POLITICS

Philosophical Malpractice: January 6th and the Closed Room

A mind operating from prior conclusions does not go looking for evidence that might challenge them. It looks for evidence that confirms, and mistakes the confirmation for proof.

Tax Cuts For The Rich

Tax Cuts For The Rich

With the election season coming into the home stretch, the cry of “Tax cuts for the rich!” is ringing out across the land from Democrats desperate to regain power in Washington . Like many other political slogans, its popularity depends on slippery words...

Big Government’s Threat to Free Press

“They better hope we don’t win.” That’s the blunt warning political operative Chad Clanton recently delivered to the journalists at Sinclair Broadcasting. Clanton’s boss is John Kerry, the subject of a highly critical documentary Sinclair...

“Plans” Versus Realities

“Plans” Versus Realities

Who said, “if you hold your fire until you see the whites of his eyes, you will never know what hit you”? It was President Franklin D. Roosevelt and he said it on May 27, 1941. It applies even more today. If you are going to go to war against terrorists in...

ABC News or ABC Spin?

ABC News or ABC Spin?

As if Dan Rather’s use of forged documents to try to discredit President Bush shortly before the election was not enough of a clue to the mainstream media’s political agenda, ABC News has now joined CBS News in the political spin game. What ABC News has...

Political Demagoguery

Politicians have a field day misleading Americans who, as a result of having been dumbed down by our education system, can’t think, reason or analyze. How many times have we heard the political lament “There are 43 million Americans without health...

Letters to the Editor: October 2004

October 18, 2004 Prosecuting “immoral price gougers” Dear Editor: Tommy Thompson, secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services was wrong to exhort the 50 state-attorneys general to zealously prosecute “immoral price gougers” of...

The Safety Zealots

The Safety Zealots

Nowhere is the tyranny of visions more absolute than with issues involving safety. Attempts to talk about costs, trade-offs or diminishing returns are only likely to provoke safety zealots to respond with something like, “If it saves just one human life, it is...

The Busybody Commissions of California

The Busybody Commissions of California

Some people think of California as a place where many kooky ideas originate. It is that but there is more to it than that. California has long had more than its fair share of busybodies with a vision of the world in which it is necessary for them to force other people...

Blame America

Blame America

The War on Terror involves more than military or intelligence, it involves winning the ideological struggle. Not there, but here. I once wrote about the way an elementary school teacher in Afghanistan discusses political science and history. The teacher holds up a...

The Tyranny of Visions

The Tyranny of Visions

At long last there is some reconsideration of the child molestation hysteria that has sent innocent people to jail for long terms behind bars, often with zero evidence and with testimony from children who have been heavily pressured or manipulated by...

The Erosion of Property Rights

Imagine you’ve been enjoying your backyard picnic table and chairs for the past 10 years when suddenly, for no apparent reason, you are served notice from a government agency that you will be fined $6,000 a day unless you remove them. Or, imagine you would like...

School Violence Toleration

School Violence Toleration

I’m wondering just when parents, especially poor minorities, will refuse to tolerate day-to-day school conditions that most parents wouldn’t dream of tolerating. Lisa Snell, director of the Education and Child Welfare Program at the Los Angles-based Reason...

The Intellectual Motor Behind SpaceShipOne

Burt Rutan may be famous for coming up with the ideas for his aircraft literally on paper napkins, but he meticulously assigns them a number. Hence the tiny plaque on SpaceShipOne, lost among the sponsors’ logos, which after interpretation reads “Mark 314,...

The Media’s Role

The Media’s Role

A joke has President Bush and the Pope sailing down the Potomac on the Presidential yacht. The wind blows the Pontiff’s cap off and it falls into the water. President Bush orders the yacht stopped, gets off and walks across the water to retrieve the Pope’s...

gun

Unicorns, Jedi, and Plastic Guns

During the recent vice presidential debate, Senator Edwards criticized Vice President Cheney for voting “against banning plastic weapons that can pass through metal detectors.” The ban to which Edwards was referring was the Undetectable Firearms Act of...

Watch Both Boots

Remember “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth”? Today, it’s more like “Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the debt.” The federal deficit this year will hit a record $422 billion, according to the latest...

UN Seeks New Environmental Treaty

Forty: That’s the number of global and regional legal documents already in existence that dictate what actions can and cannot be taken regarding the world’s forests. Forty-one: That’s the number the United Nations hopes to reach via a new treaty on...

Invasive Species: The Newest Threat to Property Rights

If you have foreign weeds, grass, trees, or shrubs on your property (and you most certainly do), you’re in trouble. Under “Invasive Species” provisions currently sitting in the Senate’s version of the Federal Transportation Bill (S. 1072), your...

The Academic Halls of Stupidity: Success Equals Effort

Benedict College in Columbia, S.C. , enforces an academic policy that defies belief. Say I’m a freshman taking your class in biology. I learn little from your lectures, assigned readings and homework. I do attend class every day, take notes and manage to average...

Too Late for One, SCOTUS Accepts Land Use Case

Finally, the nation’s highest court will hear a case with potential to clarify the Fifth Amendment’s private property protections. But to what degree the outcome will impact the future actions of the nation’s most oppressive land grabber, the federal...

Responsible Voting

Responsible Voting

Every election year there are great alarms in the media that not enough Americans vote. Supposedly this shows that there is something wrong at the core of our society. In reality, societies where different groups are at each other’s throats often have high voter...

Debater vs. Leader

Debater vs. Leader

Polls show President Bush lost the first debate against Democratic presidential contender John Kerry. Why? Bush failed to respond to Kerry’s assertions. Let’s deal with them. Did Bush irresponsibly use the “authority” given him by Congress? The...

Columbus Day: The Cure for 9/11

Columbus Day: The Cure for 9/11

On Columbus Day, in sum, we celebrate Western civilization with the utter certainty that it is good according to an objective standard: man’s life. America therefore deserves to prevail against the religious totalitarians who would destroy industrial civilization and return mankind to the Stone Age.

Opposing Platonic Conservatism: A Matter of Values

Some admirer’s of Ayn Rand have concluded that the political values of her philosophy, Objectivism, and the values of Bush conservatives are fundamentally the same. They claim, for instance, that Objectivists and conservatives both value freedom, even though the...

The Good in Price Gouging

As the Sunshine State endures the worst hurricane season in a century, some Florida merchants are also weathering a manmade gale: charges of so-called “price gouging.” There are thousands of such accusations, and, egged on by media everywhere,...

Capitalist Hawk for Kerry

“A half-battle is worse than none: it does not end in mere defeat–it helps and hastens the victory of your enemies.” Ayn Rand John Kerry is despicable, and I will vote for him. Contrary to the position of some Objectivists that President Bush is...

In Defense of Wal-Mart

It’s no secret that city planners in communities across the nation have resisted attempts by Wal- Mart to open its doors. Wal-Mart has faced the strongest resistance to its “Super Centers” – its version of one-stop-shopping for food, clothing,...

Letters to The Editor: September 2004

September 28, 2004 Why Australia is No Ally to Kerry Australia is a strong ally of the United States. We have a history of fighting alongside American troops in the wars of self interest over the past century (World War II, Korean War, Vietnam War, Gulf War I). We...

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