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Lawrence W. Reed

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A Tribute to Ed Feulner, Movement Builder →

July 21, 2025

Ed Feulner will always be a giant in the liberty movement he devoted himself to building. For that, every liberty-loving individual on the planet should be grateful—now and for all time.

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Milei's Argentine Miracle

July 20, 2025

The state is the God of the socialist religion, so whether socialists are evil or stupid is always a flip of a coin. Javier Milei is undoing their damage in Argentina.

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No Pardon for Auto Pen

July 17, 2025

What if a President were to announce one day, “I hereby pardon everybody in America for every offense they committed and for every offense they might yet commit.” Would anyone in his right mind believe that this would be in keeping with either the spirit or the letter of the Constitution? Hey, whose hand is that on the autopen? (Photo credit: NewsMobile.in.)

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A Hero of Australian Aviation

July 15, 2025

You’ve got to love the spirit John Robertson Duigan shared with Wilbur and Orville Wright—fly first, then get government approval. Photo credit: Duigan’s 1910 biplane, from Reddit.

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Mike Mansfield and the Japanese →

July 15, 2025

The internment of almost 120,000 Japanese Americans in the wake of Pearl Harbor remains one of the blackest marks against the Roosevelt administration. Montana Senator Mike Mansfield opposed it.

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The Ultimate Central Planning Nightmare: How Many Kids You Can Have

July 13, 2025

Left-leaning idiots in the West embraced China’s one-child policy as a bright idea. Photo credit: Lawrence W. Reed, Beijing, 2004. This article also appears at The Stream: https://stream.org/the-ultimate-big-government-dictating-how-many-children-you-have/.

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How James Swan Helped America

July 8, 2025

Financier, entrepreneur, patriot, and legislator, James Swan spent a quarter of his life in custody over a minor dispute. (Photo credit: portrait of Swan by Gilbert Stuart in Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts.)

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America: The Roman Connection →

July 4, 2025

America’s Founders understood that, as Tacitus put it, “Lust of absolute power is more burning than all the passions.” They knew that free societies are rare in human history — in part because, as Sallust lamented, “Only a few prefer liberty; the majority seek nothing more than fair masters.”

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The 4th of July

July 3, 2025

Nothing that ever happened on the 4th of July eclipses America’s founding in either importance or impact.

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A Tyranny to Remember →

June 26, 2025

If you’re curious what an absolute dictatorship looks like—one of the very worst in all history—this is a story you’ll want to read. The power-driven wickedness of Wang Mang.

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The Quackery of Equality

June 24, 2025

The fact that free people are not equal economically is actually a cause for rejoicing. Economic inequality, when it stems from the freedom of creative individuals and not from political power, testifies to the fact that people are being themselves, each putting his uniqueness to work in ways that are fulfilling to himself and of value to others.

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In the Fight Against Liberalism, Remember J. Gresham Machen →

June 22, 2025

"When he hit a brick wall, he didn’t retreat to his sitting room; instead, he created opposing and influential institutions. He saw liberty as God’s intention for humanity and would not abide the presumptuous claims of earthly governments to diminish it for our own good. This was a man confidently, persuasively, and fearlessly principled" -- John Hendrickson and Lawrence Reed at Iowans for Tax Relief. For more on Machen, see also “God’s Forgotten Libertarian” at https://tinyurl.com/525hjj6c

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The 20th President →

June 17, 2025

James A. Garfield was a good man who likely would have gone down in history as a great president had he lived. Garfield County, Montana, can be very proud of its name.

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Leonard Read's classic now in the Telugu Language!

June 11, 2025

Photo: With Raghavendar (Ravi) Askani in Atlanta on June 10, 2025, celebrating the translation of “I, Pencil” into Telugu. An estimated 96 million people, mostly in central and southeastern India, speak the language. Leonard Read would be very proud. Ravi is co-founder with Venkatesh Geriti of the Swatantrata Center, publisher of this edition.

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The Chinese FDR →

June 6, 2025

FDR’s New Deal of the 1930s was not a carbon copy of Wang Anshi’s New Policies of the 1070s, of course, but they share an activist, centralizing tendency noted by FDR's own Vice President and Agriculture Secretary. Pictured: sketch of Song Dynasty hydraulic grain mill (Wikimedia). Spanish version here: https://tinyurl.com/5dxc4hp8.

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The Origins of Vandalism

June 2, 2025

What the barbarians did to Rome, hoodlums on a smaller scale did to Minneapolis, New York, Portland, and Chicago in 2020, but for this significant difference: The ones who assaulted Rome were foreigners.

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Where Do Gideon Bibles Come From? →

May 20, 2025

No taxpayer funds financed those 2-1/2 billion books. A remarkable project of private, voluntary, civil society action by genuinely good people.

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Genocide in the Caucasus: Russia's Murderous Legacy

May 18, 2025

Under authoritarian czars, followed by totalitarian communists, followed by the fascist Putin, Russian kleptocracies have incurred the lasting hatred of their neighbors because they won’t leave them alone.

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The Inspiring Teresa Teng →

May 18, 2025

When the captive peoples of Beijing’s tyranny are someday liberated, we will look back and likely credit Teng’s music for contributing to the revolutionary spirit that finally got the job done. My latest at FEE.

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The Biggest Mutiny of the Gulag Archipelago

May 15, 2025

Some might say the prisoners at Kengir embarked on a fool’s errand when they rose in righteous fury against the regime that tormented them. Their heroism was not in vain.

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Recent “Best of Web”

Featured
Minnesotans Escape to Somalia
Jan 26, 2026
Minnesotans Escape to Somalia
Jan 26, 2026

Fleeing Minneapolis for Mogadishu.

Jan 26, 2026
The End of the Climate Cult
Dec 4, 2025
The End of the Climate Cult
Dec 4, 2025

The climatastrophe has been a terrible mistake. It diverted attention from real environmental problems, cost a fortune, impoverished consumers, perpetuated poverty, frightened young people into infertility, wasted years of our time, undermined democracy and corrupted science. Time to bury the parrot — Matt Ridley.


Dec 4, 2025
Government Shutdown Exposed the Biggest Lie in Education
Oct 31, 2025
Government Shutdown Exposed the Biggest Lie in Education
Oct 31, 2025

“For decades, teachers unions and the liberal allies they bankroll in D.C. have told the American people that without the federal bureaucracy, education would crumble,” writes Ryan Walters.

Oct 31, 2025

Recent Quotes

Featured
Murphy on America
Feb 11, 2025
Murphy on America
Feb 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.

Feb 11, 2025
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
Mar 20, 2023

“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.

Mar 20, 2023

Recent Blogs

Featured
A Very Old Racket
Jan 27, 2026
A Very Old Racket
Jan 27, 2026

Historians generally posit that the Roman welfare state appeared in the last century of the old Republic, beginning with grain subsidies in 123 B.C. But the racket is even older than that, by at least 300 years. Photo credit: Douglas Rissing via iStock.

Jan 27, 2026
China's Past Through a Lens of Liberty
Jan 27, 2026
China's Past Through a Lens of Liberty
Jan 27, 2026

A new, free eBook from FEE. On Chinese history from a liberty perspective by Lawrence W. Reed and Katrina Gulliver.

Jan 27, 2026
When America Bought Land From Denmark
Jan 16, 2026
When America Bought Land From Denmark
Jan 16, 2026

The U.S. never threatened or bullied Denmark before it peacefully purchased the Danish West Indies more than a century ago.

Jan 16, 2026