Free Republic

There’s a reason you don’t see many Adam Smith ties in the faculty lounge. “Adam Smith believed there are few things that the government should do,” James Otteson of Wake Forest said at the Philadelphia Society’s annual meeting in Philadelphia last month. Otteson is the Executive Director of the BB&T Center for the Study of Capitalism and Teaching Professor of Political Economy at Wake Forest. He is the author of Adam Smith’s Marketplace of Life. Nevertheless, Smith, the Scottish philosopher has inspired American scholars and sages for centuries. Thomas Jefferson recommended The Wealth of Nations as a worthy title for...

New York is the “least free” state of any in the nation because of its high taxes and heavy-handed rules controlling daily life, according to a study released Monday. The Cato Institute analysis ranked New York dead last for economic and personal freedom. New Hampshire, which has no sales tax and whose motto is “Live Free or Die,” was ranked No. 1. By comparison, New York symbolizes big government run amok, the report from the conservative libertarian group said. “New York looks set to remain the least free state for many years to come,” the group said. …

Even if you only occasionally frequent law commentary online, you have probably heard of Ilya Shapiro of the CATO Institute, as he is one of the most prominent voices on libertarian perspectives on the law today. Shapiro took it upon himself to respond ... to recent comments made by Libertarian Party presidential nominee Gary Johnson and his running mate, Bill Weld.

The following is based on a report by Cliff Kincaid for Accuracy in Media. The New York Times is quoting a spokesman for George Soros as saying that the well-known hedge fund operator is guilty of no wrong-doing in connection with the financial upheaval currently affecting Greece and Europe as a whole. But Zubi Diamond, author of the powerful new book, Wizards of Wall Street, says the agenda of Soros and other short sellers is clear. Their purpose, he says, is “to loot America and any foreign country which invested in America. Greece was one of them. Iceland was ravaged...

If you give Obama a pass when he is dishonest or breaks the rules, because he seems like a good man, or is at least better than those guys; if you argue he had to change the law himself because Congress is dysfunctional and Republicans are unreasonable; if you lambast Bush for starting a war, but give Hillary a pass for both Iraq and Libya; then you are adopting one set of rules for your tribe and another set of rules for everyone else. That shows a lack of respect for people who disagree with you. They notice. They resent...

Despite much hand-wringing by Republican leadership, the GOP is actually complicit in the persecution of Christians in the Middle East because of its vocal support for Israel, argues Doug Bandow in a Forbes essay Saturday. Bandow rightly notes that Christians are the most persecuted religious group in the world today and are “harassed and harmed in more than 100 countries.” Christians, he writes, “are particularly vulnerable to government abuse, especially in Muslim-majority states.” Yet Bandow takes issue with Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) 79% ’s Christmas Eve article denouncing attacks on Christian communities, contending that the GOP, rather than the Obama...

James O’Keefe’s latest undercover video shows professors at two prestigious private universities openly disparaging, and in one case shredding, the U.S. Constitution. Project Veritas, O’Keefe’s undercover journalism unit, sent a female journalist disguised as a student to Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, and to Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio. She got commitments from leadership at each to shred the Constitution, and in the case of Vassar, Project Veritas’ undercover cameras captured the official shredding of the U.S. Constitution. Kelly Grab, assistant director of equal opportunity at Vassar College, was captured on video saying: “Yes, I think we have a...

Chamber of Commerce president Thomas Donohue told business leaders that the organization was prepared to spend up to $100 million to help Republicans keep their House and Senate majorities.  But he also indicated that the CoC would oppose Tea Party supporters in the House, like members of the House Freedom Caucus. Donohue made clear that part of the Chamber’s election efforts will be aimed at countering the influence of hard-line legislators like members of the House Freedom Caucus, who have not supported the Chamber’s legislative agenda. That agenda includes immigration reform, reauthorizing the Export-Import Bank, and finding a consistent...

".....The reform-minded Trump of decades past is a far more attractive figure than his current incarnation, at least in the eyes of the pro-legalization advocates of today. “Well, I certainly think he had it right in 1990, and what he said then actually seemed to understand the situation,” David Boaz, executive vice president of the libertarian Cato Institute, told The Daily Beast. “My sense is that looking for consistent philosophy or even policies in Donald Trump’s statements is a pretty fruitless exercise.” Boaz also pointed out that Trump recently voiced his support for medical marijuana, and that when asked about...

The deal just struck between the U.S., world powers, and Iran is an historic achievement that decreases the likelihood of an Iranian nuclear weapon and forestalls the risk of another costly U.S. war in the Middle East.But while the diplomats in Vienna are finished wrangling over the final details, the Obama administration is by no means finished fighting for the agreement’s survival. Congress has 60 days with which to review the deal for final approval, and while Republicans may not have a veto-proof majority, they — along with some Democrats — remain vehemently opposed to any plausible peaceful resolution.The debate...

To the casual observer, the American right can appear an undifferentiated wall of denial and obstructionism on climate change, but behind the scenes there are signs of movement. A growing number of conservative leaders and intellectuals have come to terms with climate science and begun casting about for solutions. Led mainly by libertarians and libertarian-leaning economists, they've begun to coalesce behind a carbon tax, which they consider the most market-friendly of the available alternatives. Jerry Taylor, a longtime veteran of the libertarian think tank Cato Institute who recently founded his own libertarian organization, the Niskanen Center, is a vocal proponent...

Trevor Burrus is a research fellow at the Cato Institute’s Center for Constitutional Studies. ... Marriage is a constantly changing social institution that adapts to social and economic conditions. And when those conditions change, marriage changes. Our modern view of marriage — one that has generally predominated in Western societies over the past 200 years — is the outlier. Historically, marriage has been about finding good in-laws and securing economic advantage. And marrying for love is a thoroughly modern invention ...

Between terrorism and verbalized threats, I think Mr. Bandow's justifications need a little more work before people actually listen to him, or assign any value to his opinions The Cato Institute publishes a regular, and regularly interesting, newsletter called Cato at Liberty. In yesterday’s newsletter, the institute included a piece authored by Doug Bandow, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, specializing in foreign policy and civil liberties, who wrote the article titled: “America Should Say No To War Against Iran: U.S. Has No Right To Kill At Will”. Mr. Bandow leads off his article by saying: War has become...

Politicians and lawyers pretend that they are important people doing important work. But often they're important because they are parasites. They feed off others, while creating no wealth of their own. We all complain about businesses we don't like, but because business is voluntary, every merchant must offer us something we want in order to get our money. But that's not true for politicians and their businessman cronies. They get to use government force to grab our money. Those people who take instead of producing things make up "the parasite economy," says Cato Institute Vice President David Boaz. It's my...

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Kremlin-backed Russia Today news network has rolled out a provocative ad campaign that takes a sharp poke at U.S. media and the U.S. decision to invade Iraq in 2003. The pitch is aimed at convincing Americans of the merits of Russia Today - or RT - as an alternate news source to U.S. networks. Featuring a stylized image of former U.S Secretary of State Colin Powell at the United Nations, one ad reads: "This is what happens when there is no second opinion. Iraq War: No WMDs. 141, 802 civilian deaths." The campaign includes two other...

Last week, the New York Times reported that the Census Bureau would be significantly changing the questions and methods it uses to determine who has health insurance. The redesign is an attempt to address some of the flaws in the current design that have long troubled the agency. A working paper from the Census Bureau had found that it provided an “inflated estimate of the uninsured” and was prone to “measurement errors” that diminished the reliability and usefulness of the measure. The timing of this change could hardly be worse. The massive coverage provisions of the health care reform have...

SANTA FE, N.M. – For decades, it’s probably the most troublesome question facing education: Why are results for U.S. public school students so mediocre, despite the billions of taxpayer dollars spent? Andrew Coulson thinks he’s got the answer: Because there is no discernible correlation between spending and outcomes. “The takeaway from this study is that what we’ve done over the past 40 years hasn’t worked,” said Coulson, director of the Center For Educational Freedom at the CATO Institute. “The average performance change nationwide has declined 3 percent in mathematical and verbal skills. Moreover, there’s been no relationship, effectively, between spending...

Entrepreneurial capitalism takes more people out of poverty than aid.” That statement came not from a tea-party leader or a congressional Republican, but from Bono, singer, celebrity, and global anti-poverty activist, speaking to Georgetown’s Global Social Enterprise Initiative last year. As we mark the second anniversary of Occupy Wall Street this week, it is worth recalling just how much Bono is right and OWS, at its anti-capitalist core, is deeply and profoundly wrong. Occupy Wall Street did have a point when it took to criticizing the crony capitalism that helped precipitate the economic crisis of 2008 and the recession that...

As we head into a potential government shutdown over the funding of Obamacare, the iconoclastic junior senator from Texas — love him or hate him — continues to stride across the national stage. With his presidential aspirations as big as everything in his home state, by now many know what has never been a secret: Ted Cruz was born in Canada. But does that mean that Cruz’s presidential ambitions are gummed up with maple syrup or stuck in snowdrifts altogether different from those plaguing the Iowa caucuses? Are the birthers now hoist on their own petards, having been unable to...

Many have speculated that the Obama administration isn’t prepared to roll out ObamaCare. Some have speculated that even if the administration were prepared, the rollout would still be chaotic with job losses, rate shock, employer dumping, and the like. But since the Obama administration has been remarkably secretive about the status of its implementation efforts, no one has a better perspective on its preparedness, and the potential for chaos, than the administration itself. That’s why the decision to delay the implementation of ObamaCare’s employer mandate for one year is so illuminating. Implementing the law without the employer mandate will definitely...