Freedom Index
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5 years ago
Aug/Sept 2021
“In the two decades since the September 11 attacks, the absence of REAL ID enforcement has not made domestic flights more vulnerable to terrorism. Meanwhile, the federal government and the states have not been able to implement REAL ID at scale, and the general public does not seem to see a need for it. The next time Congress debates the future of REAL ID, it should repeal the requirement for good.”
Scott Shackford
“Even COVID-19 Couldn’t Kill
REAL ID”
15 years ago
Aug/Sept 2011
“After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, it became fashionable on the right, and among some hawkish liberals, to defend and even promote the idea of an American Empire to keep us safe from terrorists, hold rogue nations in check, and secure global commerce…..In the middle years of the last decade, as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan grew steadily worse, this jingoism fell out of favor, leaving only a shrinking core of committed neoconservatives to champion the virtues of empire. Still, the questions posed by American global military dominance were far from settled in public opinion.”
John Payne
“Temptations of Empire”
“If we are getting over 9/11 in ways big and small, it’s not because we have worked through the pain and the terror and the anger but simply because we are forgetting it ever happened in the first place. Within another decade at most, we will walk by 9/11 memorials the same way we stroll by the World War I cenotaphs installed in town squares across the country. Catharsis be damned; this is probably the way we always get over trauma. Repression and historical amnesia are among the most powerful tools God or evolution has handed us.”
Nick Gillespie
“Why Art Failed Us After 9/11”
“Looking back at the few bright moments during those first days and weeks after the attacks, I can think of hardly any that emanated from a politician or figure of influence….The strength of America on display 10 years ago did not result from centralizing new bureaucracies in Washington, unionizing new sets of federal employees, or devising easier ways for the government to snoop on and even kill its own citizens. It came from individual human beings, accustomed to living in freedom, acting in a decentralized manner to make an atrocious event slightly less painful. There’s an important lesson there, waiting to be learned.”
Matt Welch
“The Day Everything Continued To Change”
55 years ago
September 1971
“The [Federal Communications] Commission has an impossible job; it cannot police the thousands of licensees across the nation to ensure that they remain within the charters granted them. Lacking an overall conceptual framework, it cannot respond rationally to the technological advances which continually outpace and outscope the political and jurisdictional rules and regulations it sets forth.”
Michael Bloom
“The Data Communications Battle”
“The Democratic Party Platform of 1888 called tariffs and quotas the ‘mother of monopoly.’ The famous trusts of the time (e.g., sugar and tobacco) were protected from foreign competition. It was wisely argued that free trade would protect the American consumer by allowing the whole world to compete for his business. Monopolizing the world production of a product is infinitely more difficult than monopolizing a national market. When Brazil tried to restrict her coffee sales to raise prices, she only succeeded in causing coffee to be grown in other countries, which meant greater production and lower prices than before.”
Rod Manis
“Free Enterprise and the Monopoly Myth”
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