From 1944 to Nineteen Eighty-Four

A longer version of this article appears at the FEE website: www.tinyurl.com/npxxet.
I’m inclined to think of George Orwell and F. A. Hayek at the same time. Both showed great courage in writing the truth, undaunted by the consequences. Both valued freedom, though they understood it differently.
Orwell, a man of the “left,” could not remain silent [...]

Individualism Clashes with Cooperation? It Just Ain’t So!

Individualists get a bad rap in politics these days. That should come as no surprise; politics these days is dominated by electoral politics, and electoral politics is an essentially anti-individualistic enterprise. With free markets and other forms of voluntary association, people who can’t agree on what’s worthwhile can go their own ways. But the point [...]

Libertarianism Through Thick and Thin

Charles Johnson, a third-generation Freeman contributor, is a research fellow at the Molinari Institute and author of the Rad Geek People’s Daily weblog.
To what extent should libertarians concern themselves with social commitments, practices, projects, or movements that seek social outcomes beyond, or other than, the standard libertarian commitment to expanding the scope of freedom from [...]

Book Reviews – April 2008

• Globalization by Donald J. Boudreaux Reviewed by Richard M. Ebeling
• Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement by Brian Doherty Reviewed by Bettina Bien Greaves
• Armed America: The Remarkable Story of How and Why Guns Became as American as Apple Pie by Clayton E. Cramer Reviewed by George C. Leef
• The European Economy Since 1945: Coordinated Capitalism and Beyond by Barry Eichengreen Reviewed by Waldemar Ingdahl

The Real Argument about Government

A lot of contemporary political debate centers on how big government should be. The debate tends to have two main features.
First, it uses measures such as government spending as a proportion of GDP or the share of total income taken in taxation. Figures such as these show a dramatic rise in the size of government [...]

Time to Revive Individualism?

One problem facing people who broadly favor smaller, limited government; private property; and free exchange is what to call themselves. Historically the word “liberal” was the answer and still is in many parts of continental Europe. However, in the Anglophone world, particularly the United States, the word has now come to refer to those who [...]

A Tribute to a Polish Hero

One year ago the world lost a gifted science fiction writer and critic of totalitarianism when Poland’s Stanislaw Lem died in March 2006. Lem was best known internationally as author of the classic Solaris—twice adapted for the silver screen—but the majority of his fiction featured damning allegories against the suppression of the human spirit. Bruce [...]

Natural, Not National, Rights

Somewhere in my reading about immigration I encountered the deceptively simple point that it’s not immigration we should be talking about but migration. That’s another way of saying the focus has been on “us,” when it should be on the people coming to the United States. The discussion has proceeded as if they have no [...]

Principles Must Come Before Politics

Richard Ebeling is the president of FEE. 
We live in a time of quick fixes and patent medicines. The “physicians” offering to spoon-feed the elixirs for what ails us are the politicians running for office. Rarely do people step back and ask themselves whether there is really any ailment at all, or whether the politicians’ snake [...]