Sheldon Richman | The Libertarian Institute

TGIF: What about Politicians?

by Sheldon Richman | Jul 28, 2023 | Economics, Featured Articles, Justice, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF

The best-selling social scientist and, it so happens, libertarian Bryan Caplan thinks politicians are immoral. Sounds promising. He's discussed this online and in one of his published blog-post collections, How Evil Are Politicians?: Essays on Demagoguery. What are we to make of his contention? Caplan isn't using the libertarian nonaggression standard here. Even people who never heard of that standard or who oppose it ought to be at least open to his case. He's really talking about basic decency: the need to avoid gross negligence. Moreover, he thinks it's irrelevant that politicians may...

TGIF: Paternalists Cross the Free-Speech Line

by Sheldon Richman | Jul 21, 2023 | Featured Articles, Justice, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF

Some pundits are puzzled that respectable mainstream Democrats and "progressives" are no longer free-speech absolutists but rather are enthusiastic defenders of the government's massive effort to squelch expression on the social media platforms. (Glenn Greenwald is one of those puzzled pundits.) The center-left goes so far as to smear the exposers and critics of government censorship as tin-foil-hatted conspiracy theorists. For example, Matt Taibbi is called a "so-called journalist" for his work on the Twitter Files, despite his award-winning career in investigative reporting. And look how...

TGIF: Free Speech Upsets Powers that Be

by Sheldon Richman | Jul 14, 2023 | Featured Articles, Justice, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF

The Biden administration, along with mainstream politicians and journalists, are really upset that U.S. District Judge Terry A. Doughty has forbidden the executive branch of the central government from communicating with social-media platforms for the purpose of censoring or otherwise suppressing constitutionally protected speech. Judge Doughty's action came in an important free-speech lawsuit filed against the government. He wrote in an accompanying statement: During the COVID-19 pandemic, a period perhaps best characterized by widespread doubt and uncertainty, the United States Government...

TGIF: Good News on Free Speech — for Now

by Sheldon Richman | Jul 7, 2023 | Featured Articles, Justice, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF

Occasionally, the news makes one cheer. That's the case with a preliminary injunction granted this week (July 4) to stop the federal government from suppressing lawful speech on social media. U.S. District Court Judge Terry A. Doughty took the action in the case of State of Missouri ex rel. Schmitt, et al. v. Joseph R. Biden, Jr., et al. (which I wrote about last year). The pending lawsuit challenged, among other things, the government's power to cajole, lean on, and otherwise less-than-explicitly compel Twitter, Facebook, and the other platforms to remove or suppress lawful speech that...

TGIF: “America First” Need Not Be Antiwar

by Sheldon Richman | Jun 30, 2023 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy, Libertarianism, Sheldon Richman, TGIF

Today's Trump-inspired "America First" faction cannot be counted on to be consistently noninterventionist and antiwar. That it may lean that way because its chief rival faction is so enthusiastic about foreign adventurism is hardly a firm assurance that it will remain antiwar in the future. We must beware of the assumption that an interventionist foreign policy is, in contrast to America First, by nature "Any Country But America First." Admittedly, advocates of U.S. foreign adventurism often defend their policy choices in terms of the benefits to another population. But that's not all they...

TGIF: Foreign Policy Matters

by Sheldon Richman | Jun 23, 2023 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy, Justice, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF

In an extra special way, foreign policy matters crucially to champions of individual liberty. Not that it doesn't matter to other people too -- just not in all the same ways. Anyone who understands the importance of keeping government power strictly limited in domestic matters (if such power must exist at all) will also grasp the paramount importance of constraining government power abroad. They're cut from the same cloth. This is obvious to libertarians, but not necessarily to others. When Randolph Bourne wrote that "war is the health of the state," he expected his readers to understand...

TGIF: Markets Clean Up

by Sheldon Richman | Jun 16, 2023 | Economics, Featured Articles, Libertarianism, Sheldon Richman, TGIF

Donald Boudreaux, a professor of economics at George Mason University, has been a great defender of individual liberty for a long time. One of his favorite projects is pointing out how innovative and usually unnewsworthy market activity, to the extent that government keeps out of the way, increasingly helps us to live in cleaner, healthier surroundings. In other words, if "the environment" matters for human well-being -- and it certainly does -- the freer that markets are, that is, the freer that we are, the better for everyone. Freedom and the wealth it generates on net make our world...

TGIF: Condemning Tyranny Abroad and War

by Sheldon Richman | Jun 9, 2023 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF

Can foreign-policy noninterventionists publicly criticize foreign tyrannies without giving credence to the war party? Yes -- if they try. At least I hope so. Being a noninterventionist does not require agnosticism about, much less approval of, despotic regimes. U.S. war, of course, threatens the liberty and lives of Americans, not to mention foreigners. That's why Randolph Bourne wrote, "War is the health of the state." When private individuals condemn tyranny abroad and U.S. war against it, they are pursuing the same cause. That many people who denounce tyranny in Russia, China, and...

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TGIF: What about Politicians?

TGIF: Paternalists Cross the Free-Speech Line

TGIF: Free Speech Upsets Powers that Be

TGIF: “America First” Need Not Be Antiwar

TGIF: Foreign Policy Matters

TGIF: Markets Clean Up

TGIF: Condemning Tyranny Abroad and War

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