Virtually all commentary about the influx of unaccompanied Central American children into the United States, which some say could rise to 90,000 this year, misses the point: no government has the moral authority to capture these kids and send them back to the miserable situations they have escaped. This claim will strike many people as…

The drastic long-term drop in Americans’ trust for government since the 1950s periodically evokes pearl-clutching on the center-left. Liberal radio talk show host Leslie Marshall recently tweeted, as apparent cause for concern, a Pew Research poll finding the percentage of the public that trusts government to “do the right thing” most of the time or “pretty…

Bloomberg reports that “Wall Street’s biggest trade group has proposed a government-industry cyber war council,” led by a “senior White House official” and composed of representatives from the finance industry and no fewer than eight US federal agencies. The aforementioned “trade group,” the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, has already brought in former National…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Cathy Reisenwitz‘s “Know Thine Enemy: Political Ignorance and Libertarianism” read by Juliana Perciavalle and edited by Nick Ford. I’ve been a libertarian for years. And for years I’ve approached learning the ins and outs of the political process kind of like an abolitionist might view learning the inner workings of a slave plantation. Which…

The widely noted transition from the “old economy,” based in the production of physical commodities, to the “new economy” of the information age—with its capital base concentrated not in heavy machinery and land, but in human beings and in knowledge—has been attended by a concomitant sea change in the legal framework surrounding business. Where ingress…

When a front-running presidential contender tells the country that thanks to Barack Obama, “[w]e are only inches away from ceasing to be a free market economy,” one is left scratching one’s head. How refreshing it is, then, to hear a prominent establishment economist — a Nobel laureate yet — tell it straight: The managerial state…

Appena tre anni dopo aver ridotto la sua presenza in Iraq, gli Stati Uniti stanno mandando nuovamente le truppe. In risposta alle conquiste fatte dal gruppo jihadista Isis nella sua ultima offensiva, il presidente americano Barack Obama sta mandando in Iraq 275 soldati per “fornire supporto e sicurezza al personale e all’ambasciata americana di Bagdad.”…

Although it was overshadowed by reaction to Monday’s ruling on Hobby Lobby’s health insurance coverage of contraception, the Supreme Court made a ruling the same day that otherwise would have received more attention in its own right. Harris vs. Quinn at first glance covers only very narrow ground. It involves the rights of home health…

At first glance, a no-holds-barred conversation with an anarchist might seem the most inappropriate centerpiece imaginable for a magazine issue marking the bicentennial of the United States of America. But then again, Karl Hess was no ordinary “anarchist.” For all its brazen anti-statism, Hess’s “red-white-and-blue anarchy” fits like a glove with a cover that proclaims “Happy…

Quella fazione del centrosinistra che va in estasi davanti a Elizabeth Warren ama citare la frase di Barney Frank, “stato è il nome che diamo a ciò che decidiamo di fare assieme”. Ora, l’idea secondo cui il governo è la personificazione di ciò che “noi” decidiamo di fare presuppone qualche correlazione significativa tra ciò che…

As far as it went, the Supreme Court generally got it right in the Hobby Lobby-Obamacare-contraception case. Unfortunately it didn’t go nearly far enough. The court ruled that “closely held corporations” whose owners have religious convictions against contraceptives cannot be forced to pay for employee coverage for those products. I wish the court could have…

The Supreme Court recently closed its term with a ruling in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, concerning the government’s mandate for employer provided insurance to cover contraception. Voting 5-4 that closely held corporations could be exempt from the mandate if it violates the sincerely held religious beliefs of the owners, the decision has generated a lot…

Since Katiele and her daughter made the news, we’ve had a little debate on the legalization of medical marijuana in Brazil. Katiele struggles to treat her daughter’s epilepsy with CBD (Cannabidiol), a substance extracted from marijuana. One could ask what’s Anvisa — Brazil’s equivalent to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration — position on the matter. How…

(Inspired by a comment from James Tuttle) SCOTUS has been dancing its way down a “whatever it takes to keep things from collapsing under the weight of their own contradictions” tightrope with ACA. First they affirmed its dubious constitutionality, now they’re carving out exceptions for entities which claim to be acting on orders of a…

When the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision came out Monday, I had a lot of negative feelings about it, and I’ve been mulling column ideas in my head ever since. But all my attempts to organize my thoughts into a coherent statement and put them in writing — including this one — have been less…

Lincoln Unbound: How an Ambitious Young Railsplitter Saved the American Dream — and How We Can Do It Again by Rich Lowry (HarperCollins 2013), 390 pages. One of the central themes in James Scott’s Seeing Like a State is the ideology he calls “authoritarian high modernism”: It is best conceived as a strong (one might even say muscle-bound)…

Just three years after winding down its presence in Iraq, the United States is sending troops back in. In response to the gains made by jihadist group ISIS in its recent offensive, US president Barack Obama is sending 275 troops to Iraq to “provide support and security for US personnel and the US Embassy in…

First, for any newcomers, a primer on my view of public government sector unions: I am staunchly pro-labor. At the same time, I oppose the existence of the state. A look at how workers have been treated by governments over time, and how regularly states back up capital in several ways, disproves the commonly peddled idea that…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Nick Ford’s “The Individualist Anarchist and Work” from the Students for a Stateless Society‘s Volume 1, Issue 2 of THE NEW LEVELLER read and edited by Nick Ford. The individualist anarchist may first notice in this situation that the individual is crushed not only by the political arrangements but the systematic and institutional arrangements of work….

From 1898 to 1931, Smedley Darlington Butler was a member of the U.S. Marine Corps. By the time he retired he had achieved what was then the corps’s highest rank, major general, and by the time he died in 1940, at 58, he had more decorations, including two medals of honor, than any other Marine….