One always hopes to end the year on a high note, but politically speaking, at least, that is difficult again in 2022. One searches in vain for advances in individual liberty and setbacks for power. Sure, with the receding of the pandemic, life has returned to normal...
Justice
TGIF: The State Fuels Identity Politics
by Sheldon Richman | Dec 16, 2022 | Featured Articles, Justice, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
Anyone with an ounce of good sense knows that destructive identity politics is run amuck in America and elsewhere. All incentives these days seem to go in one direction: toward identifying oneself as a member of an aggrieved group supposedly due compensation through...
TGIF: On Liberty and Security
by Sheldon Richman | Dec 2, 2022 | Economics, Featured Articles, Justice, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." Benjamin Franklin's famous words are often quoted because, alas, they are always relevant. Whether Franklin meant what libertarians take him to have...
TGIF: Beware the Regulatory Storm over FTX
by Sheldon Richman | Nov 18, 2022 | Economics, Featured Articles, Justice, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
The bankruptcy of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX and the alleged fraud by co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried, which has cost customers millions, is tailor-made for anyone who already wants the power of government to expand, especially in the area of financial privacy. For...
TGIF: Free Markets and Greed
by Sheldon Richman | Oct 28, 2022 | Featured Articles, Justice, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
"Greed, for lack of a better word, is good." Ever since corporate raider Gordon Gekko, the lead character in Oliver Stone's Wall Street (1987), made that declaration, left-wing opponents of the market economy have regarded that one-liner as the only rebuttal required...
TGIF: How the State Violated Free Speech during the Pandemic
by Sheldon Richman | Oct 7, 2022 | Featured Articles, Justice, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
Is anyone shocked by this observation? Public statements, emails, and recent publicly released documents establish that the President of the United States and other senior officials in the Biden Administration violated the First Amendment by directing social-media...
TGIF: The Scourge of Conscription
by Sheldon Richman | Sep 30, 2022 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy, Justice, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
By now Randolph Bourne's observation that "war is the health of the state" ought to be such a cliche that it would hardly need to be said. And yet, it must be said -- often -- because many still haven't gotten the word. If the state is the adversary of liberty, as it...
This Constitutional Crisis May Collapse the Criminal Justice System Ep. 233
by Patrick Macfarlane | Sep 27, 2022 | Criminal Justice, Justice, Libertarianism, Vital Dissent
https://youtu.be/s1HycZUtZUI Patrick talks about a pending Wisconsin class action complaint regarding the lack of sufficient access to public defenders that is emblematic of a larger problem all across the United States. Episode 233 of the Liberty Weekly Podcast is...