Walter Williams

The ultimate constraint that we all face is knowledge -- what we know and don't know. The knowledge problem is pervasive and by no means trivial as hinted at by just a few examples. You've purchased a house. Was it the best deal you could have gotten? Was there some...

How many things in our lives would we like to depend upon the generosity and selflessness of our fellow man, and do you think we would like the outcome? You say, "Williams, are you now putting down generosity and selflessness?" No, I'm not. Let me ask the question in...

Steve H. Hanke is a Professor of Applied Economics at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C., and writes frequently for Globe Asia and Forbes magazine. Professor Hanke starts off his "Hu versus Sarkozy"...

Americans are harder workers, more philanthropic, individualistic, self-reliant, anti-government than people in most other countries. We’ve turned what was an 18th-century Third World nation into the freest and most prosperous nation in mankind’s entire...

Rep. Diane Watson said, in praising Cuba's health care system, "You can think whatever you want to about Fidel Castro, but he was one of the brightest leaders I have ever met." W.E.B. Dubois, writing in the National Guardian (1953) said, "Joseph Stalin was a great...

Michael Moore's new film, "Capitalism: A Love Story" will be released next month. I've neither seen nor read reviews of the film, except for a short piece in the London Telegraph (9/6/09) titled "Michael Moore film calls capitalism evil." Aware of Michael Moore's...

Instead of President Obama addressing school students across the nation, he might have accomplished more by focusing his attention on the educational rot in schools in the nation's capital. The American Legislative Exchange Council recently came out with their 15th...

A very brief but important article on the fundamental purpose of the health care bill is circulating and with which President Barack Obama and his cadre of communist and pinkish radicals, czars and advisors would agree with nods of approval, and which most Democrats...

President Obama and congressional supporters estimate that his health care plan will cost between $50 and $65 billion a year. Such cost estimates are lies whether they come from a Democratic president and Congress, or a Republican president and Congress. You say,...

Harvard Professor Henry Gates' arrest has given new life to the issue of racial profiling. We can think of profiling in general as a practice where people use an observable or known physical attribute as a proxy or estimator of some other unobservable or unknown...

President Barack Obama won an unprecedented 96 percent of the black vote. That's not much of a news story since blacks typically give their votes to the Democratic candidate. Blacks are probably the most politically loyal people in the nation and it is almost taken as...

How can political commentators, politicians and academics get away with statements like "Reagan budget deficits," "Clinton budget surplus," "Bush budget deficits" or "Obama's tax increases"? The only answer is that they, or the people who believe such statements, are...

Here's what I wrote in last year's column titled "Global Warming Rope-a-Dope" (12/24/2008): "Once laws are written, they are very difficult, if not impossible, to repeal. If a time would ever come when the permafrost returns to northern U.S., as far south as New...

Last month, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed Senate Resolution 26 "Apologizing for the enslavement and racial segregation of African-Americans." The resolution ends with: "Disclaimer. -- Nothing in this resolution (a) authorizes or supports any claim against the...