When I think of the many ways that government deceives us into its embrace, one in particular really stands out: It seeks to convince us how helpless we would be without it. It tells us we can’t do this, we can’t do that, that government possesses magical powers beyond those of mere mortals and that yes, we’d be dumb as dirt and as destitute as drifters if we didn’t put it in charge of one thing or another.

This was a rebellion of the citizens of towns against the encroachments of national authority. The models the rebels looked to were “free cities” to the east, such as Ragusa and Genoa. 

The “Hoover did nothing and FDR saved us” fairy tale is the myth that refuses to die.

She came up with a better idea. She possessed the courage to invest in it. She earned the willing patronage of millions of happy customers. She employed thousands of people. She hurt no one in the process; indeed, she left the world in a small way better than when she found it.

As we all look forward to the end of the novel coronavirus pandemic, let’s be thankful that we live in the 21st Century, not the 14th.

I will judge the leadership and character of those in power by how quickly they get off our backs, out of our pockets, and out of our way when the crisis has passed. I will judge most harshly those who use the situation to enshrine the state as our master.

Willford I. King was an economist and statistician who didn’t have to numb you with numbers to get his point across. 

We should be naturally suspicious of any ideology that requires a deadly, worldwide pandemic to make its case superficially viable, if only for the short-term. 

As our 30th president, he was one of our best—the last one to leave the federal government smaller than when he found it.

Could you really trust someone who does evil in the name of doing good? Not me, not for a second. There’s a fundamental contradiction in that formula and it never ends well. It invariably reveals a fatal character flaw, made all the more sinister by the deception and concealment.

Dr. Norman Vincent Peale's ideas are especially important today, when envy and jealousy seem to permeate much of our politics.

Though his interests stretch from mining to education in his native Australia, Ron Manners is known throughout the world’s vibrant liberty movement. 

“Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.”

Where, oh where, I ask, does the poison come from that would take a man’s life because of the color of his skin? The very thought rattles me to the bone.

Under the terms of the US Constitution, which sets the minimum age to be president at 35, Woodhull couldn’t take office even if she had won. 

Rube Foster longed for the day when whites and blacks would play baseball side-by-side on the same teams and for the same leagues.

She understood the issues that ordinary people faced, noting in a 1971 interview that “I started life with two great advantages: no money, and good parents.”

When the day comes that one-party socialism in China is tossed into history’s dustbin, Li Wenliang will be remembered as a rebel whose life helped make that glorious day happen.

A practicing orthodontist for 52 years, Dr. Robert D. Helmholdt gifted untold numbers of people with bright smiles in more ways than one.

If, as the saying goes, one picture is worth a thousand words, then the story of George Eastman and the Kodak Brownie is worth 70 trillion words.