Author Archive | Paul Craig Roberts

Who remembers Ian Smith? Unless you are a graybeard, you may not know that Ian Smith was the (white) prime minister of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) when the country was a British colony. In 1964, Smith led an independence rebellion against Great Britain when it became apparent that the British were going to betray the white [...]

In John Ashcroft’s confirmation hearings for attorney general, the United States missed a rare opportunity to remedy the disastrous decline in the truth-seeking and justice-dispensing functions of the criminal justice system. When the administration of justice goes awry, citizens are doomed to tyranny. Americans would be shocked if they realized the tyranny that passes for [...]

For decades, Planned Parenthood has been proselytizing that sex education is the answer to unwanted pregnancies and population control. The crusaders first breached the high schools, then poured into the elementary schools. Today, toddlers are taught the mechanics of sex before they develop a sexual consciousness. School counselors dispense condoms. School children learn condom use [...]

Jesse Jackson is a fraud, and so is his “civil rights” cause. It has come to light that the pious reverend has a mistress and an illegitimate 2-year-old daughter. This came as a shock to his wife and legitimate children, but it is the least of the reverend’s shortcomings. Jesse has turned civil rights into [...]

Few Americans realize it, but the Democratic Party adheres to the basic premise of Marxist political parties. The defining characteristic of a Marxist party is class warfare. The demonized class is “the rich,” whether the rich are capitalists, pharmaceutical companies, oil companies, California utility companies or upper-income taxpayers. Like Marxists, Democrats frame policy issues in [...]

What is it about guns that causes liberals to go berserk and blame inanimate objects for human behavior? Are liberals that much more emotional and less rational than the rest of us, or have liberals made guns the scapegoat for the consequences of liberal policies that trashed our culture? Guns have been around for a [...]

One of the reasons Republicans govern less successfully than Democrats is that conviction is rarer among Republicans. Under fierce intellectual attack since the days of Calvin Coolidge (the 1920s), Republicans have been made unsure of their ideas — a strong defense and a balanced budget being the only exceptions. In contrast, Democrats have been fawned [...]

If you want to understand what is happening to Microsoft, read “Atlas Shrugged,” Ayn Rand’s classic story of the bureaucratic assault on the entrepreneurial spirit. In “Atlas Shrugged,” Hank Rearden, inventor of the fabulous Rearden metal, is harassed and blackmailed by unaccountable government until he, like other persecuted businessmen, shrugs and walks away to join [...]

Alan Keyes, a candidate for the Republican 2000 presidential nomination, argues that the income tax is a slave tax and that Americans are slaves. He is correct. A slave is a person who does not own his own labor. After tax, successful Americans retain no more of the income they produce than 19th century slaves [...]