Personal Liberties

Vivien Kellems: Giving the Taxman Hell

Jan 4th, 2012 | By Wendy McElroy | Category: Featured, Personal Liberties

If principles are expressed through people, then Vivien Kellems’s life (1896-1975) shouts out that business is not the handmaiden of government. For over 25 years the Westport, Connecticut industrialist battled the federal withholding tax, which she refused to collect from employees’ wages. If the government wanted her “to be their agent,” ...read more

Tags: income tax, tax resistance, Vivien Kellems, withholding tax
Posted in Featured, Personal Liberties | 3 comments

Truth in Advertising

Dec 29th, 2011 | By Jeffrey Tucker | Category: Featured, Personal Liberties

If you are a visitor from another planet and you want to find out about real life on Earth, what do you watch on television to give the most-accurate picture: the news, the shows or the commercials? Think about it realistically. We are seeking here an accurate window into what ...read more

Posted in Featured, Personal Liberties | 3 comments

Spooner the Prophet

Nov 29th, 2011 | By Jeffrey Tucker | Category: Featured, Personal Liberties

How much more ridiculous can the US Postal Service get? This you will not believe. It has embarked on a public relations campaign to get people to stop sending so much email and start licking more stamps. This is how it is dealing with its $10 billion loss last year. ...read more

Tags: anarchism in early America, liberty, Lysander Spooner, Post office
Posted in Featured, Personal Liberties | 3 comments

To Tax Is to Destroy

Apr 29th, 2011 | By Whiskey Contributor | Category: Featured, Personal Liberties, Politics

In order to have an effect, laws must be enforced. The enforcement mechanism is the bureaucracy. Without a bureaucratic system of enforcers, laws would be just a collection of restrictive words on fancy parchment. This is why President Jackson said of another case during the Marshall court, “John Marshall has ...read more

Tags: central planning, free market economics, taxation
Posted in Featured, Personal Liberties, Politics | 6 comments

The True Nature of Taxation

Apr 27th, 2011 | By Whiskey Contributor | Category: Featured, Personal Liberties, Politics

Nobody really likes paying their taxes. But, as the old adage about “death and taxes” conveys, there is a sense that taxes are as legitimate and as inevitable as death itself. In their acceptance of taxation, many well-meaning people forget that taxation violates our most basic moral principles. If you have ...read more

Tags: economics of slavery, government intimidation, taxation
Posted in Featured, Personal Liberties, Politics | 3 comments

What Is The Quiet Fear That Troubles Us All?

Mar 25th, 2011 | By Don Cooper | Category: Featured, Personal Liberties

American Fear Whether they realize it or not Americans live in a constant state of fear every day. I’m not referring to the fears of everyday life like losing a job or having an accident of some kind, but rather a more sinister and devious fear; a fear that Americans only ...read more

Tags: government, taxation, tyranny
Posted in Featured, Personal Liberties | 17 comments

Mass Killing Was Insanity, Not Politics

Jan 12th, 2011 | By Gary Gibson | Category: Featured, Personal Liberties, Politics

It’s not the Second Amendment I’m worried about right now, but the First. According to popular opinion it was a combination of the two that got six people killed and left Rep. Gifford in critical condition. Gun-ownership supporters are getting the usual flack after Jared Lee Loughner used a gun to kill ...read more

Tags: insanity, Jared Lee Loughner, mass killing, political elitism
Posted in Featured, Personal Liberties, Politics | 5 comments

Puritanism, Paternalism, and Power

Jan 10th, 2011 | By Robert Higgs | Category: Featured, Personal Liberties, Politics

“Live and let live” would appear to be a simple, sensible guide to social life, but obviously many Americans reject this creed with a vengeance. They find toleration so unpleasant that they support the imprisonment of hundreds of thousands of individuals whose personal behavior they regard as offensive. Why do ...read more

Tags: Eighteenth Amendment, paternalism, Puritans, War on drugs
Posted in Featured, Personal Liberties, Politics | 6 comments

But What if the Customers Are Bigots Too?

Dec 22nd, 2010 | By Gary Gibson | Category: Featured, Personal Liberties, Politics

And a man’s enemies shall be those of his own household... The disappointment in my old man’s voice was hard to endure. “After all so many people went through...for you to go along with people like Rand Paul... “I can’t even talk to you right now.” The subject had turned to politics again, good ...read more

Tags: bigot, business, household, racism
Posted in Featured, Personal Liberties, Politics | 8 comments

Secession as a Solution to the Washington Debt Threat

Feb 12th, 2010 | By Ron Holland | Category: Featured, Personal Liberties, Politics

Frédéric Bastiat must have been looking toward the future of the United States today when he said, “When plunder has become a way of life for a group of people living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it, and ...read more

Tags: nullification, secession, the Union, washington dc
Posted in Featured, Personal Liberties, Politics | 73 comments