Free Republic

Americans are hurting for jobs. But New York state's lawmakers are poised to make it even tougher to earn a paycheck by concocting licensing requirements for something as simple as giving a shampoo. The Albany pols have something to gain -- campaign contributions from those pushing the new requirement. But if you're eyeing a job in a hair salon, these politicians are making your life harder. Occupational licensing is a job killer. More restrictions on working are not what Americans need. Jobs in personal care in New York state are down a staggering 37% because of the coronavirus shutdown. Even...

In some precincts, this is what passes for a joke about libertarians: "Ayn Rand, Rand Paul, and Paul Ryan walk into a bar. The bartender serves them tainted alcohol because there are no regulations. They die." The humor there eludes me, but it must work for someone: That alleged witticism has garnered tens of thousands of Twitter "likes" and retweets.Unabashed libertarians can be wacky — at the Libertarian Party convention in Florida last weekend, one contenderperformed a striptease — but they aren't anarchists. Libertarianism isn't a philosophy of dog-eat-dog or of a society with no protections for health and safety. It is a philosophy...

We take free speech for granted in America, unlike elsewhere. The furor over that anti-Muslim video is the latest reminder of that. But freedom of speech is never safe, even here. Many colleges now impose "civility codes." Civility is nice, but enforcing a "civility rule" against offensive speech would put an end to lots of useful provocative speech. As a University of North Carolina student put it, "A picture of Mitt Romney would offend 70 percent of residence hall students." Taping my Fox Business Network show at UNC, I also learned that the college, to "protect" women, had dropped the...