All Posts Tagged With: "violence"

Government Is Force

Government is different from anything else in society, the only institution that can legally threaten and initiate violence against nonaggressors.

16Sep2011 | Sheldon Richman | 62 comments | Continued

The Fiasco of Prohibition

The national prohibition of alcohol, initiated by the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution and enforced via the Volstead Act, stands as an important illustration of the limits to social engineering. Prohibition failed to eliminate alcohol, and even exacerbated many of the social ills related to its consumption, because government is limited both by its knowledge [...]

22Dec2010 | Douglas Rogers | 19 comments | Continued

Can Gun Control Work?

Can Gun Control Work? is a first-rate addition to the literature on gun control. The book is not an attempt to advocate either side of the debate. Instead, it is an analysis of whether various types of control can achieve their stated objectives, especially reducing violence and crime. Jacobs concludes that gun control cannot work, [...]

6Jul2010 | Jeffrey Miron | 0 comments | Continued

A History of Force: Exploring the Worldwide Movement Against Habits of Coercion, Bloodshed, and Mayhem

Contributing editor James L. Payne has written a book that deserves the attention of every advocate of liberty. The nemesis of freedom is the initiation of physical force. Force, or the threat of its use, interferes with the mutually advantageous exchanges people seek. It is the enemy of natural rights, the free market, and the [...]

5Jul2010 | Sheldon Richman | 1 comment | Continued

World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability

The list of complaints against laissez-faire capitalism is long, including such contradictory notions as its guilt in impoverishing the masses and its role in enabling the poor to escape their “proper” station in life. In World on Fire, Amy Chua adds to the list, arguing that capitalism, when combined with democratization in economically developing nations, [...]

2Jul2010 | George C. Leef | 2 comments | Continued

Drugs, Economics, and Liberty

Only a few people would dispute that narcotics can harm people, whether that harm is in the form of damage to the body, mental and physical dependency, or threats to social relationships. However, there is not nearly as much consensus as to what the correct public response to narcotics use and sales is. Ideas range [...]

20May2010 | Walter E. Williams | 39 comments | Continued

The Peace Principle

The key principle of liberalism is peace. Some would say peaceful cooperation is the key. But in a free society one is also free peacefully not to cooperate.  Many would say the core principle of liberalism is freedom, and since the word liberalism is derived from the Latin liber, which means free, that is a [...]

1Dec2006 | James Peron | 1 comment | Continued

Unions and Abortion Protestors

The National Organization for Women (NOW) and labor unions have a long record of support­ing each other in their respective public-policy wars, so one could reasonably expect the AFL-CIO to be on NOW’s side in Scheidler v. NOW, a long-running case that was finally decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in February. But NOW and [...]

1May2006 | Charles W. Baird | 0 comments | Continued

Economics for the Citizen

For the first time in 37 years, last fall semester I didn’t teach. No, I haven’t retired. It was my semester-off reward for two terms as department chairman at George Mason University. A break is well deserved after a chairmanship––a job not unlike that of herding cats. During fall semesters I typically teach our first-year [...]

1May2005 | Walter E. Williams | 0 comments | Continued

Book Reviews – April 2003

Guns and Violence: The English Experience by Joyce Lee Malcolm Harvard University Press • 2002 • 352 pages • $28.00 Reviewed by Clayton Cramer Joyce Lee Malcolm’s new book is not the masterpiece that her previous book, To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origins of an Anglo-American Right, was. Still, there is much to commend, [...]

1Apr2003 | FEE Admin | 0 comments | Continued

The Seven Myths of Gun Control: Reclaiming the Truth About Guns, Crime, and the Second Amendment

Guns increase the incidence of violent crime. Using a gun to deter crime is more dangerous to the intended victim than the perpetrator. Guns pose a special threat to children. Such statements, reinforced in the media, are accepted at face value by many Americans. But are they true? According to Richard Poe, editor of FrontPageMagazine.com, [...]

1Oct2002 | Tom Welch | 10 comments | Continued

They’re Just Dying to Be Rescued

Karen Selick is an attorney and a columnist for Canadian Lawyer. Copyright 2000. Belleville, Ontario, Canada—Why don’t abused women want to defend themselves? Three times within the past year, and many times previously, I have been consulted in matrimonial cases by women who have told credible and terrifying stories of violence, stalking, and death threats [...]

1Dec2000 | Karen Selick | 0 comments | Continued

Reflections 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

Silly Talking

Let’s talk about absolutely ridiculous pronouncements people make that either ignore simple fact or border on insanity. How about this one: Violence is no way to settle anything! Evidence suggests that violence is a very effective way of settling things. Let’s look at a few examples.

1Jul2000 | Walter E. Williams | 1 comment | Continued

Emotive Policymaking

Doug Bandow, a nationally syndicated columnist, is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and the author and editor of several books, including Tripwire: Korea and U.S. Foreign Policy in a Changed World. We live in an age of paradox. Media saturation following events like the murders at Columbine High School makes it appear that [...]

1Nov1999 | Doug Bandow | 0 comments | Continued

Who Wins in Strikes?

There are at least five groups of people who are affected by labor union strikes—employers, their employees, union officials, and the customers and suppliers of the strike targets. Union officials would have us believe that striking workers are the biggest beneficiaries of such conflicts and that those benefits come at the expense of employers and [...]

1Aug1998 | Charles W. Baird | 1 comment | Continued

Where Does Law Come From?

This article draws from a research project supported by the Earhart Foundation, the Institute for Humane Studies, and the Independent Institute. The legal scholar Lon Fuller defined law as “the enterprise of subjecting human conduct to the governance of rules.” It includes basic rules of conduct as well as institutions or mechanisms for clarifying, changing, [...]

1Dec1997 | Bruce L. Benson | 5 comments | Continued
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