A few weeks ago I went on a school trip to Ireland. As a relatively wealthy nation where everyone speaks English and shares deep cultural roots within the United States and United Kingdom, I found more base similarities with the strangers I talked to than glaring differences. One of the most striking differences, however, was…

During a CNN town hall on June 17, Hillary Clinton made some controversial remarks about opponents of gun control. “We cannot let a minority of people, and that’s what it is, it is a minority of people,” she said, “hold a viewpoint that terrorizes the majority of people.” But is gun control opposed by only…

Soccer transcends social classes and economic backgrounds. Children and teenagers everywhere in Brazil, from every class, play it. Where a ball may be improvised, there will be fun to be had. Soccer is also one of the foundations of Brazilian patriotism, that reascends during the FIFA World Cup. The flag colors come to be worshipped,…

A call to raise the minimum wage is happening all over the United States, a call Michigan just answered. The way Michigan went about implementing the raise is a different story, which may also shine light on how other states may implement their changes. Michigan’s Public Act 138 of 2014 to raise the minimum wage is…

With the World Cup underway, the problem at hand is: How to fight state abuse during the World Cup? We may harken back to Henry David Thoreau. He used to criticize the idea that we should expect the majority to change a law or an unfair government action, because man should live according to his conscience,…

If you follow the news, you regularly hear of various treaties — GATT’s Uruguay Round, NAFTA, CAFTA, TPP — described as “Free Trade Agreements” whose purposes are to “reduce trade barriers.” This is a lie. Without exception, such agreements actually strengthen the one form of protectionism most vital to safeguarding corporate interests against competition in…

Eric Blattberg, writing for VenturBeat, reports (“Tesla Motors: Please infringe on our patents for the greater good,” June 12) that electric car manufacturer Tesla will henceforth permit all comers to exploit its innovations. “Tesla will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology,” says Tesla CEO Elon Musk. I…

Max Borders (“The Big Box Effect,” The Freeman, May 14), in one of the most perverse exercises in framing ever, portrays Big Box stores and sprawl as examples of spontaneous order, and the older style of mixed-use development as the domain of statist control freaks. He even misappropriates phraseology from James Scott — of all people —…

“Government is simply the name we give to the things we choose to do together.” This blithe, sunny-sounding phrase, attributed to former Massachusetts congressman Barney Frank, is frequently called up in the service of the advancing march of the American state. It sounds very nice. Certainly government is one of the things people do together….

If you look at the official unemployment numbers without questioning the data, unemployment seems to be sinking. In May employers added 288,000 jobs and the unemployment rate fell 0.4 percentage points to 6.3 percent. It looks like the country is finally recovering from the recession. But taking those numbers at face value is a mistake….

Al Jazeera recently covered Chattanooga, Tennessee’s high-speed Internet service (“As Internet behemoths rise, Chattanooga highlights a different path,” June 6). The “Gig,” as it’s affectionately known, operates at one gigabyte per second — about fifty times the U.S. average — charging each customer about $70 a month. It uses a preexisting fiber-optic infrastructure originally built…

A few days ago I read Christopher Dickey’s “What the D-Day Veteran Told Obama at the 70th Anniversary Commemoration” (The Daily Beast, June 6). In attendance along with Obama were French president Hollande and Russian president Putin. Most of the article discusses the leaders’ speeches of the day and the awkwardness of having both Obama and…

Last Sunday three people were killed in Las Vegas. Two were police officers on their break at Cici’s Pizza. Rather than being a day to celebrate the death of two agents of the state as a win in the fight for freedom, it is a day to reconsider the foundations of our beliefs and the…

A couple of recent news items demonstrate once again — if such a demonstration is necessary — that “consent of the governed” as a source of legitimacy for representative democracy is absurd and impossible. In North Carolina, governor Pat McRory signed the Energy Modernization Act, which includes a provision criminalizing (reduced in the final version,…

Roman Catholic leaders from Cardinal Maradiaga to Pope Francis himself have made news this year in their criticisms of supposed free market economies, likening them to a form of idolatry that exploits and denies access to the poor. Because Catholic social teachings emphasize stewardship and aid to the less fortunate, clergymen such as Maradiaga have…

The release and return of American POW Bowe Bergdahl started off as simply cause for relief and celebration for his family and friends. Thanks to politics, it keeps taking on additional layers of interpretation for others. The revelation that Bergdahl questioned the continuing mission in Afghanistan prior to his capture has many of the same people who usually…

Brazil’s Congress just passed a Proposal of Amendment to the Constitution (PEC) known as “Slave Labor Amendment.”  The new law aims to broaden the power of land confiscation without compensation by the government, including  properties on which there is exploitation of slave labor. After the modifications, Article 243 of the Constitution reads as follows: “Rural…

King Juan Carlos I of Spain’s announced abdication has instigated a flurry of commentary contrasting dictatorship and democracy. The consensus views the remaining non-honorary power of the dozen remaining monarchies in Europe, particularly in diminutive monarchies like Liechtenstein and the Vatican, as vestigial holdouts from the relentless trend towards the representative-democratic nation-state as “the end of history.” A beloved monarch’s…

After gathering in Derby Square, in downtown Recife, SlutWalk went on to take Conde da Boa Vista Avenue, one of the most important streets in the Pernambuco state capital. The Union of the Socialist Youth (União da Juventude Socialista, UJS) were there and took posters, slogans and pamphlets with them. I was able to overhear…

I coined the term “vulgar libertarianism” several years back to describe reflexive mainstream libertarian defenses of the existing corporate capitalist system as if it were the free market, and using “free market” principles to justify the evils of the corporate economy. I recently saw one of the worst examples of this phenomenon ever, courtesy of…