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Liberty and Power

  • Jan 13, 2011

    Not Polarized Enough

    by Liberty and Power

    The ruling elite's line that politics today is "too polarized" is self-serving bunkum. Politics is not nearly polarized enough! The two parties are really divisions of a single statist uniparty. There is no prominent anti-statist party that is taken seriously by the mass media, which is little more than the PR department of the uniparty system. Internecine contests over who holds power is not true polarization, since the two sides do not represent the poles of any fundamental controver
  • Jan 13, 2011

    Beth A. Hoffman Memorial Prize for Economic Writing

    by Liberty and Power

    The first annual Beth A. Hoffman Memorial Prize for Economic Writing has been awarded to Kevin A. Carson, the Foundation for Economic Education announced. Through the generosity of a FEE donor, the prize has been established to honor the memory of Beth A. Hoffman by recognizing the best article on economics or economic history published in The Freeman the previous year.

    Carson’s article,

  • Jan 13, 2011

    The Dangerous Aftermath

    by Liberty and Power

    We should be concerned that in the wake of the massacre the usual voices are calling for a beefed-up mental-health system, which means it would be easier for government to lock people up in "facilities" and drug them against their will for being "weird" though they've committed no crimes. Thomas Szasz has made the libertarian case against such detention for 50 years. It's time we paid heed.
  • Jan 13, 2011

    Do as We Say, Not as We Do

    by Liberty and Power

    How eerie it was to see Barack Obama and Janet Napolitano talk about nonviolence and civility last night. Aren't they the same Barack Obama and Janet Napolitano who are running a super surveillance state at home and a homicidal empire abroad?
  • Jan 13, 2011

    The Myth of an American "Gun Culture"

    by Liberty and Power

    "Today’s attack on the so-called gun culture is actually an attack on the constitutional rights of American members of the public. After all, campaigners for gun control do not protest the rights of police and security officers to use deadly force when necessary. Instead, they want them to have a monopoly on guns. It brings to mind the British woman who was arrested for taking photographs in a shopping centre that was filled to the brim with surveillance cameras."

    Kevin Yuill explai
  • Jan 11, 2011

    The Lunatic Plea For Gold

    by Liberty and Power

    Reporter: Mr. President, is it still the desire of the United States to go back on the international gold standard?
    Pres. Franklin Roosevelt: Absolutely.
    FDR Press Conference (April 19, 1933)

    Just a few months ago, Federal Reserve big wigs and other assorted muckety-mucks gathered at a swank resort on the aptly named Jekyll Island (a spit of land off the coast of Georgia where our current Mr. Hyde of a monetary system was birthed) to celebrate the release 100 years ag
  • Jan 10, 2011

    The Tea Party and the Beat Generation

    by Liberty and Power

    Only recently did I have a chance to read an article on the Tea Party movement from the New York Times Book Review of October 10, 2010. Written by Lee Siegel and entitled"Beat Generations," it finds significant parallels between the Tea Partiers and the Beats of the 1950s and early 1960s. The same issue has a
  • Jan 8, 2011

    Single Payer Lunacy

    by Liberty and Power

    My brother in-law comes to me and says do not worry about a thing I will pay all of your family’s medical expenses from now on but I do not believe him. You see he owes money to all of his family and friends, his enormous student loans are in default, he has 15 maxed out credit cards, his house is in foreclosure, he has two broken legs because he could not pay his bookie and he was fired from his job yesterday. So, no I don’t think I can rely on him for my health care needs.

    Yet there are pe

  • Jan 5, 2011

    Life without the Fed: The Suffolk System

    by Liberty and Power

    Suppose for a moment that Republican Congressman Ron Paul's fondest wish came true, and the Federal Reserve Bank was not only audited but closed down. As far-fetched as such a notion may seem, it would not be the first time in our nation's history that a central bank has been shuttered. For all the Fed's imposing grandeur, Ben Bernanke is running our third (albeit longest-running) try at a central bank. This country has lived without a central bank before and, if given the chance, could do so ag
  • Jan 3, 2011

    Don’t Accuse Me of Blaming America When I Blame the Government

    by Liberty and Power

    In discourse about public affairs, words matter much more than most people appreciate. We live immersed in language so twisted and abused, in part by the design of interested parties and in part by the sloth of inattentive speakers and listeners, that we often fail to notice or object to linguistic miscarriages that pass for intelligent expression. The examples are legion, but here I have in mind a particular turn of phrase that American conservatives, especially neocons, have employed in recent
  • Dec 30, 2010

    The More Things Change...

    by Liberty and Power

    From the Washington Post:

    The president's recently departed budget director is joining Citigroup.

    The New York Federal Reserve Bank's derivatives expert is joining Goldman Sachs.

    And numerous investigators from the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission are joining W

  • Dec 29, 2010

    Thinning the Herd

    by Liberty and Power

    I don’t mean to sound callous, but in this case I’ll risk it. Lord grant that this man never breed.
  • Dec 28, 2010

    Can You Identify These Libertarian Anti-Draft Protestors?

    by Liberty and Power

    This fascinating photo is on the website of the Wisconsin Historical Society.

    Here is the caption: "Students for a Libertarian Society march on State Street and burn their selective service registration cards in an anti-draft protest."

    Althoug