Jonah Goldberg: Tyranny Of The Typical

Society and government are not interchangeable terms. And now let us recall the "Fable of the Shoes." In his 1973 "LibertarianManifesto," the late Murray Rothbard argued that the biggest obstacle in the road out of serfdom was "status quo bias." In society, we're accustomed to rapid change. "New products, new life styles, new ideas are often embraced ... MORE

VIDEO: Thomas Sowell - Growth Of Government

David Harsanyi: Let's Eat The Rich

Obama's misguided economic agenda. Some wiseguys at the Economic Freedom Network just released a survey alleging that the United States has fallen from the sixth-freest economy in the world to the 10th-freest. The survey is based on four foundations of a healthy capitalist society: "personal choice, voluntary exchange coordinated by markets, freedom to enter and ... MORE

Selwyn Duke: The Case For Ending The EPA

The disposal of a toxic waste. In the Republican presidential debate last evening, some of the candidates passionately stated that the Environmental Protection Agency should be eliminated. It’s a position that sounds strange to some ears. As a respondent in a Fox News focus group said after the debate, and this is a paraphrase, “This all sounds good when you fixate on the ... MORE

Jacob Sullum: The Broken Planet Fallacy

Treating global warming as an economic blessing. When Solyndra went belly up last month, less than a year after it started making solar arrays in Fremont, California, an Energy Department spokesman insisted that the $535 million the federal government had loaned the company was well spent. "The project that we supported succeeded," he said. "The facility was ... MORE

VIDEO: Gov. Gary Johnson: Cut Spending by 43%


Why is both the mainstream media and Republican party ignoring this guy?

Richard Ralston: Feds Want You To Rat Out Your Doc

Why would the government want everyone to inform on everybody? Must the government criminalize medical care in order to control it? It looks like we are about to find out. There was a bit of an uproar recently when the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced, then withdrew, a plan to hire your fellow ... MORE

Walter Block: 'Economic Warfare"

A consideration of price wars and corporate raiders. Pundits are accustomed to utilizing the language of war and strife to depict economic relationships. This is confusing, irrational and misleading. For the dismal science addresses mutual benefit, or positive-sum games. All participants gain whenever a trade, a purchase, sale, rental agreement, job, etc., gets    ... MORE

A. Barton Hinkle: Obama's Thought Police

Police states rely on citizen informants. To whatever high school intern probably came up with the idea, the White House's "Attack Watch" website and Twitter account must have seemed a spark of genius. After all, they yoked together two trendy ideas—rapid response and crowd-sourcing—in service to the president. Give people the opportunity to report false and malicious ... MORE

VIDEO: Milton Friedman - Market Failure


Market failure is bad, government failure is worse.

Five Myths About Social Security and Medicare

by Charles Blahous. The national discussion on entitlement programs is dazed and confused. The federal government’s largest two programs, Social Security and Medicare, are at the center of a vibrant national debate over our fiscal future. Each program faces a significant financial shortfall, the solution to which remains elusive. The following are five myths that have been ... MORE

Stephen C. Webster: Drug War Corruption

Drug cartels throw fundraisers for U.S. officials.  Two former law enforcement officials who worked with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as confidential informants on probes into police corruption have come forward with allegations of drug cartel ties to top cops, judges and elected officials. Greg Gonzales, a retired sheriff's deputy, and Wesley Dutton ... MORE

Thomas Sowell: The 'Ponzi' Sound Bite

Band-Aids don't cure cancer. Many in the media and in politics have gone ballistic over the fact that Texas Governor Rick Perry called Social Security "a Ponzi scheme." Although many act shocked, shocked, as if Rick Perry had said something unthinkable, Governor Perry is not even among the first thousand people to call Social Security a Ponzi scheme. Not only conservatives ... MORE

VIDEO: The Audacity Of Liberty In NY

Ralph R. Reiland: Toll Roads To Obamaville

Your cost: about $3 million per jobless mile. "Pass this bill now," President Obama is repeatedly demanding, regarding his new American Jobs Act. There's nothing new in the legislation, just more government spending, more transfers of money from "the rich" to Obama's political allies, more spending for infrastructure enhancement so we all won't allegedly be ... MORE

Jacob Sullum: Unbanned in Phoenix

States don't have to fight war on drugs. On May 27 Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer asked a federal judge to decide whether her state’s Medical Marijuana Act, narrowly approved by voters last November, “complies with federal law” or is “preempted in whole or in part because of an irreconcilable conflict with federal law.” Oddly, Brewer expressed no preference between those ... MORE

Robert J. Mack: Watergate Times Three

White House corruption surfaces. You think Richard Nixon's presidency was the worst scandal ever? Well, so far anyway. It all started with a tape holding a door open at the Watergate complex in Washington, D. C., discovered by a security guard 39 years ago on June 17, 1972. That discovery started a sinister chapter in America's history, fueled by the fervent investigative work of ... MORE

VIDEO: Andrew Napolitano - Wealth, Taxes & Ponzi

James E. Miller: TSA And Unproductive Labor

TSA is essentially a government make-work program. Last month, I attended the 19th annual State Policy Network conference in Seattle, Washington. Although the conference was informative and enjoyable, I took home a different lesson on free-market enterprise. This was my first trip on an airplane since President Obama upped the intensity of the screening process the ... MORE

California's Effort To Shackle The 2nd Amendment

Gun control bill seeks to ban open carry. On Gov. Jerry Brown's desk is a bid to bar Californians from openly carrying firearms, legislation that could open a new front in the state's decades-old gun control debate. The measure, aimed at an increasingly popular tactic used by 2nd Amendment activists, would make California the first state since 1987 to outlaw the ... MORE