Archive for July, 2005
Infatuated with Politics
The most striking fact about modern-day “liberals” is their thoroughgoing infatuation with politics. In their worldview, almost every objective should be pursued through legislation, regulation, or legal action. It’s a reflex. What distinguishes liberals is not their objectives, which range from the laudable to the ridiculous, but their insistence that politics is the best or [...]
1Jul2005 | George C. Leef | 0 comments | ContinuedNorth Carolina’s Educational Wall of Separation
In a little-seen corridor of the Department of Administration in Raleigh, North Carolina, near the state ethics board and just around the corner from the Office of Historically Underutilized Businesses (no joking), there is an office that represents a unique turn in state law. The compact quarters of the Division of Non-Public Education (DNPE) are [...]
1Jul2005 | Hal Young | 0 comments | ContinuedFree Enterprise and Health Care
Any discussion of free enterprise or of the free market requires a clear definition of these terms. Free refers to freedom of choice, not freedom from cost or responsibility. Free refers to freedom from regulation and restriction, other than those laws necessary to protect individuals from force and fraud. The free market implies the willful [...]
1Jul2005 | Frank J. Primich | 0 comments | ContinuedThe FDA Cannot Be Reformed
The past year or so has been tough on the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). In that time, the agency has taken heat over the discovery of a statistical correlation between antidepressants and “suicidal thinking and behavior.” It has also been accused of sitting on information regarding another statistical correlation, this time between pain drugs [...]
1Jul2005 | Arthur E. Foulkes | 0 comments | ContinuedThirty-Six Years After Neil Armstrong
“The Earth is the cradle of the mind, but we cannot live forever in a cradle.” —KONSTANTIN E.TSIOLKOVSKY, 1911 Thirty-six years ago men could walk on the moon. Today they can’t; the only moon rockets on this planet are serving as lawn decorations in Huntsville and Houston. Is this because 21st-century technology is less advanced [...]
1Jul2005 | Bill Walker | 3 comments | ContinuedWhy Freedom Matters
The future of civilization depends on preserving and spreading freedom. As a moral principle, freedom means we ought to respect private property rights, broadly understood as the rights to life, liberty, and property. As a practical matter, when private property rights are protected by law, individuals will be free to trade for mutual gain and [...]
1Jul2005 | James A. Dorn | 0 comments | ContinuedWho Hates Wal-Mart and Why?
America remains a country where you can get fabulously rich rolling the dice on a business venture or lose all your money. We have the greatest venture-capital market in the world. Our culture honors success almost unashamedly, from athletes to entertainers to entrepreneurs. At the same time, there is a tendency to tear down the [...]
1Jul2005 | Russell Roberts | 5 comments | ContinuedIdiots, Infants and the Insane: Mental Illness and Legal Incompetence
In principle, mental patents are considered competent, free to accept or refuse treatment. In practice, they are often treated as if they were incompetent, forced to submit to treatment in their own best interest. This conflation of mental illness and legal incompetence—and the concomitant transformation of the mental patient in the community into the (potential [...]
1Jul2005 | Thomas Szasz | 1 comment | ContinuedTo Own or Be Owned: That Is the Question
In coming months, and probably years, President Bush’s “Ownership Society” proposals—in particular, his plans for personal accounts within Social Security, health savings accounts, and more school choice—will stimulate national discussion in directions politicians for decades have feared to tread. Whether you think the President’s specifics have merit or not, this development should be seen as [...]
1Jul2005 | Lawrence W. Reed | 0 comments | ContinuedChoice Is Too Burdensome?
It’s pretty well certain that the money taken in Social Security payroll taxes would produce greater returns if invested by your financial adviser than it is likely to produce in the government’s pyramid scheme. But proponents of maintaining the Social Security status quo object that not everyone has a financial adviser, and if people had [...]
1Jul2005 | Aeon J. Skoble | 1 comment | ContinuedPostal Monopoly: Playing by Different Rules
Once again the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) is seeking to use its monopoly power to defy the economic law of demand. On April 8 the USPS requested an increase in the first-class letter rate from 37 to 39 cents, a 5.4 percent jump. Between 2000 and 2004, the price of first-class postage increased 12.1 percent, [...]
1Jul2005 | Robert Carreira | 1 comment | ContinuedVorkuta to Perm: Russia’s Concentration-Camp Museums and My Father’s Story
My father, Arcadi Berdichevsky, was executed at Vorkuta on the Arctic Circle in the Soviet Union on March 30, 1938. Last October I visited the former concentration-camp town. Copies of files detailing his arrest, indictment, and execution order were sent to me by the FSB, successor to Russia’s notorious KGB (formerly OGPU secret police). Incredibly, [...]
1Jul2005 | Jon Basil Utley | 3 comments | ContinuedThe Persistent Influence of Bad Ideas
Sometimes books, and the ideas they contain, have a much longer-lasting impact than anyone would expect or realize. Long after the book itself has been forgotten and languishes unread in the reserve stacks of libraries or on the shelves of secondhand-book dealers, the ideas it puts forward continue to influence people and the way they [...]
1Jul2005 | Stephen Davies | 0 comments | ContinuedPharmacists and Freedom
According to the newspapers, pharmacists throughout the United States are refusing to fill prescriptions for the “morning-after” pill and other contraceptives because of religious objections. This has caused some concern and has prompted at least one governor to intervene. Last spring Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich issued an emergency order requiring pharmacies to honor all prescriptions. [...]
1Jul2005 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedNo Buts about Freedom
Back in the early 1970s, the late Leonard E. Read, founder and first president of FEE, wrote a short piece in The Freeman called Sinking in a Sea of Buts. He said it was not uncommon or someone to say to him,I agree with you in principle, but . . . The but invariably referred to some exception from the principle of freedom in the form of a desired government intervention. The problem, Read pointed out, is that when everyones exceptions to freedom are added up, well, freedom ends up being sunk by all the buts.
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I am not going to try to defend JPMorgan Chase for its recent, widely reported financial blunders. ... Read More
For Equality; Against Privilege
This TGIF originally ran July 7, 2006. The freedom philosophy can be boiled down to two phrases: for... Read More
