Just as the police and the District Attorney use discretion in determining to arrest or seek an indictment against someone, jurors too can use discretion in determining whether to hand down an indictment.
Why not vote? Some experts sound off.
Toleration is the cornerstone of liberalism. Washington understood this and urged future generations to honor this commitment.
Perverse incentives distort the truth seeking nature of scholarship in academia to better benefit those in power.
This week brought us more than just the first day of Fall. Check out this week’s links below to get caught up. The city of Charlotte, North Carolina has declared a state of emergency and imposed a curfew in response to protests in the wake of another black man fatally shot by police. This week’s […]
The really radical idea behind the rule of law is that the lawmakers themselves are not above the law. It is “the law” that rules, not those who make and enforce the law.
Your chances of encountering a lethal refugee are about 1 in 3.64 billion. Pardon me if I’m not quaking in my boots at those odds.
After the 2010 earthquake in Haiti that killed around 250,000 people and displaced 1.5 million others, the billion dollar state-led humanitarian relief effort failed to accomplish even the most basic tasks like rebuilding houses. The situation remains dire with 80,000 people still living in “temporary” tent camps. In the new Learn Liberty video below, Professor […]
Duke University’s great historian of thought and Hayek scholar Bruce Caldwell sent the following e-mail to me, which I share here with Bruce’s kind permission (link added): Has anyone in the blogosphere noticed the chilling similarity between Hayek’s description in the Road To Serfdom (in the chapter titled “Why the Worst Get on Top“) of […]
Obamacare concentrates the health insurance market into politically connected health insurance firm at the expense of consumers.
When Donald Trump declared his candidacy for president a year ago, Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight political blog said he had “a better chance of cameoing in another ‘Home Alone’ movie with Macaulay Culkin—or playing in the NBA Finals—than winning the Republican nomination.” With a net favorability rating of -32 percent according to FiveThirtyEight and “exactly zero” […]
The politics of science fiction and fantasy series may seem like a frivolous topic at a time when we have so many serious real political problems. But it’s nonetheless worth considering, if only because far more people read science fiction novels, and watch genre movies and TV series than read serious nonfiction literature on political […]
The news from Venezuela just keeps getting worse: runaway inflation, rolling electricity blackouts, shortages of even the most basic goods, people dying in hospitals waiting for care that just doesn’t ever arrive. The world looks on, appalled at the spreading miseries, and asks: “Why is this happening?” And, “What can be done about it?” These […]
Corporate America can basically decide the outcome of an election because of the resources it can pour into campaigns. Basically, billionaires run our country and destroy our democratic process—and a 2010 Supreme Court ruling on a case called Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission is at fault. Or so the argument goes. What critics of […]
The term “pluralism” connotes both a description of our deep differences and a political response to those differences. Let’s start with pluralism as a description of our cultural reality. Our society is incredibly diverse when it comes to race, ethnicity, religion, gender, age, and sexuality. We have different life experiences, we live in different communities, […]
The 2016 presidential election season is in full swing: get your popcorn ready! As public choice economist, I absolutely LOVE this particular election season! Why, you might ask? I love this election because my training in public choice—a field of economics which applies the basic principles of economics to politics—leads me to look at our […]
A lot of people – especially the kind of people who read blogs like this! – have very strong views about politics. This is especially true when our political views are based on moral views. If we think that universal health care is a good idea because we think it’s likely to result in more […]
Are you just starting your career? Just graduated, or working entry level jobs? Do you want to learn more about the ideas of freedom, or work at an organization which advances those ideas? Consider applying for the Public Interest Fellowship. The D.C.-based fellowship offers full-time, paid employment for two years. Fellows rotate through a number […]
As the election cycle starts to heat up you may begin to realize that most politicians sound the same, except for a few rhetorical differences. Why is that? Professor Diana Thomas investigates.
Wing-walking was the practice of getting out of the cockpit of a biplane (while someone else was flying the thing) and staggering along the wing holding onto struts or wires. It was a thrill show for onlookers at air shows and barnstorming events in the 1920s and 1930s in the U.S. But for the wing-walker […]
I have been making a mistake for most of my life. See, I’m an economist, and one of the things that attracted me to economics is the notion of the “ideal economy.” Of course, there are valid objections to the use of markets. There are people who cheat and commit fraud, and there are problems […]
Libertarians have a unique perspective on how government force should be used. As Jeff Miron, Director of Undergraduate Studies at Harvard University, points out in this video, libertarians consider using government force to coerce others into action to be immoral. This is what separates them from other philosophies which are more permissive when it comes […]