Walter Williams

Do states have a right of secession? That question was settled through the costly War of 1861. In his recently published book, "The Real Lincoln," Thomas DiLorenzo marshals abundant unambiguous evidence that virtually every political leader of the time and earlier...

How many times have we heard people being applauded for "giving back"? People seem to believe that, if you've been successful and made a lot of money, you're somehow obliged to give back by making donations to this or that cause, program or people. Giving back is not...

Most Americans were pleased with the legislative attack on cigarette smokers, not to mention confiscatory tobacco taxes. We reveled in the EPA's dishonest study concluding that second-hand smoke causes cancer. And, by the way, I'd like to hear whether the Food &...

The never-ending battle of the left to keep people from being held responsible for the consequences of their own actions is now in the Supreme Court of the United States, where the justices are being urged to exempt murderers from the death penalty if they score below...

In 1996, California's voters passed Proposition 209, which outlawed racial quotas for college admission. That didn't mean the end of the quest for racial quotas and the euphemisms for it: affirmative action, diversity and multiculturalism. The diversity lobby has...

Since the 1960s, academic achievement scores have plummeted, but student grade point averages (GPAs) have skyrocketed. The Academy of Arts and Sciences reports that at Harvard, for instance, A's were awarded to 46 percent of students in 1996 (versus 22 percent in...

Racial preferences, quotas and affirmative action in university admission practices have lost political and, increasingly, legal support. As a result, states such as California, Texas and Florida have implemented a substitute practice called "percentage plans" as a...

"Battered woman syndrome" -- the politically correct legal rationalization for letting cold-blooded female killers off the hook -- is now an issue in the California governor's race. Are both Democrats and Republicans really so desperate to close the gender gap that...

Diversity is simultaneously an important and contemptible term in today's climate of political correctness. According to Merriam Webster's Dictionary, diversity means: diverseness, multeity, multifariousness, multiformity, multiplicity, variousness. Its related words...

"The shift from personal autonomy to dependence on government is perhaps the defining characteristic of modern American politics. In the span of barely one lifetime, a nation grounded in ideals of individual liberty has been transformed into one in which federal...

Worrying about bacteria, New Jersey banned restaurants from serving eggs sunny side up. The ban has since been lifted. Some New Jersey localities have a ban on people pumping their own gasoline. Policemen issue citations for driving without a seatbelt. By law, new...

Webster's Dictionary defines harm as: to hurt, damage, injure. People who don't or can't think believe that government should step in to prevent one person from harming another, such as in the case of tobacco smoke. But harm is a two-way street, and it's a daunting...

Major media people have values unlike most other Americans. Former CBS correspondent Bernard Goldberg documents that in his best-seller, "Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News." Eighty-nine percent of Washington journalists voted for Clinton in...

You'd be surprised by the newly discovered requirements for national security revealed by the Sept. 11 terrorist attack. We discovered that a thriving airline industry is necessary for national security. Congress acknowledged this by bailing out airline stockholders...

Education in Philadelphia's public schools is so rotten that the state government is threatening a takeover. There are 176 out of 264 schools on the failing list. The primary victims of Philadelphia's public schools are black students whose chances for upward mobility...

Maryland's Montgomery County Council passed a measure whereby smokers whose neighbors are offended by the odor of cigarette smoke wafting from their homes would be fined up to $750. After the measure passed, County Executive Douglas Duncan promised to sign the bill...