a nation? Or is ...
WOULD SOMEONE MIND telling me whether the war in Afghanistan is over or not? U.S. government officials seem to be proclaiming victory.
But if the war has been won, then why is the U.S. government continuing to bomb Afghanistan, conduct ...
Washington, D.C., officials are shocked over a Washington Times report detailing an extraordinary increase in violence in D.C. public schools. The Times reported that “the number of assaults with deadly weapons in the ...
This article was originally published in the January 2002 edition of The World and I.
In times of crisis, it is sometimes wise and constructive for people to return to first principles and ...
After the Constitution was ratified in 1788, the states adopted the first ten amendments, which became known as the Bill of Rights. Given the importance of the provisions in those amendments, an obvious question arises: ...
The change that took place in the United States in the 1930s and 1940s was as remarkable as the Russian Revolution which had taken place decades before. Through his domestic and international New Deal philosophy ...
The unfolding developments in the John Walker Lindh case and the Guantanamo "detainees" situation reflect why Americans should be so grateful to our early ancestors for demanding the first ten amendments to the Constitution as a ...
Since the U.S. government's bombing of Afghanistan has failed to bring Osama bin Laden to justice "dead or alive," the U.S. government has now decided to permanently extend its empire to that part of the world. ...
LAST SUMMER, I had one of the most uplifting experiences I have had in the many years that I have been advancing libertarianism. My week at Francisco Marroquin University in Guatemala will always rank near the top in terms ...
THE GREAT GERMAN THINKER Johann Wolfgang von Goethe once observed, “No one is as hopelessly enslaved as the person who thinks he’s free.” Goethe’s words might sum up the plight of the American people, a plight that was recently ...
As FFF friends and supporters know, we have taken a firm stand against President Bush's military tribunals. See, for example, "Military Tribunals: Another Step Away from Our Principles" by Jacob G. Hornberger and "Emergencies, Military ...
Have you ever noticed how advocates of the regulated society never admit that their regulations have failed? Consider the Enron case, in which one of the biggest companies in the United States has gone ...
President Bush's plan to form military tribunals to punish suspected terrorists is one more step away from the civilized principles of constitutional government and the rule of law that have long distinguished the United States from ...
Kudos to President Bush and Attorney General Ashcroft for ultimately deciding to comply with the Constitution in the U.S. government's prosecution of suspected terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui, who is accused of having participated in the September 11 ...
Once upon a time in a faraway land there was a happy and prosperous village filled with industrious and fun-loving people. To protect the villagers from occasional thieves and marauders, the village council had hired a ...
Justice was swift in the case of Hans and Sophie Scholl and their best friend, Christoph Probst. Only four days after they were arrested and accused of treason in the midst of World War II, they were ...
After the 1993 terrorist bombing of the World Trade Center, one of the convicted terrorists told a New York federal judge before sentencing that one of the principal reasons he had committed the attack ...
At the first post-9/11 Christmas, perhaps it is appropriate to draw the distinction between the private and governmental assistance provided to the families of the World Trade Center victims. The outpouring of support ...
CHRISTMASTIME ALWAYS PROVIDES a good time both for reflection and for looking forward. While we usually do this as individuals and families, this year is an especially good time to do so as a nation. How ...
Americans who are rushing to embrace the federal government's efforts to protect them from terrorists might want to keep in mind the story of the wolf, the coyote, and the sheep. One day the wolf and the ...
Today's Wall Street Journal's editorial page reflects how differently libertarians and conservatives view the meaning of freedom. For libertarians, freedom entails the right of people to live their lives any way they choose, so long as ...
Ludwig von Mises observed that government intervention inexorably leads to more government intervention until the point comes that government assumes total control over the affairs of the citizenry. The idea is that since government interventions always ...
President Bush has ordered that people he suspects of being "terrorists" will be tried before military tribunals rather than indicted and prosecuted in the customary judicial manner. Judges and juries (which will consist of the same ...
In every war, controversies over patriotism inevitably arise. Most everyone would agree that patriotism involves the loyalty that a person has toward his country. But there are two conflicting concepts arising out of the application of ...
The following was published as a Capsule Commentary in the November 7, 2001 edition of the FFF Email Update.
The October 14 issue of the Washington Post reported that Washington area police and ...
CONSTITUTION DAY — September 17 — came and passed without fanfare. That is the day that commemorates the signing of one of the two most important documents in our nation's history. (The other one, of course, is the Declaration ...
AT THE CLOSE OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION, a woman asked Benjamin Franklin what type of government the Constitution was bringing into existence. Franklin replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.”
Regardless of one’s judgment concerning the type of government ...
Responses to the September 11 attacks have split the libertarian movement like no other issue I have seen since I discovered libertarianism almost 25 years ago.
Limited-government libertarians have always maintained that one of the essential functions ...
By calling for the repeal of the minimum wage during testimony before the House Financial Services Committee last summer, Federal Reserve Chairman Greenspan undoubtedly dismayed the members of Congress. After all, Greenspan ...
Today's Wall Street Journal's editorial page reflects how differently libertarians and conservatives view the meaning of freedom. For libertarians, freedom entails the right of people to live their lives any way they choose, so ...
Ever since the September 11 attacks, it has almost been taboo, within both the U.S. government and the mainstream press, to openly examine and analyze the three specific reasons that Osama bin Laden has given for his holy war ...
One of the most disturbing aspects of Osama bin Laden's October 7 videotape has been the reaction of U.S. officials to one of his charges -- that the U.S. government has killed a million Iraqi children. As ...
President Bush has said that the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were motivated by hatred of freedom, democracy, and Western values. However, so far the results of the investigation into the attacks ...
With the publication of the first issue of Freedom Daily in January 1990, we made a vow that we have repeated every year since then: Never will we compromise that which we consider to be right and true. ...
Nineteen ninety and 1991 were critical years for conservatives, years that accelerated their decades-long descent into moral bankruptcy. The Berlin Wall came down in 1990, signaling the end of the Soviet Empire. The ...
From: Barry Paschal (Opinions Editor, Columbia County News-Times,
Martinez, Georgia)
cnt@groupz.net
To: FFF
Subject: FFF Op-Ed: "What about the Children?" by Jacob G. Hornberger
Date: October 10, 2001
Please direct this to the terribly misguided Mr. Hornberger:
Only someone ...
During a crisis such as this, it is easy for the advocate of liberty to become discouraged, especially given the willingness of so many people, including those in the conservative and libertarian movements, ...
Although it is considered by many to be beyond the pale of proper discourse to discuss whether U.S. foreign policy may have contributed to the current crisis, the American people ignore this possibility at their peril. ...
The Founders of our nation understood two principles: first, that the greatest threat to the freedom and well-being of the citizenry lies not with some foreign enemy but rather with one’s own government, and, second, that ...
A conflict between the Bush administration and Congress over travel to Cuba once again brings to light the hypocritical policies of the U.S. government. President Bush has called for stricter enforcement of the 39-year-old economic embargo ...
Long before the attacks on New York and Washington, The Future of Freedom Foundation repeatedly warned that the U.S. government's interventionist foreign policy resented significant risks to the American people. See, for example, "Terrorism or War"(June ...
IF NEW DEAL LEGISLATION had been enacted in the 1930s requiring people to tip waiters 15 percent of the total amount of their restaurant bill, we might have been subjected to the following debate today:
Repeal Advocate: Don’t you think ...
THE WASHINGTON TIMES recently reported on a controversy in Winchester, Virginia, that holds important lessons on freedom, property, and the role of government in the lives of the citizenry.
The issue involves the use of 70 acres of property on ...
Although it is considered by many to be beyond the pale of proper discourse to discuss whether U.S. foreign policy may have contributed to the current crisis, the American people ignore this possibility ...
ONE OF THE MOST COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS in the United States is that people’s rights come from the Constitution. Without the Constitution, it is believed, people wouldn’t have such rights as freedom of expression and religion. People should be grateful ...
Prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, although many people supported giving aid to England, most Americans opposed entry into the war against the Nazis. Americans still remembered the ravages ...
In his article “The Libertarian Lobe,” Jonah Goldberg expressed glee that he had trapped a young libertarian woman with what he calls his “tried-and-true trick question”:
“I asked her something ...
In his Memorial Day article, “Harry Truman’s A-Bombing of Japan Left Intact Ethics and Law,” which was in response to my article, “A-Bombings of Japan Were Acts of Cowardice and Criminality,” Col. Kevin Winters ...
THE WELFARE STATE and the regulated society are based on a twofold notion about morality: first, that this type of society reflects that people are moral, caring, compassionate, and responsible and, second, that this type of society makes people ...
If New Deal legislation had been enacted in the 1930s requiring people to tip waiters 15 percent of the total amount of their restaurant bill, we might have been subjected to the ...
IN APRIL, two more innocent people were killed in the U.S government’s 30-year war on drugs. This time, the victims were a 35-year-old missionary named Veronica Bowers and her 7-month-old baby, Charity, who were flying in a small Cessna ...
On the heels of his recent regret for the drug-war deaths in Peru of a missionary and her baby, President Bush has now expressed condolences for the deaths of 14 Mexican citizens ...
Reports of killings of noncombatants during the Vietnam and Korean Wars have recently caused Americans to reflect upon the concept of war crimes, and specifically those committed by their own military forces. But why stop with ...
THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION was one of the most remarkable periods in history, not so much for the military battles that were fought but for the ideas and principles that were expressed during that time. Foremost among the documents expressing ...
The Oklahoma City Bombing With the upcoming execution of convicted mass murderer Timothy McVeigh, much has been made of McVeigh's indifference to the fact that included among the 168 deaths in the Oklahoma City bombing were 19 children. McVeigh ...
Much has been made of convicted mass murderer McVeigh’s indifference to the fact that 19 children were among the 168 deaths in the Oklahoma City bombing. McVeigh has referred to the ...
Perhaps the release of the U.S. pilots who were spying on China will cause the American people to reevaluate the U.S. government's foreign policy. For decades, the U.S. government has stood for empire, extending its military ...
The Associated Press reported that in response to questioning at a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing, Secretary of State Colin Powell said that Fidel Castro has "done some good things for his people." Powell was referring to ...
The war on drugs has now taken two more casualties — 35-year-old missionary Veronica Bowers and her 7-month old child Charity. Last Friday, April 20, a Peruvian interceptor jet attacked and shot down ...
A RECENT RULING by a French Court in a lawsuit brought against Yahoo.com reflects the dramatically different way in which Americans and Europeans view the importance of individual liberty.
The case involved Yahoo’s ...
AS A COMPASSIONATE CONSERVATIVE, President Bush wants to give federal aid to faith-based organizations. His plan has drawn attacks from both leaders on the religious Right and civil libertarians on the Left.
Religious leaders object to ...
As a compassionate conservative, President Bush wants to give federal aid to faith-based organizations. His plan has drawn attacks from religious leaders on the right and civil libertarians on the left.
Religious leaders ...
VMI is back in the news. Two cadets, with the assistance of the ACLU, are asking the school to terminate religious prayers before supper in the VMI mess hall. VMI superintendent Josiah Bunting ...
Yesterday, the U.S. Senate voted to raise the amount that individuals can donate to federal candidates from $1,000 to $2,000. (The old limit was imposed in the post-Watergate period and has never been increased.) As is ...
DURING THE CONTROVERSY over Linda Chavezs appointment as secretary of labor, President Bush squandered an excellent opportunity to show some compassionate conservatism toward the tens of thousands of undocumented workers who have risked their lives to live and work ...
In case you were wondering where they stood on the issue, the U.S. House of Representatives has issued a formal condemnation of the shooting at Santana High School near San Diego. The ...
ROBERT DOWNEY JR. is a perfect example of the war on drug’s tremendous assault on liberty. Downey is the famous Hollywood actor who has a drug problem. To punish him for being a drug addict, the ...
Another Latin American president is talking about ending the war on drugs. First, there is Uruguay's president, Jorge Batlle, who openly calls for drug legalization. And now there is Vicente Fox, Mexico's newly elected president. ...
A few weeks ago, under the leadership of President Bush, U.S. military forces again dropped bombs on the people of Iraq, purportedly to maintain strict control over the 10-year-old "no-fly zone" in Iraq. A ...
THE POMP AND ceremony surrounding George W. Bush’s nomination of new department heads is now complete. The discussion and debate now center on the qualifications of each of the new nominees. But who is asking the crucial question: Rather ...
Defending his tax-cut proposal last night, President Bush said, "Unrestrained government spending is a dangerous road to deficits, so we must take a different path. Let the American people spend their own money ...
"When President Bush travels to Mexico this week, Mexican President Fox has the opportunity to help lead the world out of one of its most immoral and destructive wars -- the war on drugs. The drug ...
"We may have a big problem down in Mexico. A couple of days ago, the Washington Post reported that an increasing number of Americans are settling in Mexico--600,000 according to the U.S. Embassy in ...
Defending his tax-cut proposal last night, President Bush said, "Unrestrained government spending is a dangerous road to deficits, so we must take a different path. Let the American people spend their own money ...
Retired army general Barry McAfree has announced that he is now retiring from his position as America’s drug czar. If only he would take the war on drugs with him.
Of all the domestic wars that the U.S. government has ...
"Why do we need the FBI doing background checks on presidential appointments? Are FBI agents determining whether China, Russia, or Cuba have planted communists among the people selected by the president? Or is ...
HAVE YOU EVER stayed up late at night worrying about whether there would be sufficient food in your community’s grocery stores the next day? Paced the floor over whether there would be the correct ...
"Everybody's upset with former President Clinton's pardon of Marc Rich, the financier who had been indicted by a New York grand jury under former U.S. Attorney Rudy Guliani for buying and selling oil ...
The pomp and ceremony surrounding George W. Bush’s nomination of new department heads is now complete. The discussion and debate now center around the qualifications of each of the new nominees. But ...
"Perhaps we should periodically count our blessings here in the United States. From a recent Associated Press article : 'A dot.com millionaire said he is fighting a huge traffic fine--reportedly $44,100--for driving ...
ONE OF THE biggest differences between Christian statists and Christian libertarians concerns the role of the state in matters pertaining to morality. Christian statists believe that the state should be God’s ...
FACED WITH A LACK of Northern enthusiasm for his war against the South, President Lincoln resorted to drastic means to finance his war effort. If Lincoln had resorted to a traditional method of government finance — taxation — he ...
"I fall into the camp that says that Al Gore has the right to pursue all legal remedies in his attempt to establish that he is entitled to Florida's electoral votes. But I wish he ...
When Mexican president Vicente Fox visited Washington last August, he raised an idea that caught presidential candidates Al Gore and George W. Bush totally off guard. Fox suggested that it was ...
"Well, the first big presidential debate took place last night. Let me see if I have this right. Both Bush and Gore believe in: income taxation and the IRS; the drug war and the DEA; ...
"Three billion dollars have been spent on the 2000 presidential and congressional races, making this the most expensive election in history. People gripe and complain, but refuse to face the true nature of the ...
"How does the U.S. government distinguish between war and terrorism? Our government continues to bomb Iraq on a regular basis, without a constitutionally required congressional declaration of war, and calls it ...
If proponents of school vouchers get their way, Americans might well be permanently saddled with one of the most massive government welfare programs in history. What began many years ago as a ...
The Cuban constitution expressly states that people have a right to health care and that it is the duty of government to guarantee this right by providing hospitals, physicians, and medicine to the ...
PRESIDENT CLINTON justified his veto of Congress’s recent repeal of the estate tax by suggesting that most of the benefits of the repeal would go to the wealthy. “Of the $750 billion the ...
"How does the U.S. government distinguish between war and terrorism? Our government continues to bomb Iraq on a regular basis, without a constitutionally required congressional declaration of war, and calls it "war." Our ...
One of the biggest issues in the presidential race has been what should be done with the surplus. How much of the extra tax revenue should be used to shore up Social Security? ...
Part 1 | Part 2
In 1787, the Constitution of the United States called into existence the federal government. What was significant, however, was that it was a government whose powers were expressly limited by the people.
Throughout history, government ...
"On the heels of the Justice Department's antitrust case against that big, bad monopoly Microsoft comes antitrust action by German authorities against Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart? But everyone knows that Wal-Mart doesn't charge high, monopolistic ...
"There has been some interesting news coming out of China. Tens of thousands of farmers have been attacking government buildings and looting communist officials' homes. The reason? The farmers are protesting the Chinese ...
"It may be illegal for the American people to donate more than $1,000 of their own money to a presidential candidate but it's apparently not illegal for Bill Clinton to do so. Clinton is spending ...
"The Christian Science Monitor reports that Brazilian authorities are cracking down on Brazilians who commit the dastardly act of speaking English words. You know, words such as 'sale' or 'overtime' or 'summer.' Even 'e-mail,' ...
The debate over income-tax cuts between George W. Bush and Al Gore reflects how far Americans have plunged in their understanding of what it means to be free. If elected president, Bush proposes to cut ...
Two years ago, a prominent New Yorker restaurant owner who had never been in trouble with the law was arrested and charged with a federal felony. What was the man’s crime? Selling cigars at his ...
In order to solve a problem, it is necessary to ask the right questions.
During his recent visit to Washington, Mexican President-elect Vicente Fox asked the wrong questions: "How can we narrow the gap ...
"The debate between presidential candidates George W. Bush and Al Gore over income-tax cuts reflects how far Americans have plunged with respect to their understanding of individual rights. Bush calls for larger income-tax ...
Part 1 | Part 2
The most radical experiment in history is the Constitution of the United States of America. Throughout history, people had accepted the commonly held notion that government’s powers over the citizenry were supreme. In 1787, ...
"Libertarians are often challenged by statists on two points: first, whether it would be morally proper to terminate such government programs as public schooling, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and public housing for ...
"Both George W. Bush and Al Gore have declared illiteracy a 'national emergency.' What better indictment of the results of public schooling? After all, throughout the 20th century, Americans were required, under pain ...
"Two INS officials were recently convicted of alien smuggling and conspiracy for permitting people to smuggle illegal aliens into the United States. Witnesses said that they paid the two officials between $1,500 and ...
"Republicans have once again showed their hypocritical, compromising stripes. Republican House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert has written a letter to President Clinton offering his full support for a one-dollar increase in the minimum wage, ...
With the presidential campaign season upon us, one cannot help but ask whether we are electing a president ... or a daddy. After all, both George W. Bush and Al Gore are promising to take ...
WE SHOULD NOT let the hoopla associated with the Million Mom March cause us to lose sight of the real purpose and meaning behind the Second Amendment: the ability to protect ourselves from the tyranny of our own government.
Virtually ...
"President Clinton has announced that he is giving $78 million to Ukraine to help close the Chernobyl nuclear reactor. At about the same time, a study by Syracuse University disclosed that the Internal Revenue ...
"Several weeks ago, the U.S. government captured 25-year-old Cuban baseball star Andy Morales and 30 other Cuban refugees on the high seas and forcibly repatriated them to Cuba. After his return, Cuban government ...
"In last Sunday's Parade magazine (I read it only sometimes), "Walter Scott's Personality Parade" took Hollywood star Robert Downey Jr. to task for being a drug addict. A reader had asked whether Downey ...
"The election of Vicente Fox as Mexico's new president has raised hopes that government corruption will be ended. Don't count on it. As long as ...
WITH THE presidential campaign season here, the quadrennial debate over Social Security has begun. Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush is calling for Social Security reform. He says that people should have the ...
THE HORRIFYING SEIZURE of Elián Gonzalez is one more reflection of the depths of depravity to which the U.S. government has plunged in our lifetime. The episode also reflects the extent to which all too many Americans continue to ...
"Amidst much fanfare, the U.S. government is committing more than $1 billion to the drug war in Colombia. Wow -- that should finally bring victory in the decades-long drug war! Why didn't somebody ...
"Federal Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson has issued his long-awaited judgment, ordering the breakup of Microsoft into two companies. Jackson wrote, "Microsoft as it is presently organized and led is unwilling to accept the ...
"President Clinton has unilaterally lifted a 50-year embargo on North Korea, permitting Americans to import goods from North Korea and export goods and send money there. Now, let me see if I have ...
Another proud day in the history of the United States. The U.S. government forcibly repatriated Cuban baseball star Andy Morales into Cuban communist tyranny after he and 30 other Cubans who had fled Cuba ...
In her critique of libertarian opposition to government (public) schooling, public-schoolteacher Angela Harding fails to answer some important questions. ("Libertarians Are Forever Exposing Their Radicalism," June 16) If public schooling is the ...
People who rail that America's "national culture" is threatened by immigrants never explain which national culture they are referring to.
I recently visited my hometown of Laredo, Texas, which is located on our nation's ...
As U.S. government officials never tire of telling us, we live in a dangerous world. Terrorism especially is an ever-constant threat, even on American soil.
But is it possible that the U.S. government itself is responsible in ...
To the Op-Ed Editor 728 words Contact: Andy Falkof Please send tear sheet. The "Voluntary" Nature of the Income Tax by Jacob G. Hornberger
April, of course, is income-tax month, the month in which millions of Americans file their income ...
"Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush has provided us a hint as to what he means by "compassionate conservatism." A few days before the Million Mom March for gun control, Bush announced a brand ...
"Last weekend, I rode in a organized bicycle ride on Virginia's Eastern Shore in which more than 1,000 cyclists participated. Guess which government agency provided free promotional gifts to all the cyclists at the ...
"Before year's end, Congress will likely provide more than $1 billion dollars to Colombia to ensure the continuation of the U.S. drug war in the Latin American theatre. One Republican aide states, "Colombia is in ...
"After the Clinton-Reno-INS raid on the home of the Miami relatives of Elian Gonzalez, Fidel Castro proudly boasted that his agents would not have been armed under similar circumstances. The reason? Since no one ...
"The Washington Post reports that $2.8 million that the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) spent to help D.C. public-housing residents start new businesses has resulted in only 'marginal evidence of benefits for ...
"Retired Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey has come under a withering assault from his fellow officers for improper conduct during the Persian Gulf War. As detailed in an article by Seymour Hersh in the ...
"Yesterday, in United States v. Playboy Entertainment Group, the Supreme Court struck down a 1996 federal law that restricted sexually explicit adult channels' broadcasting to late-night hours. Despite people's concern for children's exposure ...
"Another cycling story this week! While cycling last weekend, I noticed a street corner where about 100 Hispanic guys were hanging out, all of whom appeared rather impoverished. I dismounted my bike and went up ...
"The Supreme Court will soon decide Boy Scouts of America v. James Dale, a case that will determine whether the Boy Scouts can exclude a homosexual from their organization. Many people may find the Boy ...
The moral decline of the conservative movement was recently reflected in a syndicated column entitled "Goofy may be a Libertarian" by Don Feder, one of the conservative movement's leading lights. Feder's critique, which ...
Last month, of course, was tax time, the month in which millions of Americans filed their income tax returns with the Internal Revenue Service and paid whatever income taxes they still owed the ...
"Remember back in 1979 when the Iranians under Ayatollah Khomeini took over the U.S. embassy and held U.S. diplomatic personnel hostage? Remember how our government portrayed the Iranians as horrible devils and the ...
"The police department in Waukesha, Wisconsin, is asking local bars and liquor stores to refuse selling alcohol to misbehaving and habitual drunks. Certainly, the police want to clean up the downtown and encourage ...
"If our federal income tax system is actually based on voluntary, rather than coerced, payments of income taxes, as IRS officials sometimes tell us, how come they don't send us thank-you notes?"
"Why hasn't the government indicted every service station owner in the country? After all, it's obvious that they are engaged in a giant conspiracy against the American people. Have you noticed that they all ...
"Janet Reno says that Elian Gonzalez is better off at Andrews Air Force Base than he was in the home of the Miami relatives because in Miami, he was subjected to an artificial world of ...
"It's hard to say whether Elian Gonzalez's father would defect to the United States if he were free to do so. Some Cubans do indeed like living in a society where there is ...
Americans everywhere were outraged at the Cuban diplomat's remark that Elian Gonzales is the property of the Cuban state. If only their outrage extended to their own homeland!
For more than 100 years, Americans ...
Last year, I spent a week in Cuba with the official permission of the U.S. Treasury Department and the Cuban Interest Section in Washington, D.C. (the diplomatic agency that is "hosting" Elian ...
The race for the Republican presidential nomination reflected the extent to which conservatives have abandoned their own principles. The two leading Republican contenders, George W. Bush and John McCain, waged a fierce ...
"The reason that the State of Virginia has insurmountable ballot-access barriers that keep Libertarians from appearing on the ballot for statewide races became a little clearer last weekend. (Due to the high barriers, the Libertarian ...
"The Internal Revenue Service has planned its annual pre-April 15 advertising campaign. A church in Indianapolis is refusing to pay federal withholding taxes totaling $5.9 million on religious grounds -- that the monies paid ...
"The Clinton administration's program to confiscate weapons in Kosovo provides powerful evidence of why Americans should be opposing gun-control efforts in the United States. There is one and only one reason that ...
"Last week, George W. Bush provided a clear-cut example of 'compassionate conservatism.' He claimed that John McCain is against breast-cancer research because McCain purportedly voted against government funding of such research -- sort ...
Unfortunately, while many scholars understand the nature and benefits of the free market in general, they seem to lack a firm appreciation of pure free-market principles in the area of education. An example ...
Austrian Joerg Haider and his Freedom Party are causing waves of anxiety throughout the European Union as well as the U.S. State Department. Government officials on both sides of the Atlantic are expressing dismay at Haider's ...
The American people survived the threat of terrorist attacks during the millennial celebrations. But fear was definitely in the air. Seattle canceled its celebration after a man was arrested at the Canadian border with bomb-making materials. New York City ...
In a proposal termed SABRE (Substance Abuse Resistance Effort), Virginia Republican governor James Gilmore III is asking the Virginia legislature to get tough in the state's war on drugs. The governor's proposals include ...
"Wanting to crack down even more on American taxpayers, the IRS is asking for a budget increase. Last Sunday's New York Times reported that President Clinton is proposing a 9% increase (which would be the ...
"Bribery is considered a crime, but not during presidential elections. Every four years, we are treated to the spectacle of political bribery by Republican and Democratic presidential candidates. The Republican candidates always ...
"Colorado state senator John Andrews is proposing a law requiring public schools to have a moment of silence and to post the Ten Commandments. As the very model of a governmental, socialistic program, ...
"George W. Bush and John McCain are fighting over which one of them is the true conservative and the real reformer. But what does conservatism have to do with reform of socialistic government ...
"Embroiled in the Bob Jones University controversy, Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush could have turned lemons into lemonade. Bush could have explained that the hallmark of a free society is the right ...
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan is calling for a global New Deal to combat poverty in poorer nations. His plan raises important issues affecting the economic well-being of people all over the world. Why ...
Upon reading Hans-Herman Hoppe’s article “On Free Immigration and Forced Integration,” I couldn’t help but wonder whether he first reached the conclusion that he wanted to reach and then constructed ...
For reasons not exactly clear, the immigration issue gives some libertarians trouble. In their efforts to grapple with the issue, it’s made needlessly complicated and some highly odd “solutions” are promulgated. We’ll look ...
"A small $45,000 scandal has hit the Prince George's County (Maryland) sheriff's office. It seems that the sheriff's department seized the money from an alleged drug dealer seven years ago and hid it in a safe ...
One of the core tenets of American foreign policy is the encouragement of democracy around the world. The implication is that if a country is democratic, the people within that country are free. ...
The flap over whether the Confederate flag should fly over the South Carolina state capitol raises an interesting question: Should Old Glory be permitted to fly over the nation's Capitol in Washington, D.C.?
After ...
By raising questions about America's participation in World War II, Pat Buchanan has horrified American interventionists. People are simply not supposed to raise questions about America's role in what has become known as the "good war."
Was Nazi Germany a ...
"The U.N. war-crimes prosecutor is examining evidence of possible war crimes by NATO pilots during the bombing of Yugoslavia last spring. Civilians were killed when U.S. pilots attacked a bridge as a passenger ...
"The United States Postal Service has decided that the Internet is a viable means of communication and commerce. Postmaster General William Henderson is contemplating a campaign to plug the USPS into the ...
"The pure, pristine hypocrisy of Republicans is reflected in the case of Elian Gonzalez. Republican presidential candidates are vehemently protesting the INS's plans to return the boy to Cuba, suggesting that communism is ...
"A new twist has surfaced in the Elian Gonzalez case. In a fascinating op-ed in the Wall Street Journal entitled "Elian's Journey" (Jan. 24), James Taranto tells the story of the two other people who ...
Word has leaked out that the Justice Department might demand that Microsoft break up into three companies as part of any settlement agreement in the government's antitrust suit against Microsoft. The idea is ...
"Ricardo Lagos, an admitted socialist, has been elected president of Chile. Twenty-five years ago, another socialist, Salvadore Allende, was elected president of Chili, and with the apparent help of the U.S. government, was ...
RETIRED ARMY GENERAL Barry McAfree has announced that he is now retiring from his position as America’s drug czar. If only he would take the war on drugs with him.
Of all the domestic wars that the U.S. government has ...
In a proposal termed SABRE (Substance Abuse Resistance Effort), Virginia Republican governor James Gilmore III is asking the Virginia legislature to get tough in the state's war on drugs. The governor's proposals include harsher penalties ...
At least the case of Elián González is helping to expose the hypocrisy of U.S. immigration policy. The INS says that the boy should be returned to Cuba so that he can be ...
Demonstrators at the World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting in Seattle protested "free-trade" negotiations between various nations of the world because, the protestors claimed, free trade harms people. I too oppose the WTO ...
Christmas is the perfect time of year to reflect on such things as freedom and virtue. People give presents to their friends and loved ones, donate food and clothing to the poor, and make contributions to their churches and ...
Republican presidential contender George W. Bush's refusal to deny cocaine use raises some fundamental, moral questions: Why should the state be punishing adults for drug offenses? Why shouldn't people be free to engage in self-destructive behavior as long as ...
Afer the bombing of the Alfred J. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995, President Clinton declared, "There's nothing patriotic about hating your government or pretending you can hate your government but ...
"The U.S. government is warning American citizens to beware of "terrorist" attacks all over the world, including the U.S. Our government has attacked and bombed people in Iraq, Serbia, Panama, Haiti, Somalia, and ...
"Fidel Castro has upped the ante by demanding the return of a 5-year-old Cuban boy to his Cuban father. The boy's mother and stepfather and nine others were drowned when their boat sank after they ...
"Detroit parents whose children have been playing hooky from school were summoned to the office of state prosecutors and threatened with 90 days in jail. In Brewton, Pennsylvania, ten parents were indicted for their ...
"Washington, DC, officials are ecstatic over plans by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) to build a brand new (taxpayer-funded) $120 million building in the district. Officials claim that the new ...
"Just in case you still had hope in the Republican 'revolution,' give it up. Discretionary spending under the new federal budget is expected to increase 5.8 percent over last year. Remember that big, bad ...
"With gleeful smiles on their faces, Justice Department lawyers posed for photographers after Federal Judge Thomas Jackson's ruling against Microsoft. The judge bought Justice's arguments that Microsoft is a "monopoly" because it has grown too ...
"The Coast Guard found a five-year-old Cuban refugee in the ocean clinging to an inner tube. The boy's mother and stepfather and several other Cubans drowned when their boat capsized. Fortunately, the Coast ...
"President Clinton did everything to avoid Greek demonstrators during his recent trip to Greece. The Greeks were protesting the U.S. government's war in Kosovo. Clinton responded by apologizing not for his own conduct ...
Dear Conservatives:
There you go again! You're once again trying to use public schooling to require students to submit to religious indoctrination. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves.
Can't you simply leave well enough ...
Dear Conservatives,
Since you have chosen to enter this web site, you have acknowledged that you suffer from the dread disease known as hypocrisitus. This is a good sign. Admission and confession are ...
As part of his presidential-campaign theme of "compassionate conservatism," Texas Gov. George W. Bush recently announced nearly $500,000 in state-financed grants to Christian groups in Texas. "America will be changed because ...
Many years ago, a high-school teacher from North Dakota invited me to deliver a lecture to one of her classes, assuring me that I would find it to be a fascinating experience.
The class ...
"Cuban authorities recently sentenced a Cuban-born U.S. resident to life in prison for smuggling Cuban citizens out of Cuba. Meanwhile U.S. officials, working in cooperation with their Cuban communist counterparts, continue to attack ...
"In last Sunday's edition of the Washington Post, Peter Kornbluh, senior analyst at the National Security Archive, details the U.S. government's refusal to disclose its full role in the violent overthrow of ...
"Texas Gov. George W. Bush has announced nearly $500,000 in state grants to Christian groups. Bush said, 'America will be changed because people of faith and good heart are willing to help people in need.' ...
After the bombing of the Alfred J. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995, President Clinton declared, "There's nothing patriotic about hating your government or pretending you can hate your government but love your ...
It's election time and Republicans are making their quadrennial call for income-tax cuts. Democrats are opposing them because the federal government needs the money to shore up Medicare and Social Security. The entire debate obscures an uncomfortable truth — ...
After the bombing of the Alfred J. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995, President Clinton declared, "There's nothing patriotic about hating your government or pretending you can hate your government but ...
Why do Americans continue to support such governmental programs as public schooling, Social Security, and drug laws? Advocates argue that these programs display a deep regard for education, compassion, and responsibility. However, ...
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When I arrived in Cuba, an El Salvadoran was being tried for terroristic bombing and four Cuban dissidents were being tried for criticizing the Cuban system, and the trials were ...
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Although Castro had not been a member of the Communist Party during the revolution, he quickly began converting Cuba into a Marxist-Leninist economic "paradise," and secured assistance from the Soviet ...
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Last spring, I spent a most fascinating week in one of the world's last bastions of communism - Cuba. I had applied for a license from the Office of Foreign ...
Recently, off the shores of Miami, Florida, the American people were exposed to the ugly side of immigration laws-the forcible repatriation of illegal immigrants to their country of origin. Television viewers watched in ...
Maryland Governor Parris N. Glendening is exercising political power that would be the envy of dictators all over the world. Declaring an emergency due to the current drought, Glendening has issued orders criminalizing the usage of ...
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Even though I knew that it is a serious criminal offense to criticize Cuban socialism, I was determined to deliver a presentation of libertarian principles in the middle of Havana. ...
Central to all the solutions to aberrant behavior in America's public schools is that public schooling is the unquestionable "given." That is, the continued existence of public schooling itself is accepted without ...
Hardly a week goes by without some mention in the media of the war on drugs. Record drug busts, money-laundering schemes, increasing drug abuse, gang warfare, thefts and robberies, political corruption, infringements on bank privacy, ...
Republican presidential contender George W. Bush's refusal to deny cocaine use raises some fundamental, moral questions: Why should the state be punishing adults for drug offenses? Why shouldn't people be free to engage in self-destructive ...
Maryland Governor Parris N. Glendening is exercising political power that would be the envy of dictators all over the world. Declaring an emergency due to the current drought, Glendening has issued orders criminalizing ...
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My trip to Cuba last spring entailed talking primarily to two groups of people — those in research centers at the University of Havana and people whom I encountered in ...
Why do Americans continue to support such governmental programs as public schooling, Social Security, and drug laws? Advocates argue that these programs display a deep regard for education, compassion, and responsibility. However, ...
More than 80 years ago, the United States entered World War I with the express purposes of making the world safe for democracy and making that war the one that would end all future European wars. The intervention was ...
It is commonly believed that the rights of the American people come from the Constitution. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Throughout history, the standard belief was that people were unconditionally subject to the commands of their government. If ...
The following is a commencement speech delivered by Jacob G. Hornberger at Thomas Jefferson Independent Day School in Joplin, Missouri.
The relatively short journey from birth to death remains a great mystery to ...
In order to preserve the national security of the United States, the U.S. Congress has made it illegal for Americans to spend money in Cuba. National security, you ask? Well, what Congress actually ...
One of the biggest scams in American politics is the bromide that government officials use to justify America's paternalistic welfare state and the federal income tax: "We love the poor, the needy, and ...
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Last March, I spent a week in Cuba, which turned out to be one of my most fascinating experiences.
I had applied for a license from the Office of Foreign Assets ...
Who are the real immigration lawbreakers - foreign citizens who cross illegally into the United States in search of work or U.S. officials who arrest and incarcerate them?
The Declaration of Independence ...
One of the biggest scams in American politics is the bromide that government officials use to justify America's paternalistic welfare state and the federal income tax: "We love the poor, the needy, and the ...
More than eighty years ago, the United States entered World War I with the express purposes of making the world safe for democracy and making that war the one that would end all future European ...
Ever since I discovered libertarianism 20 years ago, people have asked me why libertarians have such extreme views. After all, libertarians advocate the abolition, not the reform, of such things as public schooling, ...
One of the biggest con jobs in American political history has been that which the Democratic Party has perpetrated on the American people. To justify the existence of the socialistic welfare state, along ...
Last fall, I was invited to South America by two free-market think tanks — the Instituto de Estudos Empresariais (IEE — Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies) in Porto Alegre, Brazil, and the Fundación Atlas para una Sociedad Libre (Atlas Foundation ...
Forty years ago, Fidel Castro began his quest to convert Cuba into a socialist paradise. Nationalizing the means of production, the Cuban government became the sole employer, and everyone was required to become ...
If the Cuban authorities persist in jailing Cuban citizens for criticizing Cuban socialism, they might have to implement a new five-year plan for prison expansion.
I recently spent a week in Cuba. Since the ...
After the Brazilian government devalued the Brazilian real, causing the Brazilian people to lose more than 40 percent of their savings, the Brazilian authorities issued the customary line that governments follow after ...
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In 1910, Mexico celebrated the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the war for Mexican independence from Spain. The political climate in Mexico was peaceful and orderly. It would not ...
In 1913, the 16th Amendment - the income tax amendment - was added to the U.S. Constitution. It was a watershed event in American history, for it fundamentally transformed the relationship between the American ...
"My fellow Americans, I, William Jefferson Clinton, am pleased to report on the state of the union on the eve of the millennium and to propose a different direction for our country.
"For most of the 20th ...
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In February 1846, the independent nation of Texas was annexed as a state in the United States of America. The citizens of Texas were now American citizens. However, there was ...
For decades, the federal government has waged war against Mexican immigrants attempting to enter the United States. They have shot and killed them in violent confrontations. They have jailed them in detention centers. ...
Americans are a fortunate people. More than 200 years ago, our Founding Fathers had the wisdom and foresight to protect us from the government officials of today. The Framers of the Constitution ensured ...
"My fellow Americans, I, William Jefferson Clinton, am pleased to report on the state of the union on the eve of the millennium and to propose a different direction for our country.
"For most ...
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Not long ago, the patriotism of Mexican-Americans was called into question at an international soccer match in Los Angeles. Anglo-Americans were outraged that Mexican-Americans booed during the playing of the ...
Government programs are notorious for achieving results that are the exact opposite of what they intend. If advocates of gun control get their way, there will be no better example of this principle. ...
Whenever politicians wish to score political points, they recommend raising the minimum wage. Parading as champions of the poor and downtrodden, they cry out against all those selfish and greedy employers who are ...
Last summer, I spent a two-week vacation studying Spanish in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. I thought that the readers of Freedom Daily might find some of my experiences to be of interest.
San Miguel de Allende is located ...
With much fanfare, the federal government recently announced it had smashed the largest ever alien-smuggling ring, which allegedly brought thousands of Indians and other foreigners into the United States for $20,000 a head. ...
Last summer, I spent a two-week vacation studying Spanish in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, which is located in the heart of Mexico, about three hours north of Mexico City. This is the ...
To relieve the suffering in the drought-stricken counties of Texas, Congress passed an appropriations bill, but it was vetoed by the president. In his veto message, the president stated: "I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in ...
After the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the U.S. government retaliated by bombing a gathering of individuals in Afghanistan and a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan. American government officials were convinced to a moral certainty that ...
The U.S. Justice Department has hauled Microsoft into court with the ostensible purpose of protecting American consumers from another big, bad monopoly. As with other antitrust suits, it's all a waste of time, ...
It's easy to see that it's election time in America. Vice President Gore recently made a campaign swing around California where he handed out $185.4 million in federal grants while, at the same ...
Perhaps we ought to lament the tearing down of the Berlin Wall. It might have been less costly and more efficient to simply move it to the southern border of the United States.
Four ...
The dictionary defines "revolution" as a complete change in something. Thus, when Republicans called the 1994 election results a Republican revolution, everyone naturally assumed that there was going to be a complete change ...
For the last three years, up to 2 million people have died of starvation in North Korea. The U.S. government has been the biggest provider of aid, contributing 220,000 tons of food. The ...
It would be difficult to find a better model of socialistic central planning than public (government) schooling. Public schooling entails a central board of elected or appointed government planners, either at a national, ...
As the November congressional elections approach, Social Security is certain to become a topic of political conversation. With a budget surplus in mind, Republicans are seeking an $80 billion tax cut for the ...
One of the principal tenets of libertarianism is the right of people to freely trade their goods and services with others. The reasoning is based on moral principles underlying private property and individual freedom. Each of us has the ...
All of us have become accustomed to traveling with our passports when we leave the United States. But how many people realize that Hispanic-Americans must carry their passports when they travel domestically?
I recently ...
Last spring, the Atlas Economic Research Foundation of Fairfax, Virginia, invited me to participate in two conferences in Costa Rica. One conference was to celebrate the inauguration of a new Costa Rican libertarian think tank named INLAP. The other ...
To relieve the suffering in the drought-stricken counties of Texas, Congress passed an appropriations bill, but it was vetoed by the president. In his veto message, the president stated: "I can find no ...
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Did you ever think you would see the day when the United States government would be forcing people into communism? Thirty years ago, the U.S. government sent 50,000 American men, many of whom had ...
Thirty years ago, Democrats and Republicans sent 60,000 men from my generation to their deaths in an undeclared war in Southeast Asia. The rationale? To save people from the horrors of communism.
Apparently communism ...
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The core principle of libertarianism is a simple one: the noninitiation of force by one person against another. The libertarian philosophy holds that a person should be free to do whatever he wants in ...
Libertarians are often hit with the accusation "You are an extremist." What the accuser means is that the libertarian holds political and economic beliefs that are at the outermost fringes of American society. The term is customarily used in ...
Love for the children is one of the favorite justifications that Democrats and Republicans use to maintain and expand government control over people's lives. Whenever libertarians propose ending the war on drugs, along with all of its terribly destructive ...
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Libertarianism is one of the grandest movements in history. And every single libertarian should feel proud to be ...
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Some libertarians suggest that it is incorrect strategy for libertarians, both in the ideological and political arenas, to ...
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Libertarians believe that individuals should be free to engage in any peaceful activity without governmental permission or interference. ...
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Libertarian candidates for public office often say, "A no-compromise approach may be fine for a think tank, but ...
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The libertarian philosophy holds that people should be free to do whatever they want, so long as their ...
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Twenty years ago, I was rummaging through the public library in my hometown of Laredo, Texas, and I ...
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One of the primary characteristics of cults is the denial of reality. The ultimate example of this occurred in the Heaven's Gate cult: those cult members did not commit suicide; instead, they embarked on ...
In the latest attempt to reform the public schools, President Clinton is calling for national educational standards and national testing of public school students. But Joseph A. Califano, president National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, ...
Once again, Virginia's quadrennial political races for governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general are approaching, and as always, Republicans and Democrats will be on the ballot. But once again, Virginia voters will be denied the ...
It's election time in Virginia and voters are being offered a host of goodies. Lt. Gov. Donald S. Beyer Jr. and former state Attorney General James S. Gilmore III, the Democratic and Republican nominees for ...
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Several months ago, police discovered the bodies of members of a cult known as Heaven's Gate. The cult members had taken their own lives, apparently under the belief that they would be transported to ...
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Libertarians, unlike conservatives and leftists, believe that people should be free to live their lives any way they wish, as long as ...
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In a primitive, economically poor society, a person has to do a lot of basic jobs just to survive. He has to ...
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Karl Marx wrote that the value of an item is determined by how much labor goes into producing it. A diamond is ...
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What would a free society look like? That is, what if everyone were free to live his life the way he wanted, ...
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If we abolish public schooling, then how will the poor be educated? If drug laws are repealed, won't everyone go on drugs? ...
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I am often asked what distinguishes libertarians from nonlibertarians. I sometimes respond with a political or economic answer. But I've concluded that the best answer is a psychological one: Libertarians, ...
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What could be more destructive and dysfunctional than public schooling? Let's cut through the facade of parents' voluntarily taking their children to the school bus each morning or dropping them ...
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A member of the Christian Coalition recently telephoned me and said that she agreed with most of what The Future of Freedom Foundation stands for and wanted to support us. ...
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The Republican "revolution" was doomed from ...
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During the first few weeks of ...
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With the Republican takeover of both ...
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The Roosevelt Revolution in the 1930s ...
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It would be difficult to find ...
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It would be difficult to find ...
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The year 1913 was one of ...
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Our 19th-century American ancestors created the ...
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There have been four significant non-violent ...
The date was February 22, 1943. Hans Scholl and his sister Sophie, along with their best friend, Christoph Probst, were scheduled to be executed by Nazi officials that afternoon. The prison guards were ...
After a nine-month trial, the jury found O.J. Simpson not guilty of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. There was anger and outrage among most white Americans. The evidence clearly seemed to point to the defendant's ...
Sixty years ago — on August 14, 1935 — President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law the Social Security Act. It was one of the major political events that transformed the United States ...
Several months ago, President Clinton condemned Americans who exposed and criticized wrongdoing by the U.S. government. The president said: "There's nothing patriotic about hating your government or pretending you can hate your government but love ...
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What purpose does it serve to talk about wrongdoing of fifty years ago? What ...
When U.S. military forces dropped atomic bombs on Japanese civilians at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 275,000 men, women, and children were killed. Ever since, the killings have been justified by the claim that the bombings shortened the war and, therefore, ...
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The U.S. government's cry to the American people during recent wars has been: "Support ...
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When Franklin Roosevelt assumed the presidency in 1933, Americans expected him to fulfill certain ...
On April 19, 1995, the federal building in Oklahoma City was bombed. Hundreds of people, including children, were killed or injured. Although federal government officials have been sporadically killed in the line of duty in the past, this was ...
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To fully understand what happened to American soldiers who were part of the repatriation ...
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Adolf Hitler did not trust Andrey Vlasov. The Russian general had served in the ...
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Hitler, Stalin, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Truman shared two things in common — their philosophical ...
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When Hitler's forces invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, millions of Russians welcomed ...
Last November, The Washington Times published an editorial by Marilyn Quayle entitled "Americans are Demanding Relief from Overzealous Regulators." Ms. Quayle pointed out: "To comply with federal regulations alone costs between ...
Sixty years ago, there occurred one of the most monumental revolutions in history. It was a revolution that shook the very foundations of American society.
For 150 years, the American people subscribed to a ...
The American people are extremely fortunate. Two hundred years ago, their Founding Fathers used the Constitution to prohibit American government officials from ever enacting trade and immigration restrictions between the respective states of the Union. This meant that the ...
August 19, 1994, will go down as a black day in the history of the United States. On that day, President William Jefferson Clinton began jailing Cuban refugees in an American concentration center ...
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Political killings of innocent people could never happen in America, our fellow citizens tell us. America is a democracy. But so was Nazi Germany. Hitler was popularly elected, and his economic policies were widely ...
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Before the end of World War II, in 1944, Friedrich A. Hayek, who was later to win the Nobel memorial prize in economic science, startled the Western world with ...
Two centuries ago, Adam Smith asked a very fundamental question: what are the nature and causes of the wealth of nations? Note that Smith did not ask what most people today ask — ...
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Despite their good intentions, the proponents of the welfare-state, managed-economy way of life have ended up with results that are opposite from what they intended. The war on poverty was ...
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The welfare state and the managed economy do more than destroy individual self-esteem. They also destroy hopes of improving one's life. Now, we know that money cannot buy happiness, but ...
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When the surgeon general of the United States, Joycelyn Elders, announced that drug legalization was an idea worth studying, the reaction among politicians, bureaucrats, conservatives, and even those on the ...
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The only solution to America's health-care crisis is to end, not reform, governmental intervention into economic activity. What would this entail? A way of life in which people would be ...
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For over one hundred years, the American people said no to governmental intervention into health care. Americans did not permit their respective states to license physicians and other health-care providers. ...
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In his book A Critique of Interventionism , Ludwig von Mises wrote, "Authors of economics books, essays, articles, and political platforms demand interventionist measures before they are taken, but ...
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At the end of World War II, the United States was the economic leader of the world. Since our geographic territory had not suffered the ravages of war, we led ...
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After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government arrested American citizens of Japanese descent, placed them in American concentration camps, and confiscated their assets. ...
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I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to visit Japan and to speak to you, the Japanese people, during my first year as president of the United States. I am ...
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David Koresh and his followers challenged the cult of the omnipotent state. And for that, they paid the ultimate price — death at the hands of ...
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The welfare state was collapsing under its own weight in the later stages of the Roman Empire. Those who were on the dole were demanding more ...
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In ancient Rome, the political authorities used three primary means to discourage or quell rebellions among the citizenry. First, they would give more welfare to the ...
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Bill Clinton wants Americans to sacrifice more. Larger "contributions" to the government will save the welfare state and the managed economy, Clinton tells the citizenry. Sacrifice ...
Ideas matter. They have consequences. Thus, essays on liberty are vitally important in moving us toward our goal of achieving liberty. However, is there a practical way to advance liberty? Is there a method by which ...
Unfortunately, most Americans believe that the only way to preserve our environment is through public ownership of the means of production. "If there were no environmental threat," the refrain goes, "we would favor ...
Bill Clinton believes that spending on infrastructure will bring jobs and prosperity to America — and, in the process, finally prove, after sixty years of failure, that the welfare-state, managed-economy way of life can be a success after all. ...
What if, one hundred years ago, the American people had decided to amend the Constitution to provide a system of public churches in towns across America. Imagine the following conversation in 1993:
Advocate of Religious Freedom: We have a terrible ...
After Hurricane Andrew devastated the southern part of Florida, the state's attorney general threatened to prosecute "price-gougers" and speculators for charging exorbitant prices for food, ice, plywood, and other essential items.
The Power of ...
1869, the Louisiana legislature enacted a statute granting seventeen people the exclusive right to operate the only slaughterhouse in Orleans. All other slaughterhouses were required to close down. Any butcher who desired to ...
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Whether the jury's verdict in the Rodney King case was a miscarriage of justice is beside the point. The real point is the shocking reaction to the verdict by many in the black and ...
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For much of the 20th century, the United States government has waged its Wars on Poverty, Drugs, and Illiteracy. And there is no better evidence of the failure of these wars than the riots ...
For 125 years, the American people elected a president. During that time, the powers of the president were extremely limited. The American people did not permit the passage, for example, of income taxation, drug laws, and welfare laws. They ...
The end of the Cold War has brought a deep crisis to the conservative movement in America. For over four decades, the communist threat was the glue that bound conservatives together. However, now that communism no longer poses a ...
The Oliver Stone movie JFK resulted in cries of indignation and outrage from many Americans. Why? Why do so many People consider it beyond the realm of reasonable political certainty that the president's assassination was planned by top-level ...
In 1944, Friedrich A. Hayek wrote one of the most thought-provoking books of our time — The Road to Serfdom. Hayek warned that Great Britain and the United States were abandoning their heritage ...
As President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us thirty years ago, the military-industrial complex is a menace and a threat to the freedom and well-being of the American people. The time has come to dismantle America's military ...
American politicians and bureaucrats continually bombard us with the notion that the road to prosperity lies in increased spending by the citizenry. It is one of the most destructive economic myths promoted by ...
In 1860, Susan P. Hepburn executed a promissory note in which she expressly promised to repay a loan of one thousand dollars. When the note came due in 1862, Hepburn tendered to Henry A. Griswold, the owner of the ...
There are three major monopolies in the United States that have plagued the American people throughout most of this century. Yet despite their professed opposition to monopolies, the American people simply cannot bring themselves to end them. But end ...
Throughout history, people have surrendered their liberties to government in the hope of attaining a sense of security. The American people in this century proved to be no different. Our ancestors had established ...
Should the welfare state be eliminated all at once or phased out over time? Some of the most committed freedom-devotees waffle when it comes to that question. They maintain that the immediate elimination of the welfare system would be ...
Every single domestic war waged by the United States government against the American people in this century has been a failure. The war on alcohol — a failure. The war on poverty — ...
Tyranny at the state and local level is out of control. In order to benefit the politically privileged, state and local governments — like their national counterpart — are using their tax and ...
As the English philosopher John Locke observed in his Two Treatises on Government, man's life, liberty, and property are not privileges bestowed by government. They are inherent and basic rights that preexist government. Thus, individuals have the natural ...
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii — December 7, 1941 — killed or injured over 4,500 Americans. It destroyed most of America's Pacific fleet. Almost 200 American aircraft were lost. Although America's defenders at Pearl Harbor fought bravely ...
From the first grade in their government-approved schools, Americans are taught never to question the consequences of America's participation in World War II. "We defeated Hitler. Freedom prevailed over tyranny," we are taught "and there is nothing further to ...
The prospects for freedom in America may very well lie with you. For you have been most damaged by the welfare-state, planned-economy way of life. I wish to share some of my perspectives with you in the hopes that ...
The prospects for freedom in America may very well lie with you. For you have been most damaged by the welfare-state, planned-economy way of life. I wish to share some of my perspectives ...
Few people have had a bigger impact on my life than Leonard E. Read, the founder of The Foundation for Economic Education in Irvington, New York. I shall never forget the day I discovered a set of books entitled ...
The watershed years were 1932-1937 — the first two presidential terms of Franklin D. Roosevelt. This was the crucial period in American history — the period in which Americans abandoned the principles of ...
For the greater part of this century, the United States government has plundered, looted, and terrorized the American people through the Internal Revenue Service. It has surreptitiously stolen people's income and savings through the Federal Reserve System. It has ...
America of the 1800s was the most unique society in the history of man. People could engage in virtually any economic enterprise without permission of their public officials. People could become as wealthy ...
The State of California recently enacted a law which requires owners of semiautomatic weapons to register their guns with the state. But when the law went into effect thousands of California gun owners, although risking a felony conviction, refused ...
National service looms as one of the most dangerous threats to the American people in our 200-year history. Previously advocated only by liberals, national service is now also embraced by many on the ...
All across the land there is an unusual stirring among the American populace. The American people are sensing that something is severely wrong in our nation. They see the ever-increasing taxation, regulation, bureaucracies, ...
Two hundred years ago, our American ancestors instituted the most unusual political system in history. The Constitution called into existence a government whose powers, for the first time ever, were extremely limited. Thus, ...
Part 1 | Part 2
The last thing which Americans of today wish to face is that they have abandoned the principles of private property on which the United States was founded. In last August's Freedom Daily, I ...
Many Americans believe that by supporting the Welfare State, they are fulfilling God's great commandment to "love thy neighbor as thyself." Having been taught in public schools since childhood that the Welfare State ...
Being on the debate team at Virginia Military Institute during the 1970-71 school year was not easy. It was during this period of time that the collegiate protests against the Vietnam War were at their height. ...
Civil rights laws are among the most repugnant forms of political control in American society. Not only are they a severe violation of the principles of freedom, they also have totally failed to ...
Socialism has held the world in its grip since the beginning of the 20th century. People everywhere fell for the seductive allure of governmental security. Now on the eve of the 21st century, ...
Part 1 | Part 2
No myth is more pervasive among the people of the United States than that which claims that the American economic system is based on the sanctity of private property. The American people have been ...
One of the real tragedies in the struggle for freedom in the United States in the latter part of the 20th century has been the forgotten importance of civil liberties. While economic liberty provides the focal point of most ...
The world in the latter part of the 20th century is worshiping at the shrine of democracy. And leading the pack are the American politicians. Now that the nations of Eastern Europe, the ...
Many brave people died as a result of the recent invasion of Panama. The United States government claimed that these lives were lost in the defense of freedom. Unfortunately, this is untrue.
It is important first to observe ...
For years, many of us have been arguing that omnipotent government in foreign affairs is just as evil and dangerous, if not more so, than omnipotent government in domestic affairs. But our arguments met with indifference from some devotees ...
Several weeks ago, the United States Supreme Court held that certain procedural safeguards in the U.S. Constitution did not extend to foreign citizens under certain circumstances. The case was noteworthy not just for its holding but, more important, for ...
American politicians and bureaucrats have provided four reasons for the road the war on which they have embarked in the Middle East. Let us closely examine each of these reasons.
We are first told that military intervention in the Middle ...
Ever since I was a small child, I have been intrigued by the Battle of the Alamo. For a time, the defenders of the Alamo were expecting reinforcements to arrive. But ...
Happily, people all over the world are abandoning the 20th-century nightmarish experiment with socialism. But the great tragedy of our time lies here in America: unlike the rest of the world, Americans are rushing to embrace the socialist ideals ...
Accompanying this article is the April issue of Freedom Daily. All of the articles in this issue are devoted to the immorality and destructiveness of the government's war on drugs.
People have recently said to ...
Drug laws have been one of the most destructive forms of government intervention in 20th century America. Not only have they been the indirect cause of thousands of murders, thefts, robberies, burglaries, and other crimes against innocent people and ...
Friends of mine recently shared with me your two articles, "Libertarians: The Chirping Sectaries" and "A Dispassionate Assessment of Libertarians." In these articles, you claimed that an unbridgeable gulf separated the moral ...
The American flag is one of this nation's most treasured symbols of freedom. Therefore, when the United States Supreme Court held that the burning of the flag was an act protected under the First Amendment, many Americans were outraged. ...
After more than forty years of suffering under socialism, the Polish people finally have an opportunity to pursue economic freedom. Yet, every indication is that the new Polish government intends to pursue the same old hackneyed ideas of plunder ...
Socialism is morally and intellectually bankrupt. Under the guise of "order" and "security," millions of innocent people have been murdered or enslaved. Under the guise of "taxation" and social justice, untold amounts of income and ...
Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote,
"Old time, in whose bank we deposit our notes,
Is a miser, who always wants guineas for groats.
He keeps all his customers still in arrears
By lending them minutes and charging them years."
Governor Holton, General Irby, distinguished guests, ...