TGIF: About Those January 6 Committee Extravaganzas

TGIF: About Those January 6 Committee Extravaganzas

I admit it: I watched nearly every moment of the House committee extravaganzas on the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. I did more than that. I was transfixed. I couldn't even multitask. Were the mislabeled "hearings" beyond all criticism? Of course not. They were choreographed, but only mildly so; the production effort lent an orderliness that I appreciated. I accept the point that the presentations had nothing to say about FBI-informant intrigue if it took place. Such mischief has occurred in the past, and if credible allegations exist, they should be pursued vigorously. Of course, it...

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TGIF: The Limits of Ideology

TGIF: The Limits of Ideology

I have defended the idea of ideology per se and have disparaged the idea that anyone can operate without an ideology. The self-proclaimed non-ideological person is really one who has an implicit and therefore unexamined or underexamined ideology. No one really judges everything case by case as if nothing were related to anything else. We all have principles of some sort. I have never implied, however, that ideology cannot be abused or pushed too far. It most certainly can be. One way to do this is to imagine that an ideology can be squeezed to produce complete answers to empirical, including...

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TGIF: Complete Liberalism

TGIF: Complete Liberalism

Many people formerly of the left, who have bid good riddance to their former political home, believe they can retain the mantle of authentic liberalism while ignoring its free-market component. They don't want socialism, and they appropriately dislike the right-wing. But they also can't abide the libertarian commitment to free markets either. So they declare themselves centrists void of ideology. The problem with this approach is that the commitment to market freedom lies at the heart of authentic, classical liberalism, or libertarianism. Liberalism and pro-market enthusiasm go hand in hand....

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TGIF: Social Order through Liberty

TGIF: Social Order through Liberty

Human beings are self-actualizing social animals. We need to cooperate with others to flourish fully and (but?) we also need the freedom to make of ourselves the persons we wish to be; we need autonomy. Can we do both liberty and social order? The answer is yes, and that is where rights come into play. I'll go with Ayn Rand's definition: "A 'right' is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context." Also, "Rights are conditions of existence required by man’s nature for his proper survival." Although rights theory is fraught with the potential for...

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Richard Cobden on the Link between Free Trade and Peace

I see in the Free-trade principle that which shall act on the moral world as the principle of gravitation in the universe,—drawing men together, thrusting aside the antagonism of race, and creed, and language, and uniting us in the bonds of eternal peace. I have looked even farther. I have speculated, and probably dreamt, in the dim future—ay, a thousand years hence—I have speculated on what the effect of the triumph of this principle may be. I believe that the effect will be to change the face of the world, so as to introduce a system of government entirely distinct from that which now...

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TGIF: Why Can’t You Shout “Fire!” in the Virtual Public Square?

TGIF: Why Can’t You Shout “Fire!” in the Virtual Public Square?

Almost 10 years ago the free-speech champion Trevor Timm, with the Electronic Frontier Foundation at the time and now with the Free of the Press Foundation, implored readers "to stop using the ‘fire in a crowded theater’ quote" to justify limits on free expression. Many people apparently need a reminder. Timm wrote, "[Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell] Holmes [Jr.'s]' quote has become a crutch for every censor in America, yet the quote is wildly misunderstood." To dispel the misunderstanding, Timm told the story behind the quotation. The Court opinion containing the quote is from Schenck...

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TGIF: Abortion Rights v. Abortion Permissions

TGIF: Abortion Rights v. Abortion Permissions

Even if you cringe at last week's ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health, it would be wrong to say that the five Supreme Court justices took away women's right to have abortions. I say this because the Supreme Court, unfortunately, never actually recognized a women's right to terminate a pregnancy. Instead, what the Court did in 1973 in Roe v. Wade (and reaffirmed in 1992 in Planned Parenthood v. Casey) was to grant women permission to have abortions up to a judge-defined moment. (Such court permission-granting is not unique to abortion.) A permission is obviously not a right; it is the...

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Sheldon Richman

Sheldon Richman is the executive editor of The Libertarian Institute and a contributing editor at Antiwar.com. He is the former senior editor at the Cato Institute and Institute for Humane Studies; former editor of The Freeman, published by the Foundation for Economic Education; and former vice president at the Future of Freedom Foundation. His latest books are Coming to Palestine and What Social Animals Owe to Each Other.

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