Two recent events show the real meaning of two popular ideas: "hate speech" regulations and campaign finance controls. The real meaning of both is the end of free speech. The first story comes from Canada, where "hate speech" laws are already on the books. Last week,...
The market is in another slump, and investors' savings have once again shrunk. So now is the perfect time to make the case for privatizing Social Security. This is not the conventional view on the subject. In the run-up to next month's elections, Republican...
The hysteria over "corporate crime" is finally beginning to lead a few people back to the one source that puts this scandal frenzy in its proper perspective: Ayn Rand's epic novel "Atlas Shrugged," which was recently profiled in The New York Times and just this week...
I just discovered a story that sums up, better than anything else, the end result of the War on Terrorism so far. It is a story, not about the suppression of Islamic fanatics in the Middle East, but about the suppression of our own liberties here in the United States....
The Bush family has a real talent for losing wars against Iraq, and they seem to be getting more efficient at it. The first President Bush waited until he achieved a crushing victory over Iraq's armies before capitulating to Saddam Hussein. The second President Bush...
The U.N.'s "sustainable development" conference in South Africa has been characterized, so far, by what the press calls "divergent agendas," a confused contest of competing interests and an attitude of futility. One speaker summed up the expectations for the...
One year later, the hole in New York's skyline where the World Trade Center towers once stood is a visual reminder of something else that is missing: the ideas and attitudes that make a vigorous war in America's self-defense possible. For many of us, the immediate...
The president returns to Washington this week after a month on vacation in Texas and three months seemingly on vacation from America's foreign policy. Since June, President Bush has been telling everyone who asks that he has made no decision on Iraq. Making that kind...
No bold new ideas have been heard so far, or are likely to be heard, at the president's "economic summit" today in Texas. Bold new ideas, it is becoming increasingly obvious, are not Bush's style. In place of new ideas, the summit offers a lot of very conventional...
Someone, finally, has stated the truth to the administration and to the world: Saudi Arabia is our enemy. According to the Washington Post, that was the message of a recent briefing to the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board. The presentation, by Rand Corporation analyst...
Newsflash: Hauling CEOs Away in Manacles Makes Markets Soar! This is not a headline from The Onion, the satirical weekly newspaper that prints fake news stories. No, it is the story that was repeated last week by most of the nation's supposedly serious financial...
Did you hear the one about the 87-year-old grandmother who had her knitting needles taken away by airport security? They were afraid she was going to knit an Afghan. That is just one of many jibes at the fraudulent airport security measures adopted since September 11....
Just as the War on Terrorism dissipates into total inaction -- the latest word is that we will not invade Iraq -- our leaders have launched a new war to replace it: the War on CEOs. In reaction to a few cases in which corporate CEOs allegedly violated existing laws...
Reporters, commentators and politicians have whipped themselves into a frenzy over the recent corporate accounting scandals, heaping abuse on corporate executives in general and demanding to see the perpetrators led away in leg-irons. But is this feeding frenzy...
With the fall of communism and the alleged end of the "era of big government," many commentators and politicians grudgingly acknowledge the practical value of capitalism. The free market, they concede, is the best system for producing wealth and promoting prosperity;...
On July 4, Americans will take a day to honor our Founding Fathers, who gave birth to the first nation dedicated to individual freedom. This day comes, unfortunately, at a moment when our politicians are united in their venomous attacks on a crucial element of the...
Why do so many people hate Martha Stewart? How does a home-decorating and entertaining expert with a sweet, wholesome public persona come to be portrayed as a major cultural villain? Consider the past week's media frenzy over charges that Stewart engaged in "insider...
Today, more than a million people in Zimbabwe are starving, and up to three million face the imminent prospect of starvation. This has not yet excited much attention in the West. Zimbabwe, after all, is far away from the centers of American interest; all of our top...
The War on Terrorism is over. It ended when President Bush pushed to the top of his agenda the creation of a Cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security. This is the climax of a trend that has been building for the past month: the only action the U.S. government is...
The Bush administration seems to be twisting itself into a knot of confusion over the nuclear standoff between India and Pakistan, dispatching an array of diplomats to try to "ease the tensions" between the two countries -- without doing anything to eliminate the...
Memorial Day is always a solemn occasion, but especially so this year, because we have so recently experienced this day's meaning first-hand. We have seen it in two different ways: we have seen the courage of our troops on the battlefields of Afghanistan -- and we...
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