Tag: Personal Liberty
By Mary Theroux | Wednesday February 27, 2013 at 1:31 PM PDT | 6 Comments
The front page of Tuesday’s “Bay Area” section of the San Francisco Chronicle features a story on the latest Field Poll results: “Support Grows for Gun Control,” reporting that a majority of California voters now “view stricter gun control laws as more important than protecting the constitutional right to own a firearm.” Four pages...
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Tags: Bill of Rights, California, Civil Liberties, Constitution, crime, Gun Control, Personal Liberty, Police, Property Rights, Second Amendment
By Mary Theroux | Monday February 25, 2013 at 1:06 PM PDT | 17 Comments
The culmination of last night’s Oscars broadcast with a Live! feed from the White House with Mrs. Obama (hangin’ with her military BFs) marks the official recognition of the Presidency as theater: like the old Western sets, no substance required. From the very beginning, President Obama was elected based on his strong delivery of...
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Tags: Afghanistan, Bailouts, Bill of Rights, Budget and Tax Policy, Children, Civil Liberties, Constitution, Culture, Economics, Elections, Environment, Global Warming, Gun Control, Healthcare, Media, Military, Peace, Personal Liberty, Politics, Presidential Power, Progressivism, Propaganda, Second Amendment, War
By Robert Higgs | Monday February 18, 2013 at 5:05 PM PDT | 7 Comments
Eldridge Cleaver famously declared, “You’re either part of the solution or you’re part of the problem.” Although I did not agree with this sentiment in its original context, it has more definite applicability in regard to what one might think of as “solving political problems.” Notice, first, that politics consists in the struggle to...
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Tags: Liberty, Peace, Personal Liberty, Philosophy, Politics, Power, The State
By Robert Higgs | Thursday February 14, 2013 at 9:00 AM PDT | 14 Comments
Many of my freedom-loving friends have great confidence that communication via the Internet and the World Wide Web will prove to be a game-changer in the fight against the disinformation and propaganda disseminated by the state and its running dogs, and that the greater ease of spreading the truth will shift the balance in...
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Tags: Liberty, Personal Liberty, Power, Technology, The State
By Melancton Smith | Wednesday February 6, 2013 at 5:08 AM PDT | 5 Comments
If you have a few minutes, take a look at a government white paper obtained by NBC news on the lawfulness of lethal attacks on U.S. citizens with attachments to terrorists. NBC has this summary of the test for ordering a killing: the confidential memo lays out a three-part test that would make targeted...
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Tags: Bill of Rights, Civil Liberties, Civil Society, Constitution, crime, Criminal Justice, Defense, Imperialism, Law, Liberty, Peace, Personal Liberty, Power, Presidential Power, Propaganda, Terrorism, The State
By Robert Higgs | Monday February 4, 2013 at 11:31 AM PDT | 42 Comments
Jonathan Turley, a professor of law at George Washington University, wrote recently: An authoritarian nation is defined not just by the use of authoritarian powers, but by the ability to use them. If a president can take away your freedom or your life on his own authority, all rights become little more than a...
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Tags: American History, Bill of Rights, Civil Liberties, Constitution, crime, Law, Liberty, Personal Liberty, Police, Surveillance, Terrorism, The State, Totalitarianism
By David J. Theroux | Saturday February 2, 2013 at 5:10 PM PDT | 35 Comments
The world-renowned philosopher Alvin C. Plantinga has recently received the prestigious Nicholas Rescher Prize for Contributions to Systematic Philosophy, awarded by the University of Pittsburgh’s Departments of Philosophy, History, and Philosophy of Science, and the Center for the History and Philosophy of Science. Plantinga is widely known for his work in the philosophy of...
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Tags: Austrian School of economics, Christianity, Culture, Economics, Entrepreneurship, Free Market, Innovation, Liberalism, Liberty, Morality, Natural Law, Personal Liberty, Philosophy, Public Choice, Religion, Video
By Anthony Gregory | Wednesday January 30, 2013 at 9:38 AM PDT | 26 Comments
An article at Truth Out by Thom Hartmann argues that the Second Amendment was ratified to preserve slavery, particularly to empower the state militia that used arms to enforce the institution through slave patrols. I wrote to Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, an historian who has written at some length about the history of American militia...
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Tags: American History, Constitution, Gun Control, Law, Personal Liberty
By David J. Theroux | Sunday January 27, 2013 at 9:17 AM PDT | 13 Comments
In response to the current, “Progressive” (i.e., authoritarian) jihad against the Second-Amendment right of Americans to own and use firearms non-invasively, here is the Independent Institute’s new archive page of articles, books, and videos, “Firearms, Violence and the Second Amendment,” to arm everyone with the facts. In addition, GLOCK Inc. has just produced three,...
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Tags: Bill of Rights, Civil Liberties, Constitution, crime, Culture, Gun Control, Humor, Liberty, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Privacy, Second Amendment, The State, Video, Weapons, Women
By Anthony Gregory | Thursday January 24, 2013 at 10:54 AM PDT | 11 Comments
On how to respond to mass shootings and violent crime, the public opinion trends frighten me, especially when broken down by political identification. Predictably, Democrats are in favor of gun control by wider margins than Republicans. But still, 92% of Republicans favor universal background checks, which I consider as bad a proposal as any...
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Tags: Civil Liberties, Constitution, Criminal Justice, Culture, Gun Control, Law, Liberty, Personal Liberty, Police, Politics, Power, Racism, Second Amendment, The State, Weapons