Archive | December, 2002

After learning that the Republicans were dumping Trent Lott as Majority Leader in the Senate, Hillary Clinton commented, “What [Lott] did was state publicly what many of them [i.e. Republicans] have stated privately over many years in the back roads and back streets of the South.” How does she know this? Senator Clinton provides no [...]

New York City’s recent brush with a transit strike should be a wake-up call for city and state leaders. It’s time to inject private competition into Gotham’s public transportation system to control costs and make the city less vulnerable to threats every few years from an increasingly radicalized transit union. New York already has one [...]

“I do my work”. He who in faith can say That simple phrase, is set upon the way To bend the will of Fortune to his will. The world makes place for him whose strength and skill Rebel at doubt and rankle at delay. The visions that hold true, the dreams that stay Are wrought [...]

When I came to the United States from South Africa as a young doctor 17 years ago, I was excited. I was leaving behind an oppressive, racist regime, and I was entering a country founded on the inviolable rights of an individual to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I did not expect to [...]

If you want a thing bad enough To go out and fight for it, Work day and night for it, Give up your time and your peace and your sleep for it If only desire of it Makes you quite mad enough Never to tire of it, Makes you hold all other things tawdry and [...]

One of the cornerstones of the war on terrorism is the premise that promoting democracy is a long-run goal for creating a better world, one which will not breed so many terrorists. But a new book, “World on Fire” by Professor Amy Chua of the Yale law school, argues persuasively that democracy can be positively [...]

Previously, I contrasted two official U.S. responses to news that the Saudi ambassador’s wife possibly funded the 9/11 hijackers: The Bush administration pooh-poohed it, while leading U.S. senators expressed outrage. I argued that this difference results from a Saudi-induced “culture of corruption” that pervades the upper reaches of the executive branch but does not extend [...]

I remember as a child eagerly awaiting Time magazine’s choice of its Man of the Year each year. I believed that there were great men and great events in the world that I needed to know about, and that there was a great arbiter of them — Time — that somehow make the great even [...]

Now that President Bush has named his new economic team, he’s expected to turn his attention to a stimulus package. I hope not. Growth, yes. Stimulus, no. “Stimulus” implies a goose to the economy – or, more politely, the quick boost you get when you jump-start a dead battery. But this economy doesn’t need a [...]