All Posts Tagged With: "Founding Fathers"

Immoral, Unconstitutional War

David Mayer is professor of law and history at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio. He is the author of The Constitutional Thought of Thomas Jefferson (University of Virginia Press). The United States has no vital interests at stake in Yugoslavia; the conflict there is the kind of European war that Americans should avoid if we [...]

1Jul1999 | | 1 comment | Continued

Balkans Bungling: Why Only Congress Can Declare War

When the U.S. attacked Yugoslavia earlier this year, it inaugurated war against another sovereign state that had not attacked or threatened America or an American ally. The President, and the President alone, made the decision. The constitutional requirement that only Congress shall declare war is obviously a dead letter.

1Jun1999 | | 0 comments | Continued

The Great Bequest

Tom Palmer is director of the Project for a Civil Society at the Cato Institute. This article is adapted from the Cato Handbook for Congress. Limited government is one of the greatest accomplishments of humanity. It is imperfectly enjoyed by only a portion of the human race, and, where it is enjoyed, its tenure is [...]

1Mar1999 | | 1 comment | Continued

The Heritage We Owe Our Children

Leonard E. Read established FEE in 1946 and served as its president until his death in 1983. This article, reprinted ftom the September 1976 Notes from FEE, is the seventh in a monthly series commemorating the 100th anniversary of Mr. Read’s birth. “But he who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and [...]

1Jul1998 | | 0 comments | Continued

Makers and Takers: How Wealth and Progress Are Made and How They Are Taken Away or Prevented

Daniel Hager is senior research associate with Patrick Henry Associates in East Lansing, Michigan. Man is distinguished from the lower orders of animals because of the frontal and prefrontal lobes in his brain that foster thinking ahead and planning. Man becomes a maker, rejecting momentary gains for the adoption of long-range goals, while the lower [...]

1Jun1998 | | 0 comments | Continued

Liberating the Jury

Nathan Lapp is a dairy farmer and coordinator of the New York Fully Informed Jury Association in Cassadaga, New York. When disputes arise over who has the freedom to do what, fundamental principles of fairness, or “right reason,” as Roman philosopher Cicero phrased it, must come into play.[1] For this task, the founders recommended trial [...]

1Mar1998 | | 1 comment | Continued

The Primacy of Property Rights and the American Founding

David Upham is a doctoral candidate in politics at the University of Dallas. This article is adapted from the essay that won first prize in the 1997 Olive W. Garvey Fellowship program of the Independent Institute, Oakland, Calif. Progressives in the twentieth century have in large part aimed at turning the American people away from [...]

1Feb1998 | | 0 comments | Continued

Reading the Second Amendment

“A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” —Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution Is this sentence so hard to understand? Apparently so. Even some of its defenders don’t like how it is worded because it [...]

1Feb1998 | | 0 comments | Continued

Algernon Sidney: Forgotten Founding Father

Chris Baker interned at Liberty magazine and lives in Moundsville, West Virginia. A longer version of this article is scheduled to appear in the upcoming collection Millennium for Liberty. Algernon Sidney (also Sydney) was an English martyr for republican government. He was executed in 1683 for allegedly conspiring to kill King Charles II; his political [...]

1Oct1997 | | 1 comment | Continued

Faith of Our Fathers edited by Mary Sennholz

The Foundation for Economic Education • 1997 • 398 pages • $19.95 paperback Norman S. Ream is a retired minister living in Estes Park, Colorado. Although it cannot be established that Alexis de Tocqueville actually wrote his much quoted words to the effect that “America is great because America is good,” that conclusion seems more [...]

1Oct1997 | | 0 comments | Continued

The Pervasive Duty to Rescue

Mr. Kochan is an Adjunct Scholar with The Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a research and educational organization headquartered in Midland, Michigan. As individuals, Americans may choose to act as Good Samaritans and come to the aid of those in need, but are not legally obligated to do so. Traditionally under American law, no general [...]

1Jun1997 | | 0 comments | Continued

Putting the Framers’ Intent Back Into the Commerce Clause

Mr. Hagen is a third-year law student at Pepperdine University School of Law and is an editor of the Pepperdine Law Review. He is the co-author of An Endless Series of Hobgoblins: The Science and Politics of Environmental Health Scares (FEE, 1995). On April 26, 1995, for the first time in almost 60 years, the [...]

1Dec1996 | | 0 comments | Continued

Individual Happiness and the Minimal State

Dr. Younkins is professor of accountancy and business administration at Wheeling Jesuit University, Wheeling, West Virginia. The Founding Fathers held the view that government, while deriving its power from the consent of the governed, must be limited by the rights of the individual. The purpose of government was to maintain a framework of law and [...]

1Oct1996 | | 0 comments | Continued

Founding Father: Rediscovering George Washington

Dr. Carson, a contributing editor of The Freeman, has written and taught extensively, specializing in American intellectual history. America in Gridlock, 1985-1995, the sixth volume in his Basic History of the United States, will be published later this year. Near the close of this book, the author quotes John Marshall speaking to the House of [...]

1Sep1996 | | 1 comment | Continued

Why Not Freedom! America’s Revolt Against Big Government

Wesley Allen Riddle is assistant professor of history at the United States Military Academy, West Point, New York, where he teaches Advanced American History and the American Political Tradition. He is also a Salvatori Fellow with the Heritage Foundation for the 1996-97 term. The Kennedy brothers of Louisiana have followed up their successful title The [...]

1Aug1996 | | 0 comments | Continued

Historian Paul Johnson on American Liberty

An Exclusive Freeman Interview: Historian Paul Johnson on American Liberty For friends of freedom, Paul Johnson is perhaps today’s most beloved historian. He tells a dramatic story with moral passion. He gives readers tremendous pleasure as he celebrates liberty and denounces tyranny. “Paul Johnson,” declared Wall Street Journal editor Robert Bartley, “is one of the [...]

1Jun1996 | | 0 comments | Continued

Do the Right Thing

Dr. Robbins is professor of political philosophy and Director of The Freedom School at the College of the Southwest in Hobbs, New Mexico. Dr. Walter Williams, Chairman of the Department of Economics at George Mason University in Virginia, a syndicated columnist for the past 15 years, has collected his best newspaper columns from 1990 to [...]

1Jun1996 | | 1 comment | Continued
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