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Lawrence W. Reed

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Special Laws for Special Friends →

April 29, 2013

How about just getting a few basics right, like protecting the peace and punishing wrongdoers, and stopping this business of creating special privileges aimed at a select few?

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Warnings from the Wise About the Welfare State →

March 21, 2013

If you declare at a party, "Guzzle with glee, you'll feel great!" but fail to say a word about tomorrow's hangover, in what subject are you an "expert"? You're not even tuned in to the long-run consequences of your own advice.

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The Little Red Hen Goes to Re-Education Camp →

March 19, 2013

I think the original Little Red Hen story was just fine the way it was. 

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Lincoln's Good Advice →

February 12, 2013

Whatever your assessment of his presidency might be, you will likely appreciate the sentiments he expressed in a long-forgotten letter he wrote to his stepbrother John D. Johnston on January 2, 1851.

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James A. Garfield: A Most Reluctant President →

February 8, 2013

If not for a bullet, the man who least wanted to be President may well have become widely known as one of our better ones. 

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Big Government = Bad Government: It Can't Be Otherwise

January 25, 2013

If you've supported the monstrous expansion of the federal government in recent decades, or if you've got a laundry list of things you want it to do because you think it's not yet big enough, then don't blow smoke about clean and honest politics. You're part of the problem.

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Remembering 1813 →

January 4, 2013

It turns out that 1813 was such a ho-hum year that triskaidekaphobians would have a tough time making a fuss of it.

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If Incentives Matter, We Might Be In Trouble →

October 3, 2012

The future world we are creating will surely be shaped by the incentives and disincentives we are putting in place today. 

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Cleveland Passed The Test of Character and Statesmanship →

June 27, 2012

Time and again he refused to do the politically expedient. For example, as a mayor, governor, and president, he rejected the spoils of victory and appointed the best people he could find—often earning the wrath of friends and party bigwigs because they didn’t get the nod.

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An Open Letter to Statists Everywhere →

April 26, 2012

Why is it that you statists never seem to learn anything about government? You see almost any shortcoming in the marketplace as a reason for government to get bigger, but you rarely see any shortcoming in government as a reason for it to get smaller.

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Where Are The Omelets? →

April 1, 2012

It is a telling conclusion that statists have no successful model to point to, no omelet they can hold up as the pièce de résistance of their cuisine. Not so for those of us who believe in freedom.

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Wanted: A Healthy Dose of Humility →

November 30, 2011

A message that humbles the high and mighty and pricks the inflated egos of those who think they know how to mind everybody else’s business. 

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Liberty and the Power of Ideas →

May 25, 2011

The outcome of the struggle between freedom and serfdom depends entirely on what percolates in the hearts and minds of men. At the present time the jury is still deliberating.

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Competition and Monopoly: A Refresher →

April 21, 2011

In economics, competition is not the antithesis of cooperation; rather, it is one of its highest and most beneficial forms. 

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Realignments to Remember →

October 26, 2010

Realignment elections demonstrate that Americans don’t much care for endless wars in faraway places, a sagging economy, spending and taxing binges, or politicians otherwise behaving badly.

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Free Markets Blossom in Vietnam →

July 7, 2010

Downtown Hanoi even boasts a three-story luxury shopping mall, and the people shopping in it are not predominately foreigners.

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Good Economists, Bad Economists and Walmart →

June 29, 2010

The anti-Walmart campaigns of today are eerily reminiscent of the Luddite crusades against chain stores seven decades ago—proof of the old adage that the more things change, the more they remain the same.

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George Washington Plunkitt and Honest Graft →

April 19, 2010

The forgotten robber barons of Tammany Hall.

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How We'll Know When We've Won →

April 19, 2010

We’ll know we’ve won the future for liberty when “public service” is regarded as what one naturally does in the private sector.

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Your Daily Liberty Checklist →

February 23, 2010

Put a check mark next to any that apply.

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Recent “Best of Web”

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Dumb as a box of rocks.

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Recent Quotes

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“The true meaning of America, you ask? It’s in a Texas rodeo, in a policeman’s badge, in the sound of laughing children, in a political rally, in a newspaper. ... In all these things, and many more, you’ll find America. In all these things, you’ll find freedom. And freedom is what America means to the world. And to me” — Actor, poet, and the most decorated American of World War II, Audie Murphy.

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Mill on Freedom
Feb 1, 2025
Mill on Freedom
Feb 1, 2025

“The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it. Each is the proper guardian of his own health, whether bodily, or mental and spiritual. Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest.”

Feb 1, 2025
Best-Selling Japanese Novelist Eiji Yoshikawa on Do-Gooders
Mar 20, 2023
Best-Selling Japanese Novelist Eiji Yoshikawa on Do-Gooders
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“There’s nothing more frightening than a half-baked do-gooder who knows nothing of the world but takes it upon himself to tell the world what’s good for it — from his book, Musashi.

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Recent Blogs

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One Hundred Years Ago in Rome
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The line between sanity and mental illness is not stark and defined. It is blurry, so it’s not easy to tell when someone has crossed it.

Apr 4, 2026
William Henry Harrison: The Speech
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William Henry Harrison: The Speech
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As long as it was, it was largely boring and forgettable.

Apr 3, 2026
Eleanor Roosevelt on the Ten-Dollar Bill?
Apr 3, 2026
Eleanor Roosevelt on the Ten-Dollar Bill?
Apr 3, 2026

A proposal from more than a decade ago that fortunately went nowhere.

Apr 3, 2026