I’ve had the great good fortune to meet and work with some of America’s nicest and most highly respected public intellectuals. These people have a mission, to advance human freedom and well-being. They do so through their knowledge of human propensities and ambitions. They work to understand society’s organization and coordination and then explain it […]
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Here is a true, empirical, statistical generalization. Smart, mature, politically attentive adults gradually move toward a classical liberal philosophy. This philosophy is committed to the ideal of limited government under constitutional constraints, the rule of law, due process, and individual liberty. This includes freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and free markets. Independent of their education, through experience and observation, the […]
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The 1973 Yom Kippur War pitting Israel against Syria and Egypt motivated an Arab petroleum boycott, instigating congressional passage of the 1975 Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards. Known by its acronym, CAFE, the program does not mandate that every car sold in the United States be parsimonious but defines an average that each manufacturer’s cars […]
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There are moments when our political system, whose essential job is to mediate conflicts in broadly acceptable and desirable ways, is simply not up to the task. It fails. This may be one of those moments. What we learned in 2011 is that the frustrating and confusing budget debate may never reach a workable conclusion. […]
Read MoreTonight I will show that no government can successfully turn on its owncitizens when they own guns. No government in history turned on its ownpeople as malevolently or on as large a scale as Hitler’s Third Reich. Itkilled seven million of its own citizens, six million of them Jews — andthe Nazis could not have […]
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FREE just completed a conference for religious leaders, “The Environmental Economics of Creation Stewardship.” Participants came from a dozen states and even more denominations. All agreed we are indeed blessed to live here. Hiking, riding, and rafting near Gallatin Gateway testify to an environment worth conserving. And this is a great place to learn how […]
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The late Daniel Patrick Moynihan once observed: “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” But what did he know? Having one’s own facts is now thoroughly ensconced in American political dialogue. The melding of fact and opinion, in turn, leads to magical thinking in contemporary American politics. More precisely, one […]
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Two related concepts that are hallmarks of free societies are individual choice and the rule of law. Being “free to choose,” as Milton Friedman’s title described it, distinguishes the responsible adult in a free society from the small child or prisoner. But freedom of choice cannot be unlimited if a society is to have more […]
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Twice a week, John Goodman, president and founder of NCPA in Dallas, writes a blog. Most are on health care, but a few are wider issues. John uses a finely polished economic lens to help us see through complex and often disguised or misrepresented governmental programs. Here is a slightly abridged version of his recent […]
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Vogue, America’s leading fashion magazine, is one of those glossy periodicals providing in David Brooks’ words “nutrition for the imagination.” He asks, “Why do we eagerly seek out images of lives we are unlikely to lead?” Perhaps of greater interest, why did a magazine that a year ago launched an auction to advance, “…human rights […]
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