All Posts Tagged With: "government power"
Imperfect Opponents
“Microsoft and the government were the perfect opponents. The government has some power, but Microsoft has at least as much. Anyone else facing either one of them would be overmatched.” That is not some comedian’s line. It was spoken in all seriousness, I presume, by David Boies, who led the Justice Department’s antitrust case against [...]
1Oct2000 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Right of Resistance
Many politicians talk as if citizens were obliged both to revere and obey their government. But there are few things more dangerous than swallowing the notion that government is entitled to boundless obedience from the people under its power. Throughout history, governments have occasionally overstepped the bounds of their legitimate power. What should be done [...]
1Aug2000 | James Bovard | 4 comments | ContinuedWhen Bullies Take Power
Life is Beautiful, winner of Academy Awards for best foreign language film and best actor (Roberto Benigni), is a remarkable movie. This story about a Jewish father’s attempt to shield his son from a Nazi concentration camp is perhaps the most powerful movie ever made about the Holocaust. The movie makes a stunning impression precisely [...]
1Jun1999 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedBogus Freedom
“Freedom from want” is one of the most frequently invoked notions of freedom in our time. However, it is a bogus freedom that politicians and socialists offer to lull people into accepting policies that destroy true freedom. Freedom from want has been most loudly advocated in this century by those who favored removing almost all [...]
1May1999 | James Bovard | 0 comments | ContinuedTwo Powerful Words
Last year Israel Kirzner, one of the economists I most enjoy, said something during a lecture that was at once simple, true, and deceptively powerful. How powerful I did not appreciate immediately. But in the ensuing months, I have come to see how much was packed into that statement. Professor Kirzner said that the market [...]
1May1999 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedAmerica’s 30 Years War
As a child of eight, Balint Vazsonyi experienced National Socialism (Nazism) when the Germans took control of his native Hungary during World War II. In 1948, the Communist Party came to power, followed by Soviet occupation and the elimination of all opposition. Those events left a lasting impression on him, and he concluded that Nazism [...]
1May1999 | Clarence B. Carson | 0 comments | ContinuedCommodity and Propriety: Competing Visions of Property in American Legal Thought, 1776-1970
Bradley Smith is associate professor of law at Capital University Law School, Columbus, Ohio. To discuss the meaning of property is, in many ways, to discuss the meaning of liberty. If property is an individual right, secure from encroachment by government, then government power is necessarily restricted by the existence of property. If, on the [...]
1May1999 | Bradley A. Smith | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Human Rights Deception
Richard Stevens, a lawyer in Washington, D.C., specializes in legal research and writing. On December 10, 1998, world and national leaders commemorate the birthday of an impostor. The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights turns 50 years old on that date. Because Americans know so little about their own Constitution and Bill of Rights, [...]
1Dec1998 | Richard W. Stevens | 7 comments | ContinuedThe Danger of Deifying the State
Until this afternoon, I had planned to write this month about the folly of Social Security, or about the perils of central banking, or about the internal contradictions of government regulation; I forget which, exactly. I forget because a far more interesting topic sprang to mind a few hours ago: my son, 15-month-old Thomas Macaulay [...]
1Nov1998 | Donald J. Boudreaux | 0 comments | ContinuedThe 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 | Leonard E. Read | 0 comments | ContinuedRudolph Rummel Talks About the Miracle of Liberty and Peace
Since the late nineteenth century, most intellectuals have embraced the illusion that government could somehow be tamed. They promoted a vast expansion of government power supposedly to do good. But the twentieth century turned out to be the bloodiest in human history, confirming the worst fears of classical liberals who had always warned about government [...]
1Jul1997 | FEE Admin | 1 comment | ContinuedBook Review: The Good Life and Its Discontents: The American Dream in the Age of Entitlement by Robert J. Samuelson
Times Books • 1995 • 293 pages • $25.00 Dr. DiLorenzo is professor of economics at Loyola College in Maryland. The Good Life and Its Discontents, by journalist Robert J. Samuelson (no relation to the economist Paul Samuelson), is a well-written exposition of some of the failures of interventionist economic policy over the past 50 [...]
1Jan1997 | Thomas J. DiLorenzo | 0 comments | ContinuedHistorian 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 | FEE Admin | 0 comments | ContinuedJames Madison-Checks and Balances to Limit Government Power
James Madison didn’t originate the idea of checks and balances for limiting government power, but he helped push it farther than anyone else before or since. Previous political thinkers, citing British experience, had talked about checks and balances with a monarch in the mix, but Madison helped apply the principle to a republic. Contrary to such respected thinkers as Baron de Montesquieu, Madison insisted checks and balances could help protect liberty in a large republic.
1Mar1996 | Jim Powell | 5 comments | Continued-
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