The message of freedom.(FROM THE EDITOR)

The mission of this magazine is encapsulated by the slogan appearing on its cover every two weeks--"That freedom shall not perish." On the surface, that slogan seems so uncontroversial that one might ask why a magazine defending freedom is even needed. After all, isn't freedom popular? Don't we all want to manage our own lives, as opposed to the government managing our lives for us? Don't we want to decide ourselves where we go to church, how we raise our families, how we earn our livelihoods, and how we spend our money? Don't we want the opportunity freedom provides for plotting our own course through life and achieving our objectives, whether our goals be buying our dream home or starting a business or converting an avocation into a vocation?

Yes, freedom is popular. Yet despite its popularity, most people throughout history have not enjoyed freedom. Even today, many of the peoples of the world are oppressed. The fact that people want to manage their own lives does not change the fact that some people want to manage the lives of others. They do so through government, and if the government is unaccountable and unrestrained, the consequences may be horrific. Consider Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia, where the regimes were all-powerful and the victims powerless.

The American experience is different, of course. Here in America, the Founding Fathers created a Constitution limiting the government--and consequently generations of Americans have enjoyed freedom to such an extent that it is almost impossible to think of America without thinking of freedom or to think of freedom without thinking of America.

Yet even here in America, freedom can be lost. Indeed, ominous signs are apparent in our everyday lives, from oppressive taxation to finance bloated government programs not authorized in the Constitution, to our currency's depreciating value caused by the creation of fiat (unbacked) currency by the Federal Reserve, an entity given ...