Archive for Jim Powell
Jim Powell, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, is the author of FDR’s Folly, Wilson’s War, Bully Boy, Greatest Emancipations, The Triumph of Liberty, and other books.
Pearl Harbor: The Seeds and Fruits of Infamy
For decades the prevailing view among historians has been that because the American people were too stubborn and stupid to concern themselves with foreign wars, President Franklin Roosevelt had to lie for a noble cause—namely, waging war against imperialist Japan and Nazi Germany. Seldom have historians asked themselves why Americans would want to stay out [...]
30Nov2011 | Jim Powell | 5 comments | ContinuedGovernment: More Incompetent than Ever
Most intellectuals support big government, and millions of people depend on it. So why, with thousands of laws, millions of employees working to carry out those laws, and trillions of dollars spent, is it in trouble? The most popular big-government programs–like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid–are going broke. These entitlements account for more than half [...]
19Apr2010 | Jim Powell | 1 comment | ContinuedHerbert Hoover
William E. Leuchtenburg is among the last surviving literary lions who played a major role shaping the reputation of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. His book Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal (1963) stood out amidst the postwar deluge of worshipful works about FDR, including those by James MacGregor Burns, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Frank Freidel, [...]
24Mar2010 | Jim Powell | 3 comments | ContinuedTheodore Roosevelt, Big-Government Man
Theodore Roosevelt has been known as “the Good Roosevelt,” “the Republican Roosevelt,” and “the conservative Roosevelt,” as distinguished from his fifth cousin Franklin, who’s credited with ushering in modern American big government. Yet promoters of big government have long recognized TR as one of their own. Biographer Frank Freidel wrote that “While at Groton [Franklin [...]
24Feb2010 | Jim Powell | 7 comments | ContinuedWhy the Government Fails to Maintain Anything
As the mad scramble to pass President Obama’s stimulus bill reminded us, politicians love to start new government programs. They gain things they can brag about during their reelection campaigns. But there’s little to be gained by maintaining programs somebody else started. No surprise, then, that in budget battles, maintenance tends to be under-funded. Moreover, [...]
23Sep2009 | Jim Powell | 12 comments | ContinuedFDR’s Lucky Timing
It’s not clear how any of FDR’s 1933 policies could have accounted for a 17 percent increase in GDP, even if they promoted expansion, because they wouldn’t have had time to ripple through the economy. It seems more likely that FDR had the good fortune to come into office near the bottom of the Depression, and enough adjustments in wages, prices, and other factors had occurred that the economy was ready to recover.
10Jun2009 | Jim Powell | 5 comments | ContinuedEdward Coke: Common Law Protection for Liberty
Why were civil liberties first secured in England? One important reason was the development of common law principles and precedents independent of a ruler. Edward Coke (pronounced “Cook”) was more responsible for this than anybody else. Murray N. Rothbard called him a “great early seventeenth century liberal.” Winston S. Churchill observed that “His knowledge of [...]
1Nov1997 | Jim Powell | 0 comments | ContinuedBenjamin Constant Liberty and Private Life
The French thinker Benjamin Constant was, according to respected Oxford University scholar Isaiah Berlin, “the most eloquent of all defenders of freedom and privacy.” Constant’s most important contribution: he recognized that “the main problem . . . [is] how much authority should be placed in any set of hands. For unlimited authority in anybody’s grasp was bound, he believed, sooner or later, to destroy somebody.”
1Oct1997 | Jim Powell | 0 comments | ContinuedLafayette: Hero of Two Worlds
The freedom fighter Marquis de Lafayette changed history. He helped defeat the British at Yorktown, winning American independence. In France, he helped topple two kings and an emperor. Jean-Antoine Houdon, the great eighteenth-century sculptor who created busts of many great heroes, dubbed Lafayette “the apostle and defender of liberty in the two worlds.”
1Sep1997 | Jim Powell | 1 comment | ContinuedAnne Robert Jacques Turgot, Who First Put Laissez-Faire Principles into Action
By the mid-eighteenth century, a number of authors had expressed the liberating vision that came to be known as laissez faire. Anne Robert Jacques Turgot put it into action.
1Aug1997 | Jim Powell | 4 comments | ContinuedA Salute to Bettina Bien Greaves
Bettina Bien Greaves is an extraordinary, unsung resource for liberty. Now FEE’s Resident Scholar, a FEE Trustee, Freeman Contributing Editor, and two-time Guest Editor, she has done so many things for so many people for so long, it’s past time to publicly acknowledge her myriad contributions. If you ask Bettina, she says she has only [...]
1Jul1997 | Jim Powell | 2 comments | ContinuedRobert A. Heinlein’s Soaring Spirit of Liberty
A pioneering master of speculative fiction, Robert Heinlein has captured the imagination of millions for liberty.
Five of his novels chronicle rebellion against tyranny, other novels are about different struggles for liberty, and his writings abound with declarations on liberty. For instance, in Requiem (1939): It’s neither your business, nor the business of . . . paternalistic government, to tell a man not to risk his life doing what he really wants to do.
1Jul1997 | Jim Powell | 5 comments | ContinuedFrederic Bastiat, Ingenious Champion for Liberty and Peace
Frederic Bastiat ranks among the most spirited defenders of economic freedom and international peace.
Nobel Laureate F.A. Hayek called Bastiat a publicist of genius. The great Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises saluted Bastiat’s immortal contributions. Best-selling economics journalist Henry Hazlitt marveled at Bastiat’s uncanny clairvoyance. Said intellectual historian Murray N. Rothbard: Bastiat was indeed a lucid and superb writer, whose brilliant and witty essays and fables to this day are remarkable and devastating demolitions of protectionism and of all forms of government subsidy and control.
1Jun1997 | Jim Powell | 3 comments | ContinuedBenjamin Franklin: The Man Who Invented the American Dream
Benjamin Franklin pioneered the spirit of self-help in America. With less than three years of formal schooling, he taught himself almost everything he knew. He took the initiative of learning French, German, Italian, Latin, and Spanish. He taught himself how to play the guitar, violin, and harp. He made himself an influential author and editor. He started a successful printing business, newspaper, and magazine. He developed a network of printing partnerships throughout the American colonies.
1Apr1997 | Jim Powell | 8 comments | ContinuedAlbert Jay Nock: A Gifted Pen for Radical Individualism
American individualism had virtually died out by the time Mark Twain was buried in 1910. Progressive intellectuals promoted collectivism. Progressive jurists like Oliver Wendell Holmes hammered constitutional restraints as an inconvenient obstacle to expanding government power, supposedly the cure for every social problem.
1Mar1997 | Jim Powell | 1 comment | ContinuedFrederick Douglass: Heroic Orator for Liberty
Frederick Douglass made himself the most compelling witness to the evils of slavery and prejudice.
He suffered as his master broke up his family. He endured whippings and beatings. In the antebellum South, it was illegal to teach slaves how to read and write, but Douglass learned anyway, and he secretly educated other slaves. After he escaped to freedom, he tirelessly addressed antislavery meetings throughout the North and the British Isles for more than two decades.
1Feb1997 | Jim Powell | 2 comments | ContinuedMarcus Tullius Cicero, Who Gave Natural Law to the Modern World
He insisted on the primacy of moral standards over government laws. These standards became known as natural law. Above all, Cicero declared, government is morally obliged to protect human life and private property. When government runs amok, people have a right to rebel—Cicero honored daring individuals who helped overthrow tyrants.
1Jan1997 | Jim Powell | 40 comments | Continued-
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