Free Republic

The American legal system is in real trouble. Many solutions have been offered-limitations on tort damage awards, restrictions of intellectual property rights, limits on class action suits, increases and decreases in various criminal penalties, and even changes in the Senate confirmation procedure for Supreme Court Justices. Many of the reforms sought do not address the fundamental issues involved, and therefore will ultimately fail. But how does one decide whether a particular reform is appropriate? To establish and preserve a free society, citizens must recognize, as the foundation of that society, the principle of individual rights. Rights are "the concept that...

BREAKING ON THE AP WIRE: WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court has upheld Oregon's one-of-a-kind physician-assisted suicide law, rejecting a Bush administration attempt to punish doctors who help terminally ill patients die.

Smoking can kill you. That's why I don't smoke, and it's why you shouldn't, either. There. I've just done the only things that should be done in a free society to stop people from smoking: I've told you that it's dangerous, I've urged you not to do it, and I've even set a good example. If you'd like other people to be healthy, you should also discourage smoking, too. But if you'd like to be free, and you'd like your neighbor to be free, that's all you should do. It isn't my business to come into your home or business...

Arvada woman said 'no' at Federal Center while on public bus By Karen Abbott, Rocky Mountain News November 29, 2005 Federal prosecutors are reviewing whether to pursue charges against an Arvada woman who refused to show identification to federal police while riding an RTD bus through the Federal Center in Lakewood. Deborah Davis, 50, was ticketed for two petty offenses Sept. 26 by officers who commonly board the RTD bus as it passes through the Federal Center and ask passengers for identification. During the Thanksgiving weekend, an activist who has helped publicize other challenges to government ID requirements posted a...

Fascism in a Lei By Edward Hudgins ehudgins@objectivistcenter.org What could be friendlier or more welcoming place than Hawaii, America's 50th state? If S-147, the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act of 2005, introduced by that state's Democratic Sen. Daniel Akaka, is passed by the U.S. Congress, the ugly scourge of racism — the real, honest-to-badness type, not the name calling type that gets flung around too often — will rule those islands which, in the future, might cease to be part of the United States. The proposed legislation would divide Hawaiians into "natives" and all others. Anyone with a drop of...

Eminent domain and just desserts By: RICK REISS - For The Californian Where is the American Civil Liberties Union? Our "royal" U.S. Supreme Court just erased private property rights in America. The Kelo v. New London decision effectively reinterpreted the Fifth Amendment to allow the use of eminent domain by local governments to redistribute wealth from one party to another. Re-distributing wealth has long been the mantra of socialism. So we might as well welcome in the new era of a brave new world. Eminent domain is the power of government entities to forcefully buy out private property for the...

Supreme Court Strikes Fatal Blow to Rights June 30, 2005 To the Editor: On June 23, 2005, four liberal-socialist U.S. Supreme Court justices — John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg — joined by Anthony Kennedy, struck what may be a fatal blow to one of the three fundamental human rights upon which our Republic is founded, that of private property. Enlightenment thinker John Locke’s three fundamental rights of every human being — to life, liberty and property — were adopted by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence as life, liberty and the pursuit of...

GALLUP — Councilwoman Mary Ann Armijo vowed to take her smoking ban plan to the people after a split City Council rejected the idea Tuesday evening. Armijo said she would try placing the ordinance, which would have banned smoking in restaurants and other public places across Gallup, on the ballot for a referendum during the city's next general election, in 2007. She thinks the plan will have a better chance of passing in a referendum "because the people that really care are the people that vote." The plan split the council between those Armijo and Mayor Bob Rosebrough who thought...

By the time you read this, chances are that Terri Schiavo will be dead. In a land of plenty, where her parents are more than willing to feed her, where millions of thoughtful and concerned citizens have campaigned for her continued provision of sustenance, she is nonetheless condemned to wither away, literally, by a method that would be considered cruel and unusual punishment when applied to the worst of serial rapist-murderers: starvation. Private money and time has been volunteered to support her; Bob and Mary Schindler, Ms. Schiavo’s parents, have, in a blatant display of statist intrusion, been denied the...

In the name of "protecting" and "enhancing" our neighborhoods, community planners and local busybodies are fanning out all over the country to change our towns and neighborhoods They call it "visioning". An existing town that has excited the interest of community planners is the small town of Corralitos, located in an unincorporated area of Santa Cruz County, California. The Corralitos Valley Community Plan follows the same guidelines and values as groups like the Congress for New Urbanism and the Smart Growth Network whose stated goals are to reshape our values from an individual rights-oriented society to a "community" or collective...

Summary: Community plans are specifically designed to reflect aesthetically the collective values they seek to impose -- at the expense of individual expression and privacy. Full text: Community planning (including growth management, comprehensive planning and smart growth) is suddenly all the rage. Just a few years ago, the words "charrette", "visioning council", and "consensus planning", were virtually unknown to most Americans. These words have been introduced to our neighborhoods by a coterie of community planners, who've fanned out across the country to confuse Americans into accepting a different political philosophy and a different way of living. Most politicians have adopted...

Put the "Independence" Back in Independence Day June 25, 2004 by Michael Berliner America's cities and towns will soon fill with parades, fireworks, and barbecues. They will be celebrating the Fourth of July, the 228th birthday of America. But one hopes that--on this third post-September 11 Independence Day--the speeches will contain fewer bromides and more attention to exactly what is being celebrated. The Fourth of July is Independence Day, but America's leaders and intellectuals have been trying to move us further and further away from the meaning of Independence Day, away from the philosophy that created this country. What we...

Put The "Independence" Back in Independence Day By Michael S. Berliner America's cities and towns will soon fill with parades, fireworks, and barbecues. They will be celebrating the Fourth of July, the 228th birthday of America. But one hopes that—on this third post-September 11 Independence Day—the speeches will contain fewer bromides and more attention to exactly what is being celebrated. The Fourth of July is Independence Day, but America's leaders and intellectuals have been trying to move us further and further away from the meaning of Independence Day, away from the philosophy that created this country. What we hear from...

Gather round, and I shall teach you a new game, called “Michael Moore’s Mystery Message.” It is a fun game, really; you get to see a film, visit a colorful website, manage a few ironic laughs at someone who seeks to make you laugh at President Bush, and, at the end, receive a grand prize. What is this prize? That is a mystery to be unraveled, much like Michael Moore’s message. Are you ready? Watching Michael Moore’s film, “Fahrenheit 9/11,” you get to look at pretty pictures of Iraq as a children’s paradise under the benevolent regime of Saddam Hussein....

I have spent most of the past 12 years studying every facet of a new political agenda that is fast becoming a revolution - touching every aspect of our businesses, our public education system, our personal property and our individual lives. Interestingly, it is not a Republican or Democrat issue. It’s not liberal or conservative. It’s purely bi-partisan. I’m sure you’re familiar with the term "corporate social responsibility." Some of you may deal with it on a regular basis. The policies behind today’s interpretation of corporate social responsibility are actually from a much broader policy called Sustainable Development. Now most...

Ladies and Gentlemen (yes, Ladies, too), you are about to receive the greatest infringement possible upon your freedoms, one that would cause any other intrusions of the Welfare State into your lives to pale by comparison. For, you see, this planned intervention could quite easily kill you. The twin bills S 89, sponsored by Senator Fritz Hollings (D) and HR 163, sponsored by Representative Charles Rangel (D) are currently pending before the Armed Services Committee. They would legitimize a nationwide draft of individuals aged 18 to 26, male or female, rich or poor, college students or workers or parents or...

"Is this, sir, consistent with the character of a free government? Is this civil liberty? Is this the real character of our Constitution? No sire, indeed it is not. The Constitution is libeled. The people of this country have not established for themselves such a fabric of despotism. They have not purchased at a vast expense of their own treasure and their own blood a Magna Carta to be slaves." A political giant of the 19th century and a firm proponent of American principles, Daniel Webster spoke in the House of Representatives on December 9, 1814, concerning a proposed draft...

(A public letter to Illinois Senator Peter Fitzgerald) Most Honorable Senator Fitzgerald, My passion for freedom and the ideals implicit in the founding of the United States of America is unwavering, and the words of Thomas Jefferson concerning the requirement for eternal vigilance if liberty is to be preserved come to mind as I become alerted of a menace to the fundamental rights of Americans that is closer to home than the threat of terrorism itself. While the United States seeks to broadcast the image of liberation, free enterprise, and individual rights abroad, there is a design within the chambers...

 The Right Way to Do the Wrong Thing The Autonomist, Objectivists, and Libertarians may disagree on some particulars, and we do not all regard Ayn Rand as an authority, but we all agree on this succinct description of the proper role of government:"The only proper functions of a government are: the police, to protect you from criminals; the army, to protect you from foreign invaders; and the courts, to protect your property and contracts from breach or fraud by others, to settle disputes by rational rules, according to objective law."[Ayn Rand, from "Galt's Speech," For the New Intellectual (1961), p....

Imagine a country within the Western world, in which elections are rigged like in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, private enterprises are expropriated as a matter of routine, land is farmed collectively, like in the days of medieval serfdom, and every workplace has been recently mandated to hold government-approved “ideological seminars.” Sounds like Orwellian fiction? Not quite. Or an all-dominating Stalinist behemoth? Closer, but still seventy years away. This country exists today, adjacent to the prosperous liberalizing lands of New Europe. It is Belarus, and it is governed by Europe’s last despot, Alexander Lukashenko. Following its separation from the Soviet Union in 1991,...