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Lawrence W. Reed

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A Slogan Worth Your Bumper? →

February 7, 2014

Statism can be summed up and slapped on the back of a car. Can the freedom philosophy?

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Socrates and the Minimum Wage →

February 3, 2014

Whoever warned us to beware of Greeks bearing gifts apparently never met a congressman.

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Rules for Advancing Liberty →

December 30, 2013

The history of progress in ideas provides few examples of wrong-on-everything transforming into right-on-everything in a momentary leap. We must be patient, inviting, and understanding.

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Personal Character and the Political Environment →

August 21, 2013

You don’t check your character at the door when you go to work for the government. That means that the legal-political system is itself a reflection of the character of those who made the laws and those who are employed to carry them out.

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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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Recent “Best of Web”

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Democrats Promise That If Elected, Every Voter Will Give Them $5,000
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Nothing motivates Democrats more than promising to take away people's hard-earned money — Babylon Bee.

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Sell the yachts. Sell the stocks. Sell the businesses. Empty the bank accounts.

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Education should prepare students for reality, not shelter them from it. A damning indictment of the schools.

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Recent Quotes

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Reed on Socialist Thinking
September 2, 2026
Reed on Socialist Thinking
September 2, 2026

Socialists think there’s no such thing as a bad poor person or a good rich person. Among socialists, it seems there’s no such thing as a thinking person — Lawrence W. Reed.

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September 2, 2026
Murphy on America
February 11, 2025
Murphy on America
February 11, 2025

“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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February 11, 2025
Mill on Freedom
February 1, 2025
Mill on Freedom
February 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.”

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Recent Blogs

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Change Your Name? To What?
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Change Your Name? To What?
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One of the coolest names I’ve ever heard would be high on my list of candidates if I ever had to find a new one.

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September 21, 2026
A Forgotten Document
September 19, 2026
A Forgotten Document
September 19, 2026

Roger Sherman was the only person to sign all of the Four Great State Papers of the United States.

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September 19, 2026
Chris Baker interviews me on the American and French Revolutions
September 19, 2026
Chris Baker interviews me on the American and French Revolutions
September 19, 2026

Can you imagine Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, or any of America’s Founders ordering the murder of 200,000 people? That’s what the French Revolutionaries did to the region known as the Vendee.

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September 19, 2026