Author: The Future of Freedom Foundation

by Jacob G. Hornberger For the life of me, I just don’t get the mainstream media’s vehement objections to President Trump’s desire to investigate whether Joe Biden ending up winning the election through fraud. Their argument, repeated from the very moment that Biden was declared the winner and ever since, is that Trump’s claims of fraud are “false” and “baseless.” But secrecy is normally at the core of fraud. While there might be isolated cases where, say, a person is caught voting twice, it’s rare that massive fraud manifests itself immediately.  It usually takes an investigation to ferret it out. Notice what happens if the logic of mainstream media, most of which was vehemently in favor of Biden’s election, holds sway. If there is massive, sophisticated fraud, it is n...

by Richard M. Ebeling Several of the leading European countries are now in the process of implementing a second wave of social and economic lockdowns in the face of new and a rising number of cases of the coronavirus. After bringing their societies to near total halts in the spring of 2020 with lockdowns and shutdowns in the name of “flattening the curve” to not overwhelm medical facilities and, hopefully, stop any further spread of the virus, this new increase in cases has brought about a repeat of the same governmental response: prohibit many human contacts by closing or restricting business activities and ordering people to stay at home. Governments in Germany and France announced new commands closing a good deal of their countries on October 28th, with the German authorities ord...

by Richard M. Ebeling The classical liberals of the nineteenth century were certain that the end of the older mercantilist system — with its government control of trade and commerce, its bounties (subsidies) and prohibitions on exports and imports — would open wide vistas for improving the material conditions of man through the internationalization of the system of division of labor. They also believed that the elimination of barriers to trade and the free intercourse among men would help to significantly reduce if not end the causes of war among nations. The economists of that earlier era had demonstrated the mutual gains from trade that would develop and be reinforced from specialization in productive activities among the people of the world. No longer would the material improveme...

by  John W. Whitehead “For soldiers … coming home is more lethal than being in combat.” ― Brené Brown, research professor at the University of Houston. The 2020 presidential election may be over, but nothing has really changed. The U.S. government still poses the greatest threat to our freedoms. More than terrorism, more than domestic extremism, more than gun violence and organized crime, even more than the perceived threat posed by any single politician, the U.S. government remains a greater menace to the life, liberty and property of its citizens than any of the so-called dangers from which the government claims to protect us. This threat is especially pronounced for America’s military veterans, especially that portion of the population that exercises their Firs...

by Laurence M. Vance An article titled “Six Scams that Prey on the Elderly” that appeared on Kiplinger.com last year has recently been reposted on Pocket. Although there is a Social Security scam that the author (Miriam Cross) mentions as one of the six, the fact that Social Security itself is a scam is never mentioned. “Many scams are universal,” begins Cross, “from the IRS impostor who calls and threatens to arrest you if you don’t pay your taxes, to phishing emails that trick you into sending sensitive data or downloading malware onto your computer.” But some scams specifically target the elderly. “Older adults may fall for certain scams because they are in the habit of answering calls from unknown callers, open junk mail rather than tossing it in the trash, or are not as p...

by Christine Smith If there’s one thing we’ve learned about the public’s understanding and practice of liberty from the pandemic, it’s that some when pushed to the brink will rebel. Sometimes, for humans to learn, takes a loss of liberty to awaken them. Currently, millions want their states to “open up” while local governments say “no.” People lost much during this pandemic: livelihoods, freedom of movement and assembly, freedom of worship, and freedom of association. Never has our modern society been so restrictive on American’s civil liberties. As a result, mental and emotional health suffered, the economy tanked, and some lost loved ones with whom they were never able to visit during their illness. Weddings, graduation parties, and celebration of life memorials were forbidden ...

by Richard M. Ebeling “How Many Americans Will Ayn Rand Kill?” When New York Times columnist Paul Krugman’s article for October 22, 2020 was first posted on the internet that was the title of his piece. Someone at The Times must have had second thoughts about it, because now if you download Krugman’s piece the title has been changed to, “When Libertarianism Goes Bad,” but he still takes a named swipe at Ayn Rand in the body of the article, along with libertarians in general. What are Ayn Rand and libertarians guilty of? Well, according to Paul Krugman, they are selfish, inconsiderate, freedom-obsessed individualists who will not even show the basic decency and social sense for the “common good” to wear a face mask to ward off spreading of the coronavirus. What can be wrong in mandat...

by Jacob G. Hornberger Why is it that some libertarians are scared to death to call for the repeal of Social Security and Medicare? Oh sure, they’ll come up with all sorts of Rube Goldberg-like schemes for reforming these two socialist programs. But the minute that another libertarian advocates the immediate repeal of these programs, these reform-oriented libertarians have a conniption fit. It’s not like reform-oriented libertarians don’t understand the concept of immediate repeal of bad government programs. Take drug laws as an example. Many (but certainly not all) reform-minded libertarians do not hesitate to advocate for the immediate repeal of drug laws. They don’t come up with Rube Goldberg-like schemes for reforming the drug war. And they don’t call for phasing out the drug wa...

by John W. Whitehead Every day I ask myself the same question: How can this be happening in America? How can people like these be in charge of our country? If I didn’t see it with my own eyes, I’d think I was having a hallucination. — Philip Roth, novelist Things are falling apart. How much longer we can sustain the fiction that we live in a constitutional republic, I cannot say, but anarchy is being loosed upon the nation. We are witnessing the unraveling of the American dream one injustice at a time. Day after day, the government’s crimes against the citizenry grow more egregious, more treacherous and more tragic. And day after day, the American people wake up a little more to the grim realization that they have become captives in a prison of their own making. No longe...

by Jacob G. Hornberger The Democrats are threatening to enact a court-packing law if Amy Comey Barrett, President Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court to replace Ruth Bader Ginsberg, receives Senate confirmation. The Democrats feel that Joe Biden, should he win the November 3 election, should name Ginsberg’s replacement. The court-packing law would add additional justices onto the Supreme Court, all of whom would be appointed by Biden, which, obviously, would effectively nullify Barrett’s votes as well as the votes of other Republican-appointed members of the Court. The controversy brings to mind that infamous court-packing scheme of President Franklin Roosevelt, which ironically the mainstream press hardly ever alludes to during the current controversy over Barrett’s nomination....