"Free Market"? Hardly!

"Free market". The term refers to voluntary interaction and trade without government interference or coercion. Seems pretty straightforward, right?

There is an organization I recently became aware of called "The Free Market Foundation". They are not concerned with freedom, but with using government to promote their brand of religion. They do advocate keeping government out of the areas where government intervention would offend their beliefs, but as soon as government meddling can advance their agenda, they run to government.

They fight against the ACLU, which is battling government in many areas. The ACLU definitely has its blind spots as far as supporting some rights while ignoring others, but the Free Market Foundation opposes them because it opposes allowing people to exercise their basic human rights which happen to offend the group's sensibilities. This is mainly because these "free marketeers" wish to get government to support discrimination against gay people. The ACLU also tries to keep the government in compliance with the First Amendment protection of freedom of religion and establishment of none; something the Free Market Foundation opposes. This is not "free market" but government intervention. A group really concerned with the free market would only be advocating the removal of laws, not the passage of new ones.

They have the right to call their organization anything they choose, of course. I also have the right to point out their hypocrisy. How would they appreciate a group of Iraqi Muslims calling themselves "The American Christian Foundation"? Probably not too much, and they would probably run to the government to force them to change their name.

I wrote to them pointing out their "error", but I never got a response. In my mind, that just compounds the dishonesty.


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