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Sheldon Richman Articles

TGIF: The US Empire’s 72-Year War on Iran

by Sheldon Richman | Jun 27, 2025

The likely temporary Israel-Iran ceasefire notwithstanding, if you need proof of how despicable Donald Trump is, consider this: When asked last week if he would ask Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to stop bombing Iran, which had already said it would stop retaliating...

TGIF: This Is America First

by Sheldon Richman | Jun 20, 2025

The Trump battle cry is America First. Revealingly, it is not Americans First. The former signifies, implicitly if not explicitly, national collectivism; the latter, individualism. To the extent Trump has a political worldview, it is not individualist. We cannot doubt...

TGIF: Magna Carta Day

by Sheldon Richman | Jun 13, 2025

I wrote this in 2015 to mark the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta, or Great Charter. In light of current events—featuring a president who aspires to unchecked power, despairs of the rule of law, and has discussed suspending the right of habeas corpus—the posting of...

TGIF: On “Public Property”

by Sheldon Richman | Jun 6, 2025

A dubious theory held by some libertarians has been knocking about. It goes something like this: The claim that government-controlled land is actually unowned—and thus not properly subject to government rulemaking—would lead to consequences that reasonable people...

TGIF: The Worst Are Already on Top

by Sheldon Richman | May 30, 2025

After Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem made a fool of herself by defining habeas corpus as "a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country," Justin Amash, the libertarian former congressman, posted an apt quotation...

TGIF: Maestro Trump and Drug Prices

by Sheldon Richman | May 23, 2025

When encountering a public problem, people tend to fall into one of two camps: one camp, the larger one, says, "There oughta be a law." The other one asks, "How has the government created or aggravated the situation?" We know which camp Maestro Trump belongs to. Take...

TGIF: Individuals, Not America, First

by Sheldon Richman | May 16, 2025

Let's hear no more about America First! It's a fraud, a cover for collectivist nationalism, and a distraction from what matters. (It also looks like camouflage for Trump Family First, but let's take it at face value for now.) On foreign policy, America First does not...

TGIF: On the Importance of Undesigned Order

by Sheldon Richman | May 9, 2025

Carl Menger, the founder of the Austrian approach to economics, was not the first or last thinker to see similarities between a society and a living organism, suggesting the existence of undesigned, spontaneous order. The names Adam Ferguson and Adam Smith, before...

TGIF: On Value and Freedom

by Sheldon Richman | May 2, 2025

To live is to act. To act is to choose. To choose is to prefer. To prefer is to pursue values—that is, to value. That's logic-guided observation. Ego sum, ergo aestimo: I am, therefore I value. (HT: Aristotle, Ayn Rand, and Ludwig von Mises.) Next: to think is to act....

TGIF: More on Menger and Value

by Sheldon Richman | Apr 25, 2025

Consumer goods are also called finished goods. The products we buy at the supermarket and other retail stores have, in less finished form, passed through many stages (including distribution), reaching back to the original factors of production: land and labor. Land...

TGIF: Menger on Trade

by Sheldon Richman | Apr 18, 2025

Even when a line on a map separates two individuals, trade is still trade—that is, mutually beneficial cooperation. Whether the line separates towns, cities, counties, states, or countries, it does not matter. The transactions are win-win. We could do quite well...

TGIF: The Objectively Invaluable Menger

by Sheldon Richman | Apr 11, 2025

Many people are uneasy with the free market. I think that's because they subscribe, implicitly if not explicitly, to the labor theory of value. Workers, people lament, seem not to reap the full and just reward for their labors. Belief in the labor theory puts...

TGIF: The Great Carl Menger

by Sheldon Richman | Apr 4, 2025

There can be no doubt among competent historians that if ... the Austrian School has occupied an almost unique position in the development of economic science, this is entirely due to the foundations laid by this one man.... [I]ts fundamental ideas belong fully and...

TGIF: “Liberalism and Capitalism”

by Sheldon Richman | Mar 28, 2025

Ludwig von Mises's 1927 path-breaking work in political theory speaks to the current generations. In section 5 of his introduction to Liberalism: The Classical Tradition, Mises sounds impeccably relevant in describing how the opponents of liberalism and the market...

TGIF: The Income Stagnation Myth

by Sheldon Richman | Mar 21, 2025

Many people, including some free-market advocates, think Americans are materially worse off today than they were in the 1970s. Some subscribers to that view blame globalization, that is, free trade in goods, which means in labor services. By any reasonable measure,...

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Sheldon Richman

Sheldon Richman is the executive editor of The Libertarian Institute and a contributing editor at Antiwar.com. He is the former senior editor at the Cato Institute and Institute for Humane Studies; former editor of The Freeman, published by the Foundation for Economic Education; and former vice president at the Future of Freedom Foundation. His latest books are Coming to Palestine and What Social Animals Owe to Each Other.

What Social Animal's Owe to Each Other

by Sheldon Richman

Book Animalssm

These essays, written over the past 20 years, have a single underlying theme: namely, that we human beings, as social animals, need individual freedom to fully flourish.

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Coming to Palestine