I had a lively chat yesterday with Mises Institute President Jeff Deist regarding Hayek, Mencken, Washington venality, the Great Books, that bastard Nixon, and some of my muckraking over the past decades. I was not aware that folks had considered me a unicorn – I’m more accustomed to being compared to weasels or guttersnipes. Their interview description refers […]
Tag Archives | Freedom
Freedom Fighter Jon Utley Tribute Video Now Online
I blogged a few weeks ago about the tribute gathering for the 80th birthday of Jon Utley, the publisher of American Conservative and one of the most dedicated and principled pro-freedom and antiwar activists in the nation. The Committee for the Republic and the Empire Salon have now placed online the video from that event. There […]
Health Care Hostage to Bureaucrats: Everyone’s “VA Future”
This New Yorker “daily cartoon” by Mick Stevens was sparked by the Veterans Administration scandal. But this is the future of our entire health care system thanks to ObamaCare and an avalanche of federal subsidies and mandates starting half a century ago. Here’s a link to a great NPR interview with two of […]
My Zoning Crackdown Eviction Notice & 1996 Playboy Article on Zoning
Reading about the city of Richmond’s zoning code crackdown on Tom Blanton reminded me of how I fell into similar crosshairs while living in Blacksburg, Virginia in the late 1970s. Here’s the riff from Public Policy Hooligan: How An Eviction Notice Made Me an Anti-Zoning Zealot – In late 1976, I moved into a […]
Celebrating Freedom Fighter Jon Utley’s 80th Birthday
Jon Utley, the publisher of American Conservative and one of the most dedicated and principled pro-freedom and antiwar activists in the nation, celebrated his 80th birthday last month. Hundreds of folks gathered at D.C.’s Metropolitan Club to hear him speak about his life and to hear tributes from a dozen speakers ranging from Human Events […]
AmeriCorps: Idealistic Triumph or Usual Buffoonery?
From the November 2013 issue of the Future of Freedom (published by FFF) AmeriCorps: Idealistic Triumph or Usual Buffoonery? by James Bovard National service is the latest fashionable panacea for all that ails America. Time magazine ran a July cover story, “How Service Can Save Us,” on the potential benefits of pressing all young people […]
Sordid History of IRS Political Abuse
From the August 2013 issue of The Future of Freedom – The Sordid History of IRS Political Abuse by James Bovard The power to tax has long conferred the power to destroy one’s political opponents. When the latest IRS politicization scandal erupted in May, many commentators talked as if the abuses were a novelty in […]