Articles

Here is yet another golden opportunity for the United States and Israel to help foment a pro-freedom (or at least anti-theocracy) revolution in Iran that could end our shared number-one enemy and the enemy of all freedom-loving Iranians: the Iranian theocracy. Boroujerdi’s popularity and predicament amount to a powder keg that needs only to be ignited.

Leon Panetta, former director of the CIA and secretary of defense, says that defeating our enemies in the Middle East and North Africa will require a thirty-year war. The only reason Americans will accept a long war is that they have lost (or never gained) confidence in their right to defend themselves against those who seek to kill them.

The U.S. State Department has endorsed a handbook titled United Against Terrorism, published by a Muslim group in Canada. The handbook recommends (among other things) that "Jihad is a noble concept in Islam." Will Americans continue to permit our government to call our Islamic enemy a non-Islamic enemy?

Renowned photographer Richard Berenholtz has been commissioned to document the construction of 432 Park Avenue, a building that, at nearly 1,400 feet will be the tallest residential tower in New York and the Western Hemisphere. Joseph Kellard recently talked with Berenholtz about his work on 432 Park, Manhattan’s ever-changing skyline, and his fascination with the construction process.

The causes of war include statism, collectivism, altruism, mysticism; those of peace include capitalism, individualism, egoism, rationality.

So long as government controls education, political fights over education are inevitable and unending. The alternative, as Americans must learn if they wish to achieve a high-quality, choice-driven education system, is the complete separation of school and state.

Piketty stirs up resentment against the producers and holders of wealth, and then says we need to tax it away to assuage that resentment. Instead, as an economist, he should be explaining why wealth is good and how, in the hands of those who know how to invest it profitably, it leads to prosperity for everyone involved in the economy.

Congressman Steny Hoyer criticizes Ayn Rand, whom he blames for the Republicans’ unwillingness to compromise. However, Rand is discussing a compromise on a moral issue, between what is ethically right and ethically wrong. The improper type of compromise, she writes, involves “the betrayal of one’s principles.”

In a free market in education, with complete separation of government and schools, lawmakers would have no power to interfere in schools or to meddle with contracts between educators and parents.

That “ginseng police” are raiding root diggers for possessing ginseng at the “wrong” time of year speaks to the insanity of the government’s ginseng regulations—and indicates how regulations in any area of business violate people’s rights, disrupt the free exchange of goods and services, and lead to myriad seemingly irresolvable conflicts.

What is "cronyism?" Is it a valid term? How has this idea, sometimes called "crony capitalism," come into use? How does it influence debate? How should free market advocates view the issue of cronyism? Steve Simpson will examine these and related questions in a talk for the Hungry Minds Speaker Series on October 4 in Denver, CO.

On the Foundation for Economic Education’s website, Max Borders and Craig Biddle debate the question of whether liberty is best defended by reference to a single, demonstrably true moral foundation or a diversity of moral perspectives. Check out the debate, and vote for the side you think makes the most sense.

Although it is true that a person may reach a point when, given the diminished quality of his life, he no longer deems it worth living, the proper principle guiding such decisions—a principle Ezekiel Emanuel never states—is that the only person properly in a position to decide whether his life is worth living is the individual himself.

In his article—“The Atheist Libertarian Lie: Ayn Rand, Income Inequality and the Fantasy of the 'Free Market’”—Werleman fundamentally misunderstands the nature of capitalism, and he completely fails to grasp the facts cited by Rand and others supporting the idea that capitalism is the only moral system.

The “rights” sought by the union are the “freedom” not to associate voluntarily, but to violate the rights of employers to run their businesses as they see fit and to enter into voluntary, mutually consensual contracts with employees. Specifically, the union wants to use the force of government to coerce business owners to “bargain” with unions.