Tag: government
If Markets Fail, Governments Fail Harder
August 31, 2016 | Post
The government is, at best, another tool societies can sometimes use to good effect. It is not a Deus ex machina that societies can rely upon to swoop in and bring about a happy ending.
Protecting Religious Liberty and the Common Good Aren't Mutually Exclusive
August 29, 2016 | Post
In this second installment to the series on religious freedom, Professor Mark Hall explains a third way to protecting both religious liberty and the public interest.
Why the Worst Get On Top: Class of 2016
August 26, 2016 | Post
Duke University’s great historian of thought and Hayek scholar Bruce Caldwell sent the following e-mail to me, which I share here with Bruce’s kind permission (link added): Has anyone in the blogosphere noticed the chilling similarity between Hayek’s description in the Road To Serfdom (in the chapter titled “Why the Worst Get on Top“) of […]
Some Reflections on Whether We Should Abandon Religious Liberty
August 22, 2016 | Post
Impinging on religious liberty rarely, if ever, benefits the commons good, as Professor Mark Hall explains in this first installment in a series on religious liberty.
Are Foreign and Domestic Policy Really that Different?
July 28, 2016 | Post
Pundits like to talk about foreign and domestic policy as if they are completely separate concerns. But as University of Tampa professor Abby Hall has been explaining in Learn Liberty’s six part series on foreign policy, there is not as much distinction between them as people often think. In fact, foreign policy often boomerangs back […]
When Your Foreign Spying Program Become a Tool to Control Your Own People
July 22, 2016 | Post
The recent public fight between Apple and the FBI as well as the controversy over the Edward Snowden leaks make it seem as though government spying on American people is a recent phenomenon. In fact, government surveillance of U.S. citizens goes back over 100 years. Martin Luther King, for instance, was spied on extensively for […]
Venezuela vs. Ecuador (Chavismo vs. Chavismo Dollarized)
July 22, 2016 | Post
This piece was originally published at the Cato Institute. Tune into Learn Liberty’s Facebook page on Monday at 3pm for a Facebook Live event with professor Steve Hanke on this topic. With the arrival of President Hugo Chávez in 1999, Venezuela embraced Chavismo, a form of Andean socialism. In 2013, Chávez met the Grim Reaper […]
Why the Founding Fathers Risked Everything for an Untried Idea
July 7, 2016 | Post
Earlier this week, Americans celebrated one of their most meaningful holidays, their country’s Independence Day. It’s a day every American knows, a day spent with food, family, and fireworks. See Also: Why the American Revolution Was Really an Economic Revolution But, many Americans don’t know the real story that led to July 4, 1776. What […]
Millennials Like Socialism — Until They Get Jobs
June 28, 2016 | Post
Editor’s note: This post originally appeared at the Washington Post. The author, Emily Ekins, will be joining Learn Liberty on Facebook Live this upcoming Thursday the the 30th at 3pm to talk about this and other election issues. Millennials are the only age group in America in which a majority views socialism favorably. A national […]
Putin’s Crackdown on Social Media Provides One Important Reminder to Americans
June 20, 2016 | Post
Russia has been cracking down on its internal dissent, limiting speech that does not coincide with the government’s narrow and controversial policies. Last year, up to 54 people were sent to prison for hate speech, marking a dramatic five-fold increase from five years ago. Take Anastasia Bubeyeva, for example. Bubeyeva now lives alone with her […]
Government Goes into Debt to Help the Poor, Ends up Stealing from Them Instead
June 16, 2016 | Post
We all know government debt is bad for the young. But it’s also bad for the poor. Hurting the Kids to Help the Elderly The well-known political philosopher Loren Lomasky recently reminded us of why debt is bad for the young. We might be able to justify spending now, and borrowing to finance the spending, […]
Privatize the TSA!
June 7, 2016 | Post
Editor’s note: This blog post by Gary Leff was originally posted at the travel blog View From the Wing. The TSA has failed to meaningfully detect dangerous items going through the checkpoint for years. Their 95 percent failure rate is hardly new, ten years ago it was a 91% failure rate. That’s unacceptable. We don’t need […]
A Little White Lie I Told as a Camp Counselor Explains Political Strategy Perfectly
June 6, 2016 | Post
It would not be remarkable to observe that politicians lie. Many people lie. What is remarkable is that politicians keep telling the same lies over and over again. Few people do this. (Donald Trump, who tells a new lie almost every time he opens his mouth, is not a counterexample to this observation because he […]
How My Annual Halloween Parade Explains Donald Trump’s Success
May 26, 2016 | Post
Many public intellectuals and political pundits were surprised by Donald Trump’s ascendancy to the Republican nomination. In my opinion, this is because they succumbed to what has (unfairly) become known as the “Pauline Kael syndrome.” Pauline Kael is the New Yorker critic who was reputed to have remarked after the 1972 Presidential election that “Nixon […]
How the State Became the American Woman’s Real Enemy
May 18, 2016 | Post
Editor’s Note: This is part one in a two part series from Sarah Skwire on women and liberty. You can read part two here. I’ve been a feminist for as long as I can remember. One of our oldest family stories is of Young Sarah asking Mom why Puppy Chow had a commercial that said “Don’t […]
Legal and Cultural Approaches to Pluralism and Diversity
May 12, 2016 | Post
The term “pluralism” connotes both a description of our deep differences and a political response to those differences. Let’s start with pluralism as a description of our cultural reality. Our society is incredibly diverse when it comes to race, ethnicity, religion, gender, age, and sexuality. We have different life experiences, we live in different communities, […]