Free Republic

May Day will once again be celebrated by left-wing and environmentalist protestors united by a single emotion: a virulent hatred of capitalism, especially global capitalism. Why the hatred? The advantage of a global economy based on free trade and capitalism is so obvious and so enormous that it is difficult to conceive of anyone opposing it. The benefit is based on the law of comparative advantage: every country becomes more prosperous the more it invests in producing and exporting what it does best (in terms of quality, cost, uniqueness, etc.), and importing goods and services that other countries can produce...

Author's note: This is a short story that seeks to penetrate to the core of a conflict in modern society which places the entire destiny of human progress on the line. It is NOT a blurry post-modern perceptually-bound depiction, but rather a conflict of ideas with characters bound by only their own volition. Be prepared for a plot relevant to the most pervasive questions of human existence, and a style that harkens back to a time when rational humanism in writing was the rule, not the exception. Scott Denning, his face prematurely creased, wizened, and blemished by years of tanning,...

Americans remember Benjamin Franklin as one of our founding fathers. And well they should, as he was not just our most famous citizen at our country's birth, he was a central part of that birth. As a member of the Second Continental Congress, Franklin helped draft the Declaration of Independence. As a member of the Constitutional Convention, he helped draft the Constitution. Both documents bear his signature. He also signed the Treaty of Alliance with France, bringing the colonies French aid against the British, and The Treaty of Paris, which ended the Revolutionary War and recognized the independence of the...

Note: This is the second in a line of essays, the first of which can be found at http://www.geocities.com/rationalargumentator/Collectivism.html. Yet it seems in the Party rhetoric that the survival of man (with that of the individual, as has been demonstrated in previous chains of reasoning, being a required precursor to that of the species) is an aim which the tyrants deliberately avoid. O'Brien concedes this as well. "Suppose that we choose to wear ourselves out faster. Suppose that we quicken the tempo of human life till men are senile at thirty. Still what difference would it make? Can you not...

By the "benevolent nature of capitalism," I mean the fact that it promotes human life and well-being and does so for everyone. There are many such insights, which have been developed over more than three centuries, by a series of great thinkers, ranging from John Locke to Ludwig von Mises and Ayn Rand. I present as many of them as I can in my book Capitalism. I'm going to briefly discuss about a dozen or so of these insights that I consider to be the most important, and which I believe, taken all together, make the case for capitalism irresistible....

MR. EDMUND DALEFORD: The Case for Euthanasia: Opening Arguments: This nation philosophically rests upon the principle of individual rights. Rights, in a nutshell, are negative obligations. One's right to life implies that other entities cannot intervene with one's attempts to live and to live better. It does not imply an obligation on the part of society or private individuals to keep one alive at their expense, nor does it endow society with the authority to dictate the means by which the pursuit of one's life can be undertaken. In essence this grants the individual sole ownership of his life and...

The other day I was asked to comment on something called "laissez-faire socialism" and what I thought about American conservatism as a political ideology. This was my response. "Laissez-Faire socialism" is a contradiction in terms. Socialism involves government ownership and control over industry and under pure socialism each and every citizen is owned by the collective and has no rights -- only whatever the government decides to give him or her. Work becomes compulsory for each and all (see Marx's Communist Manifesto's ten planks). Under hard-core socialism, all economic activity is rigidly controlled by a clique of central planners...