Author: Sheldon Richman

National conservatism is objectionable on many counts — the name in itself tells you that — but it does pay tribute to free enterprise. A closer look, however, may cause one to doubt its commitment.

Regardless of written constitutions and the laws on the books, individual liberty is always at risk. And as liberty goes, so goes our capacity to live well, to achieve the good life as rational, virtuous social beings.

The brilliant people in the Biden administration and the U.S. Congress have decided that one thing America really needs is an Internal Revenue Service (!) fortified by 87,000 more employees and 80 billion more dollars so it can help reduce the inflation that currently menaces us. You don’t believe it? Oh, ye of little faith!

I have defended the idea of ideology per se and have disparaged the idea that anyone can operate without an ideology. The self-proclaimed non-ideological person is really one who has an implicit and therefore unexamined or underexamined ideology. No one really judges everything case by case as if nothing were related to anything else. We all have principles of some sort.

Many people formerly of the left, who have bid good riddance to their former political home, believe they can retain the mantle of authentic liberalism while ignoring its free-market component. They don’t want socialism, and they appropriately dislike the right-wing. But they also can’t abide the libertarian commitment to free markets either. So they declare themselves centrists void of ideology.

Human beings are self-actualizing social animals. We need to cooperate with others to flourish fully and (but?) we also need the freedom to make of ourselves the persons we wish to be; we need autonomy.

A tweet might offend people — if they choose to take offense — or it might hurt someone’s feelings. But let’s get real: that bears no resemblance to endangerment.

Even if you cringe at last week’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, it would be wrong to say that the five Supreme Court justices took away women’s right to have abortions.

The root of the conflict that produced this case is government schooling itself. Ironically, the early government-school movement presented the misnamed “public school” as the way to prevent conflict over religion. How’s that worked out, Horace Mann?

In the marketplace, profits come from voluntary exchange, which requires that buyers and sellers freely choose to transact business. Why would they do that? They do it because each party expects to benefit — to be made better off — by giving up something they own for something that they would rather own.