United States

Territory in central and northwest North America, ruled since 1788 by the United States of America

Places index: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y Z

The United States, officially the United States of America, also referred to as America, U.S. or U.S.A., is a country located primarily in North America. It is a federation of 50 states, a federal capital district (Washington, D.C.) and 326 Indian reservations. It also claims sovereignty over five major unincorporated island territories and various uninhabited islands. The country has the world's third-largest land area, second-largest exclusive economic zone, and third-largest population, exceeding 334 million.

Geographical type: Territory

Latitude: 40° N — Longitude: 100° W

Area: 9,525,067 km²

ISO 3166-2 code: US

Notable Places

Alabama - Motto: Audemus Jura Nostra Defendere (We Dare Defend Our Rights)
Alaska - The Last Frontier
Arizona - The Grand Canyon State
Arkansas - Motto: Regnat Populus (The People Rule)
California - The Golden State
Carolina, North - The Tarheel State - ratified Constitution 21 Nov 1789
Carolina, South - The Palmetto State - ratified Constitution 23 May 1788
Colonies, Thirteen - The 13 original colonies whose representatives signed the U.S. Declaration of Independence
Colorado - The Centennial State
Connecticut - The Constitution State - ratified Constitution 9 Jan 1788
Dakota, North - The Peace Garden State
Dakota, South - The Mount Rushmore State
Delaware - Motto: Liberty and Independence - ratified Constitution 7 Dec 1787
Florida - The Sunshine State
Georgia - The Peach State - ratified Constitution 2 Jan 1788
Hawaii - Islands in the central Pacific Ocean, ruled since 1959 by State of Hawaii - Mokuʻāina o Hawaiʻi
Idaho - The Gem State
Illinois - The Prairie State
Indiana - The Hoosier State
Iowa - Motto: Our Liberties We Prize and Our Rights We Will Maintain
Kansas - The Sunflower State
Kentucky - The Bluegrass State
Louisiana - The Pelican State
Maine - The Pine Tree State
Maryland - The Free State - ratified Constitution 28 Apr 1788
Massachusetts - The Bay State - ratified Constitution 6 Feb 1788
Michigan - The Wolverine State
Minnesota - The North Star State
Mississippi - The Magnolia State
Missouri - The Show Me State
Montana - Big Sky Country
Nebraska - The Cornhusker State
Nevada - The Battle Born State
New Hampshire - Motto: Live Free or Die - ratified Constitution 21 Jun 1788
New Jersey - Motto: Liberty and Prosperity - ratified Constitution 18 Dec 1787
New Mexico - Land of Enchantment
New York - The Empire State - ratified Constitution 26 Jul 1788
Ohio - The Buckeye State
Oklahoma - The Sooner State
Oregon - The Beaver State
Pennsylvania - The Keystone State - ratified Constitution 12 Dec 1787
Presidents, United States - Heads of the Executive branch of the United States government
Rhode Island - The Ocean State - ratified Constitution 29 May 1790
Tennessee - The Volunteer State
Texas - The Lone Star State
Utah - The Beehive State
Vermont - The Green Mountain State
Virginia - The Old Dominion - ratified Constitution 23 Jun 1788
Virginia, West - Motto: Montani Semper Liberi (Mountaineers Are Always Free)
Washington - The Evergreen State
Washington, D.C. - The Nation's Capital
Wisconsin - The Badger State
Wyoming - The Equality State

United States Declaration of Independence

Birthplace of

Sharon Presley, on 23 Mar 1943

Robert Ringer, Robert J. Ringer, on 1938

Measures of Freedom

Economic Freedom Summary Index, Economic Freedom of the World, 19 Sep 2023
2021: 8.14, Rank: 5

Human Freedom Index [PDF], The Human Freedom Index 2023: A Global Measurement of Personal, Civil, and Economic Freedom
2021: 8.39, Rank: 17, Personal freedom: 8.57, Economic freedom: 8.14

United States: Freedom in the World 2024 Country Report, Freedom in the World 2024
2024: Status: Free, Aggregate Score: 83/100, Political Rights: 33/40, Civil Liberties: 50/60

The United States is a federal republic whose people benefit from a vibrant political system, a strong rule-of-law tradition, robust freedoms of expression and religious belief, and a wide array of other civil liberties. However, in recent years its democratic institutions have suffered erosion, as reflected in rising political polarization and extremism, partisan pressure on the electoral process, mistreatment and dysfunction in the criminal justice and immigration systems, and growing disparities in wealth, economic opportunity, and political influence.

Articles

The Acton-Lee Correspondence, by John Dalberg-Acton, 4 Nov 1866
Exchange of letters between Lord Acton (4 Nov) and Robert E. Lee (15 Dec 1866)

I have considered the preservation of the constitutional power of the General Government to be the foundation of our peace and safety at home and abroad, I yet believe that the maintenance of the rights and authority reserved to the states and to the people, not only essential to ... the general system, but the safeguard to the continuance of a free government. I consider ... the consolidation of the states into one vast republic, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of that ruin which has overwhelmed all those that have preceded it ... R.E. Lee

Related Topics: American War Between the States, Massachusetts

America as Utopia, by Robert Nisbet, Reason, Mar 1987
Historical survey of the "American Religion" (America as "the city upon a hill") from the Pilgrims to the present and questions whether it will progress further in the near future

America is unique among nations of Western society in its utopia-touched origins ... From the time of the Great Awakening of the 1730s in America, with Jonathan Edwards one of the principal figures involved, Christianity and Americanism would interpenetrate, with the fervor and even the liturgy of the former often infused into treatments of the 13 colonies, not least in their increasingly hated role of being subject to the British Crown. America was by now the "city upon a hill" in the eyes of a constantly enlarging number of pre-Revolutionary Americans.

An American Empire! If You Want It instead of Freedom, Part 1, by Richard M. Ebeling, Freedom Daily, Apr 2003
Examines Garet Garrett's 1952 essay "The Rise of Empire" and contrasts it with Charles Krauthammer's "The Unipolar Moment Revisited" and his concept of "unilateralism"

[S]ince Garrett outlined ... the emerging American Empire, most ... analysts have denied that America ... was pursuing an empire. America was part of the world and as such could not walk away from the world's problems ... Military alliances with multitudes of other nations, military bases around the globe, tens of billions of dollars spent on foreign and military aid to numerous governments ..., and two protracted and bloody wars on the Asian mainland, were not signs of empire. They were merely the burden created by an unbalanced world in the wake of the destruction of the Second World War.

Related Topics: Garet Garrett, Imperialism, Militarism

Americans Have Lost Their Country, by Paul Craig Roberts, 1 Mar 2007
Discusses (and lists) the neoconservatives in the George W. Bush administration and the rationale for their actions furthering wars in the Middle East

The Bush-Cheney regime is America's first neoconservative regime. In a few short years, the regime has destroyed the Bill of Rights, the separation of powers, the Geneva Conventions, and the remains of America's moral reputation ... This extraordinary aggressiveness toward the US Constitution, international law, and the Islamic world is the work, not of a vast movement, but of a handful of ideologues ... They have been supported by their media shills ... and by "scholars" in assorted think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute.

Americans Should Be "Anti-American", by Sheldon Richman, 21 Jun 2006
Examines Robert Kagan's statement that the Iraq War "made anti-Americanism respectable again" and what "anti-Americanism" is supposed to mean

Kagan and others cleverly use the term "America" as a package deal—... disparate ideas that need to be ... examined individually ... What exactly do anti-Americanists dislike? There are several possible candidates: the people, the culture, the tradition of freedom, the commercial spirit, the U.S. government's foreign policies ... The evidence is strong that non-Americans for the most part do not hate individual Americans or their culture, freedom, and commercial spirit. On the contrary, people in other most places seem to have a warm affection for Americans in their private capacity.

Related Topics: Foreign entanglements, Imperialism

An Anti-Democracy Foreign Policy: Iran, by Jacob G. Hornberger, 31 Jan 2005
Discusses the history of Operation Ajax, the CIA-led 1953 coup d'état in Iran that removed the democratically elected prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh, and which eventually led to the 1979 Iran hostage crisis

For years, the U.S. government, including the CIA, kept what it had done in Iran [in 1953] secret ..., although the Iranian people long suspected CIA involvement. U.S. officials, not surprisingly, considered the operation one of their greatest foreign-policy successes ... until, ... the violent ouster of the shah and the installation of a virulently anti-American Islamic regime in 1979 ... [T]he reason that the Iranian students took control of the U.S. embassy after the violent ouster of the shah in 1979 was their genuine fear that the U.S. government would repeat what it had done in 1953.

Related Topics: Democracy, Foreign entanglements, Iran, John F. Kennedy

Benjamin Tucker, Liberty and Individualist Anarchism [PDF], by Wendy McElroy, The Independent Review, 1997
Presents a short biography of Tucker and then the history of the Liberty journal, including its major themes, the debates over Stirnerite egoism vs. natural rights and its literary and international coverage, concluding with commentary

With the Declaration of Independence and the cry of "no taxation without representation," government had been deemed to rule through the consent of the people. When the North refused to permit the South to withdraw its consent ..., the consensual view of government was severely weakened. Moreover, instead of viewing the relatively autonomous states as forming a loose federal union—as composing "these United States"—a new description arose, "the United States." As this centralized nation was deemed to be "One Union under God," the mystification of the American state proceeded.

Bernie Is Not a Socialist and America Is Not Capitalist, by Marian Tupy, The Atlantic, 1 Mar 2016
Clarifies the meaning of various terms which young people tend to misunderstand, including socialism, communism, capitalism and corporatism, and then discusses the relative levels of economic freedom in the United States and other countries

[T]he United States does not have a strictly capitalist economy, but a mixed one. As such, it combines a high level of private ownership of capital and the means of production with relatively onerous regulation and taxation ... [T]o the extent that what anti-capitalist Sanders supporters really want is a Scandinavian-style social democracy, with its high level of wealth redistribution and income equality, they should consider that even some of the most socially democratic countries on earth are, in one crucial way, more capitalist than the United States.

Borderlands: What’s Happening to America?, by Sheldon Richman, 30 Jul 2014
Discusses the extension of border patrol activities in the United States well beyond (100 miles) the traditional country and coastline limits

This should alarm anyone who thinks America is the "land of the free." "Imagine the once thin borderline of the American past as an ever-thickening band, now extending 100 miles inland around the United States—along the 2,000-mile southern border, the 4,000-mile northern border, and both coasts—and you will be able to visualize how vast the CBP's [Customs and Border Protection] jurisdiction has become," writes Todd Miller, author of Border Patrol Nation ... ... "This 'border' region now covers places where two-thirds of the U.S. population (197.4 million people) live ..."

The Colonial Venture of Ireland, Part 2, by Wendy McElroy, Freedom Daily, Jun 2004
Historical account of Ireland from 1840 to the first decade of the twentieth century, including the Young Irelanders, the famines, the Irish in North America, Captain Boycott, the demand for home rule, the Gaelic League and the emergence of Sinn Fein

In the ten years after 1845, two million Irish ... emigrated in overcrowded ships to America or Canada ... Immigrants to North America carried their hatred of Britain with them. In the Irish ghettos of America, children listened to recitations of Emmet's call for freedom; they learned Irish history and songs. Almost every Irish-American community had a Repeal Club that ... pressured American politicians to support a free Ireland. On St. Patrick's Day 1858, a new movement was born simultaneously in Dublin and New York City ... In America, it was known as the Fenian Brotherhood ...

Related Topics: Canada, Free trade, Great Britain, Ireland, Nonviolent resistance

The Criminality of the State, by Albert Jay Nock, The American Mercury, Mar 1939
Cautions Americans that rather than being worried or surprised by the doings of Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, the Munich agreement and other foreign states, they should devote their energies to reining in the United States government

[I]n order to keep down the great American sin of self-righteousness, every public presentation ought to draw the deadly parallel with the record of the American State. The German State is persecuting a minority, just as the American State did after 1776; the Italian State breaks into Ethiopia, just as the American State broke into Mexico; the Japanese State kills off the Manchurian tribes in wholesale lots, just as the American State did the Indian tribes; the British State practices large-scale carpet-baggery, like the American State after 1864; ..., and so on.

Related Topics: John Adams, Democracy, India, Netherlands, The State

The Drug War as a Socialist Enterprise, by Milton Friedman, Friedman & Szasz on Liberty and Drugs, 16 Nov 1991
Chapter adapted from keynote address at Fifth International Conference on Drug Policy Reform; examines why, 20 years after his admonition against the drug war, the government continues its attempts at enforcement, in spite of the predicted results

I am speaking about the level of living of the great majority of the people ... How do people best vote? With their feet. Where do people try to immigrate? Some people do try to get into the European countries ... But so far as the United States is concerned, people from all over the world seek to immigrate here. They aren't coming here to be made miserable. They aren't coming here to be exploited. And you can't say that they're all fools; they know what they're getting into. So, I reject the idea that this is a country in which a few stand on the backs of the multitudes ...

Empire or Liberty: The Antifederalists and Foreign Policy, 1787-1788 [PDF], by Jonathan Marshall, The Journal of Libertarian Studies, 1980
Describes the arguments regarding foreign policy made during the period of ratification of the United States Constitution by the Federalists and the counterarguments, "largely ignored" by historians, from the Antifederalists

The Federalists saw foreign predators on all sides ready to take advantage of America's weakness: To the north, the British still occupied strategic forts; to the west, Indian tribes, apparently armed and encouraged by the British and Spanish, menaced frontiersmen; to the south, the Spanish were making trouble, especially on the Mississippi; and to the east, American commerce and fisheries were at the mercy of the French and British fleets ... Many Americans believed that national weakness produced these humiliations that undermined the dignity of their great republican experiment.

Fascism, by Sheldon Richman, The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics, 2008
Defines fascism, contrasting it with other ideologies (such as socialism, capitalism, Marxism), identifying Mussolini's Italy and Nazi Germany as its two main exponents and discussing its influence on the New Deal

In the United States, beginning in 1933, the ... government interventions known as the New Deal had features suggestive of the corporate state. The National Industrial Recovery Act created code authorities and codes of practice that governed all aspects of manufacturing and commerce. The National Labor Relations Act made the federal government the final arbiter in labor issues. The Agricultural Adjustment Act introduced central planning to farming. The object was to reduce competition and output in order to keep prices and incomes of particular groups from falling during the Great Depression.

The Federalist No. II: Concerning Dangers from foreign Force and Influence, by Publius, The Independent Journal, 31 Oct 1787
Drawing a parallel with the wisdom of the Congress of 1774, that led to the Independence Declaration, recommends approval of a Union under a single national government rather than being "split into a number of unsocial, jealous, and alien sovereignties"

It has often given me pleasure to observe that independent America was not composed of detached and distant territories ... Providence has ... blessed it with a variety of soils and productions, and watered it with innumerable streams, for the delight and accommodation of its inhabitants. A succession of navigable waters forms a kind of chain round its borders, as if to bind it together; while the most noble rivers ..., running at convenient distances, present them with highways for the easy communication of friendly aids, and the mutual transportation and exchange of their various commodities.

Related Topic: Freedom of the Press

Letters to Mr. Malthus, on Several Subjects of Political Economy, and on the Cause of the Stagnation of Commerce, by Jean-Baptiste Say, 1820
Original title: Lettres à M. Malthus, sur différens sujets d'économie politique, notamment sur les causes de la stagnation générale du commerce
Series of five letters from Say to Malthus, written in response to the latter's criticisms in Principles of Political Economy (1820); the letters were translated from the French by John Richter

In the United States, the obstacles to production are few, the taxes are light; and there, as in all other places, merchandize abounds, for which there exists no demand. "These difficulties," you say, "cannot be attributed to the cultivation of poor land, restrictions upon commerce, and excess of taxation. Something else, therefore, is necessary to the continued increase of wealth, besides an increase in the power of producing." Well! will you believe it, Sir? it is the very power of production itself, at least for the present, of which the Americans are in want ...

Liberalism, by F. A. Hayek, New Studies in Philosophy, Politics, Economics and the History of Ideas, 1978
Chapter 9; originally written in 1973 for the Enciclopedia del Novicento; covers both the history of both strands of liberalism as well as a systematic description of the "classical" or "evolutionary" type

[T]he USA never developed a liberal movement comparable to that which affected most of Europe during the nineteenth century ... The reason for the absence of a similar movement in the USA is mainly that the chief aspirations of European liberalism were largely embodied in the institutions of the United States since their foundation, and partly that the development of political parties there was unfavourable to the growth of parties based on ideologies. Indeed, what in Europe is or used to be called 'liberal' is in the USA today with some justification called 'conservative' ...

Our Elective Monarchy, by Sheldon Richman, 16 Jun 2004
Comments on the "fit for a king" funeral for Ronald Reagan and the similar treatment given to other U.S. Presidents, contrasting them to the treatment of Prime Ministers in Great Britain

Any president is treated like royalty in the United States ... [C]ompare the treatment of the prime minister of Britain. Look at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and No. 10 Downing Street. If you say, "But the United States is the leading power in the world," you're beginning to get my point. The unconstitutional aggrandizement of the national government in general, and the presidency in particular, is part of the cause; the royal treatment of the president the effect ... Some Americans are fascinated by [the vigorous questioning] of the prime minister ... Why? Because nothing like it happens here.

Patriotism along the Southern Border, Part 1, by Jacob G. Hornberger, Freedom Daily, Dec 1998
Discusses patriotism, loyalty to a country, and treason, in the historical context of Texas between 1821 (as a territory of Mexico), 1836 (when it became an independent republic—not recognized by Mexico) and 1846-48 (the Mexican-American War)

Were the Mexican-American soccer fans ... behaving unpatriotically? To answer this question, it would be helpful to explore the background, history, and circumstances by which California, where the controversial soccer game took place, as well as Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico, became part of the United States ... Before Mexico won its independence ..., the Spanish Empire stretched from Central America all the way to the lands encompassing the current states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. These territories also included parts of the current states of Utah, Colorado, and Nevada.

Related Topics: Government, Los Angeles, Mexico, Texas

The Poison Called Nationalism, by Sheldon Richman, The Goal Is Freedom, 6 Feb 2015
Discusses nationalism as exhibited by those who defend sniper Chris Kyle as a hero (in response to the earlier article "The American Sniper Was No Hero", 28 Jan 2015)

Nationalism ... is an unswerving religious-like devotion to the nation, construed as a quasi-mystical entity—"America"—that cannot be wrong and so has the authority to command reverence and obedience ... The United States did not begin with 50 states ... Had events gone differently, it might have included some or all of Canada and none of what was once part of Mexico. It might have been without the Florida territory and the 828,000 square miles that constituted the Louisiana Purchase. The current boundaries were the result of (often bloody) human action but not entirely of human design.

Related Topics: Government, Iraq War, Marriage

Protectionism and Unemployment, by Hans F. Sennholz, The Freeman, Mar 1985
Discusses why foreign and domestic trade are both beneficial, mercantilism and neo-mercantilism, the groups wanting tariffs and protectionism, the effects of trade restrictions on labor, the factors affecting industry competitiveness and more

The U.S. surely is no free-trade country; the U.S. government has entered into international trade agreements on cocoa, coffee, rubber, sugar, and tea. It has built trigger price mechanisms in steel and imposed "voluntary" quotas on autos and textiles. The maritime industry represented by seamen's unions and unionized domestic shipbuilders has managed to obtain legislation that forces Alaskan oil producers to ship their products in high cost U.S. tankers ... The legislation hit hard at Japanese levels of living by cutting the Japanese people off from Alaskan crude oil.

Pundit in Wonderland, by Sheldon Richman, The Goal Is Freedom, 28 Sep 2007
Criticizes a Washington Post op-ed by columnist Harold Meyerson about the results of a survey showing an increase in those who consider themselves the "have-nots" of American society

Where is Meyerson living? Surely not in the United States in 2007. The U.S. economy—more precisely, the American population—has been laden with taxes, regulations, and the consequences of political privilege for decades—make that centuries. Republicans ... have been more adept than Democrats at shoveling largess to favored interests. Corporations, rich farmers, and government contractors rake in billions of dollars ... "National security" is the catch-all rationalization for all manner of subsidies. Trade restrictions ... funnel tons of cash directly from consumers' pockets to business coffers.

Related Topics: Economic Freedom, Free Market, Free trade

Revisiting a Libertarian Classic: Nock's Our Enemy, the State, by Sheldon Richman, Freedom Daily, Mar 2006
Examines some of the major themes of Nock's Our Enemy, the State (1935)

According to Nock, the admirable, though imperfect, Articles of Confederation were overthrown in the "coup d'etat" that took place in Philadelphia in 1787, resulting in a centralization of power (favoring industrial over agrarian interests) that revolted Jefferson. So for Nock, the United States does not represent the radical break in political history that it is often made out to be. It metamorphosed from the British system of privilege (through land grants, tariffs, and other enactments), despite the Jeffersonian window-dressing, then forged a distinctly American form of the merchant-State.

Ron Paul and the Empire, by Steven LaTulippe, 31 Jul 2007
Considers what steps the establishment could take to prevent Ron Paul from becoming President if he continued to be "a viable candidate" and to present a serious challenge

[I]t's important to accept one fact about contemporary America: This is not a democracy, and certainly not a constitutional republic. America is actually a carefully concealed oligarchy. A few thousand people, mostly in government, finance, and the military-industrial complex, run this country for their own purposes. By manipulating the two-party system, influencing the mainstream media, and controlling the flow of campaign finance money, this oligarchy works to secure the nomination of its preferred candidates ..., thus giving voters a "choice" between Puppet A and Marionette B.

Related Topics: American War Between the States, Law, Ron Paul

The Secret State, by Carl Oglesby, 19 Dec 1991
Details various events from the dismantling of the Office of Strategic Services after World War II to the 1991 death of Danny Casolaro, which Oglesby said are reason to be worried about "a secret and invisible state within the public state"

The National Security Act of 1947 reorganized the military and created the CIA, but the Gehlen Org was the base from which U.S. intelligence developed throughout the decades of the Cold War ... I believe this fact helps to explain how the American national-security community evolved the quasi-fascistic credo we can observe developing in the following incidents ... A secret state has set itself up within the darkest corners of the American government. It is what Nixon adviser John Dean called a cancer on the presidency, but it has metastasized well beyond the White House.

States' Rights vs. Monetary Monopoly, by Thomas J. DiLorenzo, 9 May 2003
Recounts the story of how various states and Andrew Jackson maneuvered against the second Bank of the United States (BUS) eventually causing it not to be re-chartered

[A]s early as 1816, Indiana and Illinois amended their state constitutions to prohibit the BUS from establishing branches within their jurisdictions. North Carolina, Georgia, and Maryland imposed heavy taxes on BUS branches within their states ... After Marshall's 1819 opinion, Ohio enacted a $50,000 per year tax on the BUS ... Kentucky and Connecticut adopted Ohio's states' rights stand toward the Bank in 1825. In 1829, South Carolina imposed a tax on stockholders of the Bank within the state. New York and New Hampshire enacted resolutions urging that the Bank not be re-chartered.

Related Topics: Andrew Jackson, Ohio, Woodrow Wilson

States, United States: America's James Bond Complex, by Sheldon Richman, 4 Feb 2015
Argues that the doctrine of American "exceptionalism" means U.S. officials appear to have a de facto licence to kill and wonders why officials are treated so deferentially instead of being brought to judgment for their aggressive actions

We might say America has a James Bond complex. In the eyes of many Americans, the United States has a "Double O." ... Judging by how the U.S. government gets away with murder, terrorism and other horrible offenses, it apparently has a de facto license to kill ... Will George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld face charges for their wars of aggression against Iraq and Afghanistan? ... Will Barack Obama ever have to defend himself against murder counts for his drone kills? Will former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton bear consequences for the havoc she unleashed in Libya?

Related Topics: Foreign entanglements, Founding Fathers, Vietnam War

Tocqueville, Alexis de (1805-1859), by Jason Kuznicki, The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism, 15 Aug 2008
Biographical essay

Tocqueville is best known for De la démocratie en Amérique, ... that was first published in 1835-1840 ... From 1831-1832, Tocqueville had traveled extensively throughout the United States and interviewed people in every stratum of society, including Native Americans, slaves, merchants, clergy, and the president ... Tocqueville's understanding of American society emphasized the liberty, egalitarianism, and entrepreneurship of the new republic. He found that, in contrast to Europeans of the same period, Americans tended to discount social rank and mixed freely with different social classes.

Related Topics: Alexis de Tocqueville, France, Government, Socialism

The Top 25 Liberty Songs, by Bill Winter, Libertarian Party News, Aug 2001
List of 25 "Liberty's Best Songs" chosen from over 200 suggestions, each with a short summary and highlighted lyrics, and a supplementary list of 25 runners-up

The perfect pro-immigration libertarian theme song. [Neil Diamond's "America"]'s lyrics embody what I believe is the best ideal of America: A star guiding the journey of people fleeing from hunger and oppression. People come to America because they "only want to be free." America will be their new "... home, [to] a new and [a shiny] place / Make our bed and we'll say our grace / Freedom's light burning warm ... Everywhere around the world / They're coming to America / Ev'ry time that flag's unfurled / They're coming to America." This song's stirring music gets anyone's heart pounding ...

Trump’s Support and Praise of Despots Is Central to the U.S. Tradition, Not a Deviation From It, by Glenn Greenwald, 2 May 2017
Discusses recent criticism of Donald Trump that claims that his foreign policy towards known dictators and tyrants constitutes a major shift, when in fact that has been standard U.S. policy since at least the end of World War II

[T]he post-World War II foreign policy of the U.S.—independent of its massive human rights violations committed over and over around the world—has been predicated on overthrowing democratically elected governments and ... aligning with, and propping up brutal dictators. This policy has been applied all over the world, on multiple continents and by every administration. It is impossible to understand ... the U.S. role in the world without knowing that. All of this history is now being erased and whitewashed, replaced with jingoistic fairy tales by the U.S. media and leading political officials.

Related Topics: Jimmy Carter, Chile, Democracy, Egypt, Honduras, Barack Obama, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela

Up from Serfdom, by Jacob Hornberger, 9 Apr 2010
Response to criticism by David Boaz on "Up From Slavery" (6 Apr 2010) to Hornberger's "Liberal Delusions about Freedom" (Freedom Daily, Nov 2009)

Let's consider, say, the year 1880. Here was a society in which people were free to keep everything they earned, because there was no income tax. They were also free to decide what to do with their own money—spend it, save it, invest it, donate it, or whatever. People were generally free to engage in occupations and professions without a license or permit. There were few federal economic regulations and regulatory agencies. No Social Security ... No slavery ... Notwithstanding slavery and other violations of liberty, our American ancestors brought into existence the freest society in history.

Related Topics: David Boaz, The Future of Freedom Foundation

The U.S. Base on Diego Garcia: An Overlooked Atrocity, by Sheldon Richman, 4 Jun 2013
Describes the disheartening and shameful story of the forced evacuation of Diego Garcia's native inhabitants by Great Britain during 1968-1973, so that the United States could set up a Navy base, as well as current efforts to redress those actions

Vine has written a book, Island of Shame, ... about the savage treatment of the people of Diego Garcia, part of the Chagos Archipelago ... Americans may know Diego Garcia as a U.S. military base. It "helped launch the Afghan and Iraq wars and was part of the CIA's secret 'rendition' program for captured terrorist suspects," Vine writes. What's not widely known is that the island was once home to a couple of thousand people who were forcibly removed to make room for the U.S. military. The victims' 40-year effort to return or to be compensated for their losses have been futile.

Related Topics: Government, Great Britain, Indian Ocean

U.S. Hypocrisy in Cuba, by Jacob G. Hornberger, 26 May 2006
Comments on a propaganda billboard posted by the U.S. Special Interest Section in Havana for Cubans to read, one of its messages stating "In a free country you don’t need permission to leave the country. Is Cuba a free country?"

Most Americans continue to view their federal government as a beloved parent, one who never lies to them; who takes care of them and gives them "freedom" in the form of welfare, health care, Social Security, education, grants ... and protection from drug dealers, immigrants, terrorists, and oil companies; and who is devoted to spreading freedom and democracy around the world. Most of the rest of the world sees the reality—an increasingly oppressive and military-oriented government whose cruel and brutal foreign policies have engendered deep-seated anger and hatred, whose officials often lie ...

Reviews

Book Review: J.-B. Say: An Economist in Troubled Times, by Richard M. Ebeling, Freedom Daily, May 1998
Review of J.-B. Say: An Economist in Troubled Times (1997), writings selected and translated by R. R. Palmer

Say greatly appreciated America as a beacon for freedom, and he even contemplated immigrating to the United States during the tyrannical reign of Napoleon. For example, he wrote to Thomas Jefferson in 1803: "You will show us the true means to our liberation ... It is for you [the Americans] to show the friends of liberty in Europe how personal freedom is compatible with maintenance of the social body." Its unfortunate that if Say were alive today, he could not be as praising of America as an example for the world as he could be 195 years ago.

Liberty Against Power: Essays by Roy A. Childs, Jr., by Doug Bandow, The Freeman, Jun 1995
Review of Liberty Against Power (1994), a collection of Roy Childs' "best writings and speeches", edited by Joan Kennedy Taylor

Roy wrote "Crime in the Cities: The Drug Connection." ... [T]he article [shows] how it is drug prohibition ... that fuels the crime wave enveloping cities across America. Similarly impressive are his analyses of foreign policy ..., as well as America's expansive alliance network around the globe. He wants the United States to "abandon the foreign policy which has brought us to the state where Americans are vilified and damned and held hostage" abroad, and instead return to a noninterventionist stance, when we "once again become a beacon of hope and liberty for all the people of the world."

Related Topics: Capitalism, Roy Childs, War on Drugs, Property Rights

The Nightmare of the New Deal, Part 1, by George C. Leef, Freedom Daily, Dec 2007
Review of The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression (2007) by Amity Shlaes; introduction and focus on the "bad guys"

As an aside, one can't help wondering what the United States would be like today if, instead of turning to coercive, statist "remedies" for the Depression, Americans had drawn the correct conclusions and turned away from the bad policies they already had, especially high tariffs and central banking. America would be a much freer and more prosperous country today but for the intellectual blunders of the 1930s. Although Shlaes doesn't indulge in any libertarian daydreaming, she does a good job of exposing those intellectual blunders.

Related Topics: Capitalism, Government, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Taxation

Interviews

Faculty Spotlight Interview: Thomas DiLorenzo, by Thomas DiLorenzo, 16 Aug 2010
Asks DiLorenzo about an alternate career path, hobbies, biggest inspiration, the Mises Institute and Austrian tradition, his class at Mises academy, future works and words of wisdom for young scholars

I'm writing a book tentatively titled "False Virtue: The Myths That Transformed America From a Republic to an Empire." After the War to Prevent Southern Independence, the U.S. government is said to have possessed a "treasury of virtue." ... I'm ... writing about what ... [it] did with all that "virtue," beginning with its war of extermination against the Plains Indians, so-called Reconstruction, all of the scandals associated with ... subsidies to railroad corporations, ... protectionism, the killing of 200,000 Filipinos who resisted becoming part of the American empire, and so forth.

Related Topics: Austrian Economics, The Road to Serfdom

Historian Paul Johnson on American Liberty, by Paul Johnson, The Freeman, Jun 1996
Topics discussed include religious freedom, abolishing slavery, the impact of immigration, the Founding Fathers, the U.S. Constitution, individualism, reining in government and the prospects for liberty in America

Johnson: The majority of people who came to America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were from the British Isles. They shared a common language, ... political tradition, and ... law. America benefited from a debate about liberty, which had gone on in England for some 150 years ...
The ethical basis of the United States was a broad-based Protestantism. This was the case even though not all the colonies were Protestant. Maryland was Catholic for a long time. Rhode Island was a non-denominational state, formed by people who broke away from the restrictive Protestantism of New England.

Interview with James Buchanan, by James M. Buchanan, The Region, Sep 1995
Topics include The Calculus of Consent, public choice theory, monetary policy and the Federal Reserve

Buchanan: ... The idea [of the Conference of States] was to have a meeting in Philadelphia of the governors of all states plus a bipartisan group of leading legislators from each state. They were to come to Philadelphia and meet for the first time since 1790. The states would meet quite separately from the federal government. The idea behind this—I know because I was invited to be on the academic advisory committee—was to have these governors meet and have a discussion about ways and means through which we could genuinely get some power evolved from the central government back to the states.

Interview with Karl Hess, by Karl Hess, A. Lin Neumann, Reason, May 1982
Topics discussed include the Republican Party, National Review, AEI, Goldwater, Rothbard, anarchism, the Vietnam War, Carter and Reagan, fascism, urban enterprise zones, the environment, and authoritarianism vs. freedom

HESS: ... Just looking around the world, there's no place like [this country]. Comparatively, it's the most free country on the face of the earth. I don't think there's any doubt about it. And I think that applies to blacks living in the ghetto and to people living in Beverly Hills, and it applies to people living in Hamtramck, Michigan. There would be no advantage to being a poor person anyplace else in the world compared to here. I don't think there is any particular advantage to being poor, most of all because of the state of mind involved, but where else?

Books

America: A Minority Viewpoint
by Walter E. Williams, 1983
A collection of 84 essays; contents: Race - Unions - Government Failure - Freedom and Coercion - Crime and the Law - Inflation, Taxes, and Government Spending

ISBN 0817975624: Paperback, Hoover Institution Press, 1983

Conceived in Liberty
by Murray N. Rothbard, 1975
Volume I: A New Land, A New People: The American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century - II: "Salutary Neglect": The American Colonies in the First Half of the Eighteenth Century - III: Advance to Revolution, 1760-1775 - IV: The Revolutionary War, 1775-1784

ISBN 0945466269: Hardcover, Ludwig von Mises Institute, 4 volume set, 2000
ISBN 1933550988: Hardcover, Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2011
Kindle Book available at Amazon

The Decline of the American Republic and How to Rebuild It
by John T. Flynn, 1955
Partial contents: The Tragic Retreat - Government and Freedom - Republics in History - The American Republic - The Great Depression - A New Name for Socialism - The Dark Alliance - The Assault on the Constitution - From Depression to War Room

ISBN 9991109595: Hardcover, Devin-Adair Pub, 1955

A History of the American People
by Paul Johnson, 1997
Contents: Colonial America, 1580-1750 - Revolutionary America, 1750-1815 - Democratic, 1815-1850 - Civil War, 1850-1870 - Industrial, 1870-1912 - Melting-Pot, 1912-1929 - Superpower America, 1929-1960 - Problem-Solving, Problem-Creating America, 1960-1997

ISBN 0060168366: Hardcover, HarperCollins Publishers, 1998
ISBN 0297815695: Hardcover, Orion Pub Co, 1997
ISBN 0060930349: Paperback, Harper Perennial, 1999

A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960
by Milton Friedman, 1963
Partial contents: The Greenback Period - Silver Politics and the Secular Decline in Prices, 1879-97 - Gold Inflation and Banking Reform, 1897-1914 - Early Years of the Federal Reserve System, 1914-21 - The High Tide of the Reserve System, 1921-29

Related Topics: Federal Reserve System, Money

ISBN 0691041474: Hardcover, Princeton University Press, 1963
ISBN 0691003548: Paperback, Princeton University Press, 1971

Reinventing America: The Common Sense Domestic Agenda for the 90's
by Michael Foudy, 1992
Partial contents: Money Makes the World Go Round! - The Value of Money - What Went Wrong? - The Worst Case - Why Bother? - Politics: A Complex of Social Relations - Power is the Reality - Prospects for America - Where Do We Go From Here?

ISBN 096325717X: Hardcover, Inst for American Democracy, 1997
ISBN 0963257102: Paperback, Inst for American Democracy, 1992
ISBN 0963257188: Paperback, Inst for American Democracy, 1997

Videos

The Empire Strikes Out: Debt, inflation and the end of the state, by Stefan Molyneux, 23 Sep 2008
Analyzes the U.S. economic crisis in the fall of 2008

Free Trade vs. Protectionism, by Don Boudreaux, 31 Aug 2011
Defines free trade and protectionism, the use of tariffs to implement the latter, and gives Hong Kong and the United States as examples of the benefits of free trade

One of the intended consequences of the 1787 Constitution was to turn the United States into a free-trade zone ... [W]e have this huge transcontinental country, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the Gulf Coast up to Canada, Americans are free to buy from any other American that they want ... And so people in Maine buy pineapples from people in Hawaii, people in Hawaii buy maple syrup from people in Maine. One of the reasons for the United States' enormous economic growth over the past 2 centuries and high standard of living is that we have total free trade within America.

Related Topics: Commerce Clause, Free trade, Hong Kong

Is America # One?, by John Stossel, 19 Sep 1999
ABC News special; starts by comparing the U.S., India and Hong Kong and then posits reasons for prosperity in the U.S.

The introductory paragraph uses material from the Wikipedia article "United States" as of 29 May 2024, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.