Laurence Vance | The Libertarian Institute

Who Is Doing the Discriminating?

by Laurence Vance | Jul 12, 2023 | Featured Articles

Conservatives are cheering and progressives are crying about the recent Supreme Court decision in the case of Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, which was consolidated with Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina et al. The cases began in 2014 when Students for Fair Admission (SFFA)—a nonprofit organization whose stated purpose is “to defend human and civil rights secured by law, including the right of individuals to equal protection under the law”—sued Harvard University and the University of North Carolina on behalf of...

Not a Single American Deserved to Die in Korea

by Laurence Vance | Jun 7, 2023 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

The remains of an American soldier were laid to rest on Memorial Day at the Andersonville National Cemetery in Georgia after a police car with lights flashing escorted the casket to the cemetery. What made this funeral service so unique and so tragic is that Pfc. Luther Herschel Story was killed on September 1, 1950, during the Korean War. He was just eighteen years old. Story left high school during his sophomore year and enlisted in the Army. In the summer of 1950, he deployed to Korea with Company A of the 1st Battalion, 9th Infantry Regiment. After he was wounded when his unit came under...

NPR Can’t Justify Its Existence

by Laurence Vance | Apr 24, 2023 | Featured Articles

One of the hallmarks of authoritarian countries is that the media is state-run or under the direct supervision or control of the government. The Xinhua News Agency is the official state news agency in China. Al-Akhbar, Al-Ahram, and Al-Gomhuriya are state-owned national newspapers in Egypt. Cuba prohibits privately owned media. According to Reporters Without Borders, China, Egypt, and Cuba are ranked near the bottom of its 2022 Press Freedom Index, along with Myanmar, Vietnam, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. The top five countries for press freedom are Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Estonia, and Finland....

Can a Libertarian Support ‘Law and Order’?

by Laurence Vance | Apr 17, 2023 | Criminal Justice, Featured Articles

The election year of 1968 was a tumultuous one marked by the assassinations of Sen. Robert Kennedy and civil rights leader Martin Luther King, urban race riots, college antiwar demonstrations, and a Democratic National Convention that saw the Chicago police and the National Guard have violent clashes with protestors. The 1968 Election Republican presidential candidate Richard Nixon (1913–1994) campaigned on a platform of “law and order” in the 1968 election. In his acceptance speech for the Republican nomination at the Republican National Convention in Miami Beach, he said: The first civil...

Foreign Aid Doesn’t Need Oversight, It Needs To Be Abolished

by Laurence Vance | Mar 27, 2023 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

In an interview with ABC News last month, after it was noted that U.S. aid to Ukraine now totals at least $113 billion, President Joe Biden was told that “many” Americans were asking, “How long can we spend like this?” His response was to first question the number of Americans who were really asking such a question, and then to limit the questioners to “the MAGA crowd” and “right-wing Republicans.” President Biden maintained that the United States is “in a situation where the cost of doing—of walking away could be considerably higher than the cost of helping Ukraine maintain its...

Donald Trump Promises to Protect the Welfare State

by Laurence Vance | Mar 9, 2023 | Featured Articles

In a recent brief video message to his supporters, former president and current 2024 presidential candidate Donald Trump warned Republicans about cutting Medicare or Social Security: Under no circumstances should Republicans vote to cut a single penny from Medicare or Social Security to help pay for Joe Biden’s reckless spending spree...Do not cut the benefits our seniors worked for and paid for their entire lives. Save Social Security. Don’t destroy it! The Democrats are looking to destroy Social Security. We’re not going to let them do it. Senator J. D. Vance (R-Ohio) tweeted that Trump...

The Government’s War on Consumption Is a War Against Liberty

by Laurence Vance | Feb 22, 2023 | Featured Articles

Although Americans believe that they live in a free country — some would even say the freest country on earth — that freedom is limited and relative. The Cato Institute’s Human Freedom Index “presents the state of human freedom in the world based on a broad measure that encompasses personal, civil, and economic freedom.” The United States is ranked 15th, behind such countries as Switzerland, Ireland, and Finland. In the Press Freedom Index issued annually by Reporters without Borders, the United States is only ranked 42nd, behind such countries as Guyana, Latvia, and Namibia. The Heritage...

Hands Off My Income

by Laurence Vance | Jan 17, 2023 | Featured Articles

House Democrats finally obtained former president Donald Trump’s tax returns and promptly released them to the public. No one should have his tax returns released: not presidents, not politicians, not celebrities, not sports figures, not cab drivers. Released was nearly 6,000 pages of six years of individual and business income tax returns for the years 2015 through 2020. The returns show that Trump paid $750 in federal taxes in 2017, $0 in 2020, and had negative adjusted gross income in four of the six years. His highest year for charitable giving was 2017, when he donated $1.8 million. But...