individual liberty

Whatever economic freedom we enjoy in the world today is due, to a great extent, to the ideas and efforts of the classical liberals and economists of the first half of the nineteenth century.

Scotland would seem a strange place for the emergence of center of intellectual development that would influence the stream of ideas throughout the world. Scotland had been unified with England near the beginning of the eighteenth century. It was considered a “backwater” of European civilization.

October 25th marked the 247th birthday of one of the greatest voices of liberty, the French political philosopher of freedom, Benjamin Constant. He may not be a household name to friends of freedom today, but he should be. He wrote one of the most principled and consistent defenses of individual liberty and freedom of enterprise to appear in the last two hundred years, the Principles of Politics Applied to All Governments (1815).

From long before the rise of Mao’s communism — and to this day — Shanghai remains a commercial and industrial center built on the principles of laissez-faire capitalism.

The Douglas County election results can and should sow similar efforts around the country to reclaim local institutions to protect freedom and demonstrate effective self-government.

[First posted at The American Spectator.] Whether Left, Right, Independent, or Confused, no one who is not bought and paid for as part of the Obama political machine is going…

Constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley noted today that Chief Justice John Roberts’ tax idea in the Obamacare decision contains no “limiting principle.” He gave as an example that the Supreme Court now…

Heartland’s Director of Research Sam Karnick, the proprietor of the excellent The American Culture blog, expands there on the public comment he offered on our behalf. Sam offered today at…