Free Republic

Libertarians warned for years that government is force, that government always grows and that America’s police have become too much like an occupying army. We get accused of being paranoid, but we look less paranoid after heavily armed police in Ferguson, Missouri, tear gassed peaceful protesters, arrested journalists and stopped some journalists from entering the town.

Running for the U.S. Senate in 2010, Rand Paul became known as that crazy right-winger who expressed reservations about the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But in the past two years, the Kentucky Republican has emerged as his party's most passionate voice on criminal justice reform, explicitly decrying the system's disproportionate impact on African Americans. You might assume that Paul, widely seen as a contender for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, is trying to redeem himself with black voters who were alienated by his criticism of the Civil Rights Act. Yet both positions spring from the same wariness of state...

The events unfolding in Ferguson, Missouri, represent why every single black American should, without equivocation, reject the big government view of America. Without doubt, the savior of the African American community will not be any government, neither local nor state nor federal, nor will that savior be anyone within that particular government who shares our pigmentation. In truth, big government is the primary cause of the psychological scars and emotional pain so deeply rooted within the African American community today. History is clear on this point. It was big government that allowed slavery to exist in this nation until we...

Libertarians warned for years that government is force, that government always grows and that America's police have become too much like an occupying army. We get accused of being paranoid, but we look less paranoid after heavily armed police in Ferguson, Missouri, tear gassed peaceful protesters, arrested journalists and stopped some journalists from entering the town. One week before the rioting began, Fox News aired my documentary on the militarization of law enforcement, "Policing America." That show didn't stop some left-wing commentators from making the bizarre claim that libertarians like me have been silent about Ferguson. I can't force them...

Political junkies will remember how former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels was being groomed to run for president in 2012 before he made his foolish statement that the next president should "call a truce on the so-called social issues." Americans do not want a leader who is unable or unwilling to articulate and lead on important social issues. Four years after the Daniels misstep, many have failed to learn that lesson. The New York Times has proclaimed the "libertarian moment" has arrived, by which they seem to mean libertarian ideas about marriage and the family. We hear people say the libertarian...

The images of police in riot gear armed with heavy weaponry and tanks has at times become the alarming backdrop for the Ferguson story, with pictures that television can’t resist.

A stunning change happened overnight in Ferguson, Missouri after the government took a different approach to people’s civil liberties in the area. Gone were the SWAT trucks and snipers. Gone were the riot shields and militaristic outfits. Gone was the hostility. And guess what? Gone was the violence. Yesterday the Missouri Highway Patrol was given responsibility over the area. Patrol Capt. Ronald S. Johnson, who is a Ferguson native, marched in front of the crowd and set clear priorities for the marchers which respected their civil liberties. Governor Jay Nixon had vowed to take a different approach to the event,...

No, this post is not about that kind of fantasy. Instead, we’re dealing strictly with public policy and specifically addressing whether the libertarian agenda is unrealistic. This is because when I talk to people about libertarianism, they often will say something mildly supportive such as: “I like the idea of getting government out of my wallet and out of my bedroom.” But then the other shoe drops and they say something skeptical such as: “But you folks are too idealistic in thinking the private sector can do everything.” If you ask them to elaborate why libertarian ideas are fantasies, you’ll...

There is this notion, one we hear more and more, that the Republican Party has to shed the social issues to seize the future. "Social issues are not the business of government!" says thoroughly modern millennial. It's a seductive cry, one repeated this past Tuesday in an article about how some young libertarians dubbed the "Liberty Kids" are taking over the moribund Los Angeles GOP. Oh, wouldn't the political landscape be simple if we could just boil things down to fiscal responsibility? But life is seldom simple. If you would claim to be purely fiscal, or assert that "social issues"...

Robert Draper’s New York Times magazine piece, “Has the ‘Libertarian Moment’ Finally Arrived?” dutifully if rotely runs through the greatest hits: Kennedy was on MTV, Nick Gillespie wears black and quotes Jack Kerouac, people bring guns to PorcFest, David Koch exists, libertarians disagree about abortion, and Rand Paul is not the ideologue his father is. There are some notable false notes, too: Draper describes Glenn Beck as a “partisan gunslinger” when he is if anything the opposite, a man who believes that “the Republicans have betrayed their own values” and who pronounces himself “done with them.” Glenn Beck no longer...

I'm 63 years old and in my lifetime, I have been political almost all of it. In my youth, the Viet Nam War was topic one, every day, all day. If you were against the war, you were a Democrat and for the war, a Republican. It was an easy line to see and pretty much lasted through Nixon into the Carter years. During Carter, we were reminded that the economy didn't have to remain bullet proof just because we were Americans. This is where I was intrigued by the fledgling libertarians that had the "pure" economic theory that was...

There is this notion, one we hear more and more, that the Republican Party has to shed the social issues to seize the future. “Social issues are not the business of government!” says thoroughly modern millennial. It’s a seductive cry, one repeated this past Tuesday in an article about how some young libertarians dubbed the “Liberty Kids” are taking over the moribund Los Angeles GOP. Oh, wouldn’t the political landscape be simple if we could just boil things down to fiscal responsibility? But life is seldom simple.If you would claim to be purely fiscal, or assert that “social issues” should...

Some people confuse being libertarian with being libertine. I’m sometimes asked, for instance, if I’m a libertarian because I want to smoke pot or do other drugs. I respond that I’ve never done drugs and have no desire to use drugs. Then I’m asked if I’m a libertarian because I want to gamble. I respond by saying that I don’t gamble, even when I’m in Las Vegas or some other place where it’s legal. Sometimes I’m asked if I’m libertarian because I want to use prostitutes. I respond by explaining that I’d never patronize a prostitute because I want to...

Remember back in April, 2007, when then-CIA director George Tenet appeared on 60 Minutes, angrily telling the program host, "we don't torture people"? Remember a few months later, in October, President George W. Bush saying, "this government does not torture people"? We knew then it was not true because we had already seen the photos of Iraqis tortured at Abu Ghraib prison four years earlier. Still the US administration denied that torture was torture, preferring to call it "enhanced interrogation" and claiming that it had disrupted so many terrorist plots. Of course, we later found out that the CIA...

We do not need Hillary or Warren or any career politician. We do not need another leader in debt to big business, financial backers or his party agenda. We do need someone truly independent of all political pressures, capable of resolving all the damage done to this country. The names that come to mind are Ben Carson, Mitt Romney and maybe Ted Cruz. What say you all?

FULL TITLE Rand Paul Fires Back at Rick Perry: ‘Apparently His New Glasses Haven’t Altered His Perception Of The World’ Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul on Monday fired back at fellow Republican Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who accused Paul over the weekend of standing for “isolationist policies” that “would only endanger our national security.” “There are many things I like about Texas Gov. Rick Perry, including his stance on the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution,” Paul said. “But apparently his new glasses haven’t altered his perception of the world, or allowed him to see it any more clearly.” The new foreign...

This week another Reason/Rupe poll came out, this one on the political leanings of my generation, the Millennials. One interesting thing to note for people concerned with how we vote is that a plurality of Millennials surveyed who described themselves as “liberal” express support for downright libertarian positions. Liberal, to many Millennials (33 percent), just means belief in “social tolerance, openness, and personal freedom.” And far from preferring a leviathan state, many Millennials said they were liberal because people should have freedom to do what they want in their personal lives without government interference. So how does that impact our...

On the Fourth of July in the United States of America we celebrate freedom. In particular we celebrate freedom from tyranny, freedom from government that is not representative, and freedom from unchecked power and unaccountable sovereigns.Yet as Christians, we cannot overlook that there are ways of understanding freedom today that are distorted, exaggerated, and detached from a proper biblical, Christian, or Natural Law context. Many modern concepts of freedom treat it as somewhat of an abstraction.Yes,  many speak of freedom in the abstract and have a hard time nailing down the details. So let’s talk about some of the details.Most people...

ASPEN, Colo. — Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper is refusing to call the state's legalization of marijuana a success — mostly because he says that would send a bad message to kids. "Talk about bad branding," Hickenlooper said during an interview with Yahoo News' Global Anchor Katie Couric at the Aspen Ideas Festival on Tuesday, six months after recreational pot use in the state was legalized. "We don't want kids slipping off the rails." But the governor, who previously opposed legalization because he saw "so many risks," now readily admits that many of his fears surrounding the topic have gone unrealized:...

Long before billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel dreamed up the idea of a floating libertarian island nation, a 24-year-old Yale grad student named Jason Sorens proposed a far more down-to-earth experiment for those who wanted to live the limited government lifestyle: that a critical mass of “freedom-loving people… establish residence in a small state and take over the state government.” The “Free State Project” call to action was in 2001. By 2003, five thousand people agreed to take part and they held a vote to decide which low-population state would be the staging ground for the libertarianvasion, which would be...