Was Censorship the Greatest COVID Threat to Freedom?
It wasn't just autocrats who were frequently tempted to address "fake news" about the pandemic through state pressure and coercion.
Books
Speaking Freely Through the Ages
As long as there have been laws, there have been attempts to silence people.
Maria Montessori's 'Libertarian View of Children'
The education pioneer's authoritarian personality was at odds with her commitment to children's independence.
The Fuzzy Moral Line Between Drinkers and Bartenders
Were liquor suppliers across the world guilty of outrageous abuses that explain the prohibitionist response?
Expanding Our Understanding of the Revolution
Despite all the controversy it has courted, Woody Holton's newest book doesn't stray very far from other scholarly interpretations of the American Revolution.
When Humanitarianism Prolongs the Inhumane
"A future of bloodless global discipline is a chilling thing."
The Reactionary Tradition Out To Annihilate American Liberty
A World After Liberalism details the rise of a young right that finds reactionary ideas relevant and appealing.
A Flawed Case Against Black Self-Defense
In the face of state failure, neglect, and overt hostility, black Americans need the right to bear arms.
What Technology Can Learn From Biology
Can humans design products that assemble (and disassemble) themselves?
Foucault in the Panopticon
How Michel Foucault's encounters in Poland's heavily policed gay community informed his ideas
Terrorwashing a Genocide
How the war on terror facilitated Communist China's repression of Uyghurs
Lockdowns' High Costs and Murky Benefits
Cato economist Ryan Bourne's new book is a much-needed rejoinder to the obtuse economic reasoning of many pandemic-era policy makers.
Stealthily Wielding Caesar's Sword
Sohrab Ahmari's case for tradition conceals an authoritarian agenda.
A Clear and Present Lack of Danger
We can stop obsessing about Islamic terrorists crossing the Southern border.
America's Cross-Partisan Dalliance With Eugenics
A new book pulls the curtain back—but only partway.
Autonomous Mexico
What happened when some indigenous people took their lands back from the state
When Kidnappings Were All the Rage
With panic in the air, federal law enforcement seized the moment.
City Building and Black Power
That time a civil rights activist teamed up with Richard Nixon to build a black-run town in rural North Carolina
Rethinking the Power To Take a Life
America's approach to capital punishment changed in the 1970s. It's time for another look.
Wanted: A Better Way To Think About Health Care
If social insurance plans had been designed by libertarian-leaning policy mechanics, what might they have produced?
The Myth of Antonio Salazar
The integralist right's foolish crush on the man who once ruled Portugal
A Declassified Case Against Torture
Retired FBI agent Ali Soufan argues that the agency's thirst for torture made it harder to protect Americans.
Why We (Still) Shouldn't Censor Misinformation
It strains credulity to believe random tweets can lead otherwise normal people to drive across the country and stage an insurrection.
A Radical History of Tennis?
Despite some interesting tidbits, a new history of the game falls short.
Was the Reagan Revolution Really Reagan's?
While we're at it, was it really a revolution?
Miracles and Magic
The desire to know one's fortune seems to be an instinctive human urge.
Americans and Their Foreign Entanglements
Nothing in U.S. history suggests that ordinary Americans are isolationists—but nothing suggests they've embraced international adventurism either.
The Truth About the Free Market Family
Maxine Eichner's The Free-Market Family laments the bad public policy that makes it hard for parents to juggle work and child care, but often arrives at the wrong solutions.
Into the Dugout
Jim Bouton pulled back the curtain on the MLB and changed the perception of sports forever.
The Nationalism-ists
The members of Steve Bannon's international circle share an outlandish spiritual-historic vision, but their threat to liberty is more mundane.
The Weird Beauty of Suburbia
How can a place that we're intimately familiar with—more than half of America lives in the suburbs—be so unknowable?
Salvaging Secession
The Founders understood union as a strategic necessity, not a moral imperative.
The Long, Dark History of Family Separations
How politicians used the drug war and the welfare state to break up black and Native American families
Seeing Like an Anarchist
How former slaves built an autonomous, self-sufficient, and nearly stateless society in the mountains of Haiti, and how they lost it
Will Anyone Ever Be Able To Build Again in San Francisco?
How did California's housing shortage happen and why is it so intractable?
The Sins and Virtues of New Religions
Occultists, social justice warriors, and techno-utopians may not look like the Christians of yore, but they're more religious than they realize.
Indians and Aliens
Human beings' disturbing capacity to manufacture history to serve our own ends
Drugs and Ammo
A look at war through the lens of the performance enhancers that help make it possible