The recent deaths of journalists in Baghdad are more than just personal tragedies. Both the chances that these journalists have taken and the indignant reactions by the surviving journalists are a sad sign of a growing lack of realism in our times, especially among...
Thomas Sowell
No Hall of Fame for Pete Rose
A San Francisco sports writer has joined the chorus of those who argue that Pete Rose should be admitted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, despite being banned from baseball for violating one of its cardinal rules, against betting on ball games. The argument is: What...
The Grand Fraud: Double-Standard Admissions
If you would like to be taller than you are, do you think that joining a basketball team would help? After all, statistics prove that members of basketball teams are taller than other people. If this seems like a strange way to reason, it is the same kind of reasoning...
The Grand Fraud: “Disparate Impact” Statistics, Big Business, and Affirmative Action
Someone once said of Lillian Hellman that every word she uttered was a lie, including "and" and "the." Many defenders of affirmative action deserve a Lillian Hellman award. Not only is much of what they say contradicted by readily available facts, much of what they...
The Grand Fraud: Affirmative Action for Women
Fraud is as pervasive in arguments for affirmative action for women as in arguments for affirmative action for blacks. In fact, a whole fraudulent history has been concocted to explain the changing economic position of women over the years. In the feminist movement's...
The Grand Fraud: Affirmative Action for Blacks
No issue has been more saturated with dishonesty than the issue of racial quotas and preferences, which is now being examined by the Supreme Court of the United States. Many defenders of affirmative action are not even honest enough to admit that they are talking...
Random Thoughts for March 2003
Random thoughts on the passing scene: Never before in history has the word "unilateral" been thrown around so gratuitously when the issue was war. Only in recent years has there been any question that a sovereign nation takes the solemn step of going to war...
Who is “Pro-War”?
We have heard a lot about anti-war demonstrators. Indeed, we have heard a lot from anti-war spokesmen, as the media continue their corrupt practice of providing free air time to those whose antics provide them with footage for their news broadcasts. But what about...
Artificial Stupidity
A recent news story about a teacher who assigned her students to write anti-war letters may have seemed like just an isolated episode, but teachers using students for their own little ego trips is by no means uncommon. Perhaps the worst recent example was a teacher...
The Other Filibuster
While Senate Democrats are filibustering against the nomination of Miguel Estrada to the federal appeals court, liberals in the media are filibustering against conservative judges in general. The hallmark of these liberal media filibusters is that they can find little...
“Diversity” For Thee, Not Me
My favorite salesman in my favorite camera store in Palo Alto, California, happened to mention that he lives in the town of Tracy. That is about an hour and a half drive to work in rush hour traffic. Why was this man spending three hours a day on the highway? Because...
The Fetish of “Relevance”
One of the many fashionable idiocies that cause American schools to produce results inferior to those in other countries is the notion that education must be "relevant" to the students -- and especially to minority students with a different subculture. It is absurd to...
Random Thoughts for February 2003
Random thoughts on the passing scene: Everything is relative. In most of coastal California, Ted Kennedy would be politically middle of the road -- and, in San Francisco, right of center. A lot of what is called "public service" consists of making hoops for other...
Twin Disasters: Teacher failure and Student failure in Education
When critics point out the abysmal performances of schools in ghetto neighborhoods, teachers defend themselves by pointing out the disinterested, disruptive, and sometimes dangerous students they have to deal with. But teacher failure and student failure are not...
Undeclared Wars: French State Still Hasn’t Learned the Lessons of History
It is a painful reminder of human folly, irresponsibility, and exhibitionism that millions of "anti-war" demonstrators have somehow convinced themselves that they have some special aversion to war. No sane human being wants war. There would be cheers throughout the...
A Cold Shower
Sometimes a phrase betrays a whole mindset. Someone quoted in the New York Times recently referred to the Bush tax cut as one in which "most of the benefits would be showered on the richest taxpayers." Keeping money that you yourself earned is called having benefits...
A Rush Limbaugh For the Left?
Liberals have been throwing money at problems for so long that it should not be surprising that they are now ready to throw money at the problem they have with the predominance of conservative talk show hosts on radio. For a change, rich liberals will be throwing...
Hard Times for Envy
When driving down the highway with my car on cruise control and the stereo playing "Stompin' at the Savoy," I am in heaven. There are millions of later model cars on the road, and no doubt some better stereo systems, as well as more scenic highways. But why should I...
Give Minority Youngsters a Lousy Education and Then Admit Them to College By Quotas
It has been said that, when Ronald Reagan was governor of California, someone told him that admitting students to the University of California on individual performance alone could mean that all the students at Berkeley might be Asian Americans. "So what?" was the...
Damaging Admissions: Increasing Faculty Diversity
Not the least of the damage done by affirmative action is damage to the English language. In addition to all the euphemisms concocted to evade the simple fact of racial quotas and double standards, there has long been a fog of obscure phrases shrouding the issues...
Disarming a Country: The Parallels Between Hitler’s Germany and Hussein’s Iraq
History does not literally repeat itself, but sometimes it comes awfully close. Iraq is not the first dangerous dictatorship that international agreements tried to keep disarmed. Nor is it the first where that effort failed. Back in the 1930s, Germany's military...
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