Financial commerce, the exchange of money and currency, is indistinguishable from speech. Therefore, it deserves the exact same respect and “freedom of speech” protections afforded to the utterances of the street-corner preacher, the independent journalist, the newspaper publisher, the internet blogger and so on. Financial commerce is speech, and should be free. Despite all of the “freedom…

Every once in a while I’m inspired to write a column by looking through my feeds and stumbling across two items that dovetail together so well the column almost writes itself. This is one of those times. There are several hard realities that most liberals — as opposed to those of us on the genuine…

Many economists think that the next bubble to burst in our current crisis will be student loans. Student loan debt is at a historic high, and federal loan rates are about to double, from 3.4% to 6.8% – despite a small effort to have student loan interest rates mimic the rates government grants big banks. This…

Memorial Day in the United States is a time for absentminded, almost spontaneous, flag-waving and military worship; a time when yellow ribbons become ubiquitous and the mantra “support the troops” enjoys renewed life. For those of us who are keenly critical of the United States, its foreign policy in particular, those accoutrements of Memorial Day…

The US government has declared war on us. By “us,” I mean the many thousands of people who work as journalists in this country, myself included. This war extends a larger, more subtle war on whistleblowers that the government, and the Obama administration more specifically, has waged for several years. Last week, the first overt…

Lately, feminist activists are organizing against a litany of misogynist Facebook pages that glorify violence against women or treat it as a joke, pages with names like “Raping Your Girlfriend” and “Fly Kicking Sluts in the Uterus.”  The activists’ primary tactics include making specific demands for changes to Facebook’s moderation policy and “calling on Facebook users…

Since November, more than a thousand Bangladeshi garment workers have perished in two tragic factory calamities: a fire in Tazreen and a building collapse in Savar, outside the capital, Dhaka. Bangladesh is a major exporter of apparel to the West and “is set to become the world’s largest apparel exporter over the next few years,”…

Katrina vanden Heuvel, publisher of The Nation, is at it again, this time on Twitter (@KatrinaNation). This morning she tweeted: “Ginning up IRS story to make government seem like oppressor fits into Right’s decades-long narrative. Government for common good is needed.” Pssssh. That America has ever had government for common good is one of those…

Of all the self-styled libertarian commentaries attempting to put the Bangladesh garment factory tragedy in “perspective,” Benjamin Powell’s is probably the worst (“Sweatshops In Bangladesh Improve The Lives Of Their Workers, And Boost Growth,” Forbes, May 2). In Bangladesh, Powell writes, “some 4,500 garment factories employ approximately 4 million workers. In the grand scheme of…

It seems official, the United States is a permanent wartime state. Senior Obama Administration officials have stated that the War on Terror, in its “limitless form,” will carry on for another decade, possibly two. Given our role in the world, as an economic and military super-power, and given the economic, social and environmental crisis we…

There’s nothing quite so funny as the sight of the authoritarian functionaries of a dying order trying to suppress a revolution they don’t understand — and failing miserably. The State Department’s attempt to censor 3-D printable gun files from DEFCAD is the latest — and one of the most gut-bustingly hilarious — attempts by the…

In a speech last month about proposed gun control legislation, President Obama decried opponents’ attempts to encourage “suspicion about government.” “The government’s us,” he responded. “These officials are elected by you. They are constrained as I am constrained, by a system that our founders put in place.” But if government were “us,” why would we…

The French, British and Israeli governments have all accused Syria’s regime of using chemical weapons in its ongoing struggle with foreign-backed rebels. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon is urging Assad to allow UN inspectors into the country to verify or disprove the claims. And US president Barack Obama, while carefully avoiding a direct accusation, has…

Carson: If you’re unfamiliar with the history of May Day, you might be surprised to learn not only that it originated in the United States, but that it was strongly supported by American free market anarchists.

Hummels: It is no secret that there is a vanguard of sorts in policing which celebrates the fascist tendencies of the occupation.

Carson: The means of pacifying labor are as old as time and intimately linked to corporate greed and state power.

Richman: This is not paranoia. It’s a recognition of the dynamics of demagogic politics.

Carson: Reality is not the same as the map. It is far more complex. And the pointy-haired bosses who attempt to regulate it will always make fools of themselves.

Knapp: Lockdowns are no longer just a prison thing. They’re a school thing, an area, neighborhood, city thing. Google News reports more than 50,000 uses of the word “lockdown” in the news media in the last 30 days.

Hummels: If Schmidt was at all aware of the state’s capacity for mass killing and organized violence, he might become less wary of the local yokels.