C4SS Feed 44 presents Nathan Goodman‘s “Don’t Reform the Surveillance State, Route Around It” read Christopher King and edited by Nick Ford. Moreover, the state tends to secure its own interests and those of concentrated special interest groups first and foremost. Bills that pose a substantial threat to the NSA, their telecom company collaborators or profiteers…

In his recent Rolling Stone cover story (“In Defense of Obama,” October 8), Nobel Prize-winning economist,  peak liberal and New York Times commentator Paul Krugman lays out what he believes is a qualified defense of Barack Obama’s presidency: A sycophantic love letter from a man who surely must know better, but either has chosen to ignore six years of…

It’s well known that the United States has the largest prison population on Earth. It’s less obvious why this is the case. To truly understand mass incarceration, we should examine what caused America’s prison population to grow so dramatically over the last several decades. The Growth of Incarceration in the United States: Exploring Causes and…

American political dialogue often overlooks the difference between “pro-business” and “pro-market.” Failure to observe the implications of this difference leads both pundits and voters to believe that if a candidate is pro-business, naturally he is a zealous crusader for free markets. Lately this oversimplified narrative finds itself challenged as business groups such as the US Chamber of Commerce increasingly…

In a new article for Rolling Stone, “Inside the Koch Brothers’ Toxic Empire,” Tim Dickinson attempts to present the frequently demonized brothers Koch as essentially hardline libertarians, whose radical free market ideology is thoroughly mixed into their business philosophy and practices. We’ve all seen this article before. Liberal media outlets have made a whole industry…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Kevin Carson‘s “On Big Box Stores and the Abuse of Hayek” read Christopher King and edited by Nick Ford. Borders at least tips his hat to the possibility that there is some local government aid to Big Boxes. But he does so in the manner of Lincoln’s anecdotal Jesuit who, accused of…

L’Onu è tornata sulle prime pagine con le preparazioni per l’apertura della sessione della 69ª Assemblea Generale. Il segretario generale Ban Ki-moon ha evidenziato l’importanza della missione Onu in questa “epoca di turbolenze”. Forse, però, è meglio guardare da vicino in cosa consiste questa “missione”. E allora si scopre che il fine dichiarato è il…

Mandatory minimum sentences have been receiving a fair bit of scrutiny lately, largely due to the efforts of Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM). And rightly so. Mandatory minimums remove discretion and context from sentencing, resulting in grossly unjust and wildly disproportionate sentences for minor offenses. Moreover, they’ve caused some troubling shifts in who has discretionary…

È opinione comune che, secondo come vengono formulate le domande, i sondaggi possono produrre praticamente qualunque risposta desiderata. Emily Ekins, parlando dell’atteggiamento della generazione Y su questioni economiche e politiche (“Are Millennials Far Left on Economics? No,” Reason, 18 agosto), dimostra un’incoerenza concettuale quasi totale nell’inquadrare i risultati di un sondaggio Reason-Rupe sulla generazione Y…

It’s a common observation that polls can produce virtually any response desired, depending on how the questions are worded. Emily Ekins, ostensibly reporting on the political and economic attitudes of millennials (“Are Millennials Far Left on Economics? No,” Reason, August 18), displays almost total conceptual incoherence in framing the results of a Reason-Rupe poll of “millennials” (young Americans age…

About the only thing A. Barton Hinkle gets right about the Industrial Workers of the World in “Meet the Left-Wing Extremist Running for U.S. Senate” is not calling them the “International Workers of the World”. Although at least Reason likening the “Wobblies”, whose founding antedates the Russian Revolution by over a decade, to “warmed-over Lenin” is not the…

A new report from the Open Society Justice Initiative documents the overuse of pretrial detention around the globe. The report estimates that around 3.3 million people are currently incarcerated awaiting trial. These people have yet to be convicted of any crime, yet they are locked in cages and subjected to brutal human rights abuses. Martin Schoenteich…

The UN is back in the news with preparations for the opening of the 69th General Assembly session. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon highlights the importance of the UN’s mission in this “time of turmoil.” But maybe we should take a closer look at what that “mission” is. The avowed purpose of the UN is to maintain…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Roderick Long‘s “Thinking Our Anger” read and edited by Nick Ford. “This disagreement between Lawrence and Seneca conceals an underlying agreement: both writers are assuming an opposition between reason and emotion. The idea of such a bifurcation is challenged by Aristotle. For Aristotle, emotions are part of reason; the rational part of…

Questo articolo è stato scritto da Sheldon Richman e pubblicato su The Future of Freedom Foundation il 5 settembre 2014. In un suo sorprendente articolo, Daniel McCarthy, il lodevole direttore di The American Conservative (TAC), scrive: “L’impero britannico prima, e quello americano poi,crearono e mantennero un ordine mondiale in cui il liberalismo [classico] poté fiorire.”…

American criminal law takes a nuanced view of murder, creating several punishable degrees of it. First degree murder is generally defined as premeditated. The murderer has a plan to kill and takes sufficient time to map out his crime. Second degree murder involves the killer who hasn’t necessarily taken the time to plan out his crime,…

With another fall election season picking up steam, The New Yorker’s Sam Wang wonders whether the 2014 election will “be a wave or a ripple.” A wave, Wang says, occurs when “one party makes massive gains and overturns the existing power dynamic.” But notwithstanding Wang’s intended point, the “existing power dynamic” in the United States…

The war in Syria is here. It got held up in social media traffic. We thought the angry hashtags had permanently ceased death from above for the Syrian people. For a moment, the Internet rejoiced in its seemingly overwhelming power to harness the American people’s voice. We were sick of war, sick of decent people being…

L’amministrazione Obama ha recentemente annunciato una politica di intervento limitato in Iraq, con l’uso di droni per allontanare la possibilità che Isis conquisti i territori autonomi curdi. Il principale alleato americano è il governo regionale curdo di Massoud Barzani. Gli aiuti americani contro Isis si limitano alle regioni curde in Iraq. Il principale avversario di…

When I tuned in to US president Barack Obama’s televised speech on his plans for war against the so-called “Islamic State,” I expected exactly what we got — a bland sundae of pseudo-patriotic drivel topped off with some whipped cream of big bucks for the military-industrial complex and the cherry of regime change in Syria. What I didn’t expect was…