All Posts Tagged With: "charity"

The Rise of Government and the Decline of Morality

The recent financial crisis has expanded the power of government. Tea parties have revealed the disillusion of millions of Americans with the rise of government and the decline of morality. The crisis has damaged, unfairly, the vision of market liberalism. It is essential, therefore, to reexamine and articulate the principles of a free society and [...]

29Jun2010 | James A. Dorn | 10 comments | Continued

How Shall We Live?

What is civilization and how is it to be achieved? How can we live together in peace and social harmony? What is wealth and how do we acquire it? Why are so many people poor and why do they remain poor? Finally, are there objective standards of behavior that must be respected if societies are [...]

24Mar2010 | and and Paul A. Cleveland | 1 comment | Continued

A Contemptible Congress and a Derelict Court

What can Congress do that the Supreme Court would find unconstitutional? Or, what can Congress do that a president would veto as unconstitutional? It is not much exaggeration to say that Congress can do whatever it can muster a majority vote for, whether it is constitutional or not. The members only have to worry about [...]

24Feb2010 | Walter E. Williams | 5 comments | Continued

Presidents and Precedents

America’s 44th president has embarked on a massive expansion of the federal establishment that, if accomplished, will dwarf all previous welfare states in its spending and debt. Americans will largely depend on politicians and their underlings for a significant portion of their heavily mortgaged livelihoods. It’s a path to national suicide that would horrify most [...]

24Feb2010 | Lawrence W. Reed | 13 comments | Continued

From Good Samaritan to Robin Hood

The clamor from interventionists against inequality morphs into a clamor for a larger and larger state. This path leads to the loss of liberty and a distortion of both democracy and justice. It distorts democracy because, by attempting to solve inequality, it removes limits to power and expands the field of state action. It distorts justice because the only way to solve inequality politically is for the state to have the power to treat individuals unequally. Thus the struggle to eliminate inequality ends up destroying the most important form of equality for an open society: equality before the law.

10Jun2009 | Carlos Rodríguez Braun | 2 comments | Continued

Menagerie of Happy Men: The Ancient Incas and the Bureaucratic State

Examples of bureaucratic control over social life seem to be as old as recorded history, and they always have features that are universal in their perverse effects regardless of time or place. The French economist and historian Louis Baudin described some of these consequences in his classic work, A Socialist Empire: The Incas of Peru [...]

1Sep2007 | Richard M. Ebeling | 0 comments | Continued

Watering the Tree

Though my father is approaching 80 and is no longer able to do as much outdoors, a legacy of his retirement years is the orchard behind my childhood home. After my dad ended his trucking career, he took to heart an activity I would not previously have supposed to be of interest to him. His [...]

1Mar2004 | Russell Madden | 0 comments | Continued

Massive Foreign Aid Is the Solution to Africa’s Ills?

President Bush traveled to Africa in July. Those sympathetic to the President might say he went to show his charitable concern for the problems of Africa and his sincere care for the downtrodden of the world. But a less rose-tinted view might have shown an unprincipled but skillful political machine bolstering its image among centrist [...]

1Nov2003 | WILLIAM THOMAS | 0 comments | Continued

Andrew Johnson and the Constitution

Before 1998 “Andrew Johnson” used to be the answer to the question “Who was the only U.S. president to be impeached?” But Andrew Johnson, the self-educated tailor, deserves to be remembered more for his ideas, especially his defense of the Constitution in a troubled time. Johnson was born in poverty in North Carolina in 1808 [...]

1Sep2003 | Burton W. Folsom Jr. | 0 comments | Continued

Of Human Hypocrisy

A scene in W. Somerset Maugham’s beautiful novel Of Human Bondage captures the hypocrisy and pretense of much of what passes today for enlightened thought. Philip Carey, the novel’s protagonist, invites a dying friend, Cronshaw, to spend his final days at his small apartment. Cronshaw is a penniless poet. Leonard Upjohn is a self-satisfied writer [...]

1Jun2003 | Donald J. Boudreaux | 0 comments | Continued

Capital Letters

Bike Helmets, Children, and Libertarian Philosophy To the Editor: In response to Ted Roberts’s article criticizing the admonishing of children to use bicycle helmets (“Take Your Bike Helmet to the Safety Museum,” February), I’d like to offer a couple of unscientific, anecdotal items from my own experience. One is from a few decades ago, when [...]

1May2003 | FEE Admin | 0 comments | Continued

George Westinghouse: Problem-Solver

One man, more than any other, made possible the great network of railroad lines that connected American cities and made the U.S. economy a truly national one. That man wasn’t Cornelius Vanderbilt or James J. Hill or any of the other great railroad magnates. No, those men achieved their success because of another man: George [...]

1Sep2002 | Charles Oliver | 2 comments | Continued

The War on Charity

“Congress is going to rebuild Afghanistan for billions, and they can’t take care of 3200 people,” complained Kenneth Foster, husband of one of the September 11 victims, at a public hearing earlier this year. In his view, and that of many other victims’ families, who vigorously applauded his remarks, the September 11 Victims’ Compensation Fund [...]

1Jun2002 | Doug Bandow | 1 comment | Continued

Who Owes What to Whom?

For a society that has fed, clothed, housed, cared for, informed, entertained, and otherwise enriched more people at higher levels than any in the history of the planet, there sure is a lot of groundless guilt in America. Manifestations of that guilt abound. The example that peeves me the most is the one we often [...]

1Feb2002 | Lawrence W. Reed | 2 comments | Continued

America and the World’s Resources

At the heart of almost all economics is the idea of mutually beneficial exchange. When two people voluntarily engage in an activity, economists assume that both parties are better off. Otherwise, one of them would have refused the deal. It doesn’t mean people don’t make mistakes—sure they do.

1Dec2001 | Russell Roberts | 5 comments | Continued

The Paradox of Carnegie Libraries

Chris Cardiff is a homeschooling father of three spirited girls and a vice president of AOL. Neither AOL nor his family necessarily endorses his views. People with a weak grasp of history are aghast when someone questions one of their fundamental assumptions. Questioning the public-goods theory of government-owned-and-operated libraries seems to shut down a conversation [...]

1Oct2001 | Chris Cardiff | 2 comments | Continued

Beware the Ides of April (Plus Two)

Ted Roberts is a freelance writer in Huntsville, Alabama, who often writes on public-policy issues. April 15, two days after the Ides of April. A day of infamy that causes the sour-hearted taxpayer to shudder and wish a warp of time would wash over him and carry him to seventh-century Notaxylvania, an idyllic kingdom where [...]

1Apr2001 | Ted Roberts | 0 comments | Continued
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