All Posts Tagged With: "government"
Pelosi Health-Insurance Bill Summarized
Happily, you need not invest the next few weeks of your life reading the 1,990-page House overhaul of the health-insurance — and by implication, the healthcare — industry. A convenient summary has been provided, compliments of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. To provide affordable, quality health care for all Americans and reduce the growth in health care spending, [...]
31Oct2009 | Sheldon Richman | 1 comment | ContinuedIn Defense of Joe Wilson
I’m a little disappointed that folks seem so offended by Joe Wilson’s shouting “You Lie” at the President last night. The fact that our politics have been so sanitized that there is no forum in which the President must directly confront his critics is far more offensive.Democracy in America sounds like this: The critic says [...]
10Sep2009 | Mike Van Winkle | 6 comments | ContinuedProposers versus Producers
Why do people who really make us better off get nowhere near the attention when they die that prominent national politicians get? “Prominent national politicians” isn’t quite what I mean. “Prominent politicians who favored government power over liberty” is more on target. The media spotlight on the late Sen. Edward Kennedy is the latest example. [...]
28Aug2009 | Sheldon Richman | 2 comments | ContinuedTGIF: Proposers versus Producers
Why do people who really make us better off get nowhere near the attention when they die that prominent national politicians get? The rest of TGIF is here.
28Aug2009 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedTake a hike
From the Wall Street Journal: After sparking a four-day mystery about his whereabouts, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford’s spokesman said the governor had been hiking along the Appalachian Trail. Until late Monday night, Mr. Sanford’s whereabouts hadn’t been revealed since Thursday, when he took off in a sport-utility vehicle normally driven by a bodyguard, turned [...]
23Jun2009 | Mike Van Winkle | 0 comments | ContinuedInclined to Liberty: The Futile Attempt to Suppress the Human Spirit
Some people, writes Louis Carabini, are naturally “inclined to liberty.” That is, their thoughts revolve around voluntary action to accomplish their objectives and solve problems. As a Freeman reader, you are probably such an individual. On the other hand, there are many others who are instinctively drawn to coercion to accomplish their objectives and solve [...]
21May2009 | George C. Leef | 0 comments | ContinuedBeware Systemic Threats
The current push for a regulatory dictatorship over the financial industry is based on the principle that we must keep on a tight leash any organization whose activities are so pervasive and consequential that its potential for misjudgment presents a “systemic threat.”Isn’t that the case for strictly limiting the government?
7Apr2009 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedHarry Reid – “Taxation Is Not Coercive”
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid confirms in this interview what some of us have long suspected–namely that politicians are mostly those individuals too out of touch with reality to be capable of finding employment anywhere else!
11Dec2008 | Mason Drake | 0 comments | ContinuedFreedom and the Right of Self-Determination
The most guarded prerogative of every government is its legitimized monopoly over the use of force within its territorial jurisdiction. The second most important prerogative is its exclusive control over all its territory. By implication, governments therefore claim an exclusive right over the political, economic, and cultural destinies of the people under their control. If [...]
1May2008 | Richard M. Ebeling | 1 comment | ContinuedThe Day the Glue Came Undone
Scenes of the devastation and suffering inflicted by Hurricane Katrina will long remain in our memories. Equally horrifying were the pictures of New Orleans residentsand policemen helping themselves to goods from stores.
1Jan2006 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedBasis of Liberty
In one of his fables Aesop said: “A horse and a stag,
feeding together in a rich meadow, began fighting
over which should have the best grass.The stag with
his sharp horns got the better of the horse. So the horse
asked the help of man. And man agreed, but suggested
that his help might be more effective if he were permitted
to ride the horse and guide him as he thought best.
So the horse permitted man to put a saddle on his back
and a bridle on his head.Thus they drove the stag from
the meadow. But when the horse asked man to remove
the bridle and saddle and set him free, man answered, ‘I
never before knew what a useful drudge you are. And
now that I have found what you are good for, you may
rest assured that I will keep you to it.’”
Beware Democracy without Liberty
A fundamental fallacy of our time is that democracy is the open-sesame to peace, freedom, and prosperity. The recent elections in Ukraine, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia, and the promise of a contested presidential election in Egypt, are hailed as evidence of a new dawn for mankind. And, indeed, maybe they are. But democracy in itself [...]
1Apr2005 | Richard M. Ebeling | 0 comments | ContinuedJames Madison and the Simple Truths of Classical Liberalism
Perhaps it is because liberty is an intuitive concept and because the state is foreign to human nature that the precepts of (classical) liberalism can be described succinctly. Whatever the reason, one need only spend a matter of a few hours to read and understand the fundamental tenets of liberalism. Leonard Read aptly illustrates the [...]
1Jan2003 | Donald J. Kochan | 1 comment | ContinuedI, Government
I am government–the institution known the world over to all who pay taxes, get subsidies, and face regulation. Coercion is both my vocation and my avocation; it is in my very nature to compel others to do that which they otherwise would not do. My nature should then be of great concern to you as [...]
1Oct2002 | D.W. MacKenzie | 1 comment | ContinuedTrust No One Including The X-Files?
I have two favorite moments from The X-Files. In one of the television episodes (“Arcadia,” which aired in 1999), FBI agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) go undercover in a planned residential community. Posing as the Petries—that’s right, same names as Rob and Laura from the old Dick Van Dyke Show—they [...]
1Jun2002 | Raymond J. Keating | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Rule of Law and Freedom in Emerging Democracies: A Madisonian Perspective
James Dorn is vice president for academic affairs at the Cato Institute. The collapse of communism in 1989 in Eastern and Central Europe, and the fall of the Soviet Union two years later, have increased the number of democracies in the world to a total of 120. Of those, however, only 85 are classified as [...]
1Aug2001 | James A. Dorn | 0 comments | ContinuedReflections on a Ravaged Century
Several years ago, R. J. Rummel’s book Death by Government documented the horrifying numbers of people killed by government during the twentieth century—more than 100 million. Governments have always been the leading cause of violent death, but in the last century, the toll far surpassed anything previously. Why? In his new book Reflections on a [...]
1Sep2000 | George C. Leef | 1 comment | Continued-
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