I have just finished reading, with great pleasure, Peter Schwartz’s new booklet, The Foreign Policy of Self-Interest: A Moral Ideal for America (published by ARI Press). In just 60 clear, hard-hitting pages, Mr. Schwartz lays out the essentials of a proper...
POLITICS
Country Joe and the Woodstock Generation
I’m a baby boomer and that’s a curse. You see I’m stuck with the idiots from the sixties till my dying day as they whine and moan about injustice and mentally dwell forever in the days of tie-die shirts, incense, and free love. The news media, now...
The Declaration of Independence
Though the Declaration of Independence was assigned to a committee consisting of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman and Robert B. Livingston; the document is primarily Jefferson’s work, aside from a few editorial exceptions–in...
Ever Wonder Why People Who Hate America Live in America?
Ever wonder why people who hate America live in America? At a soccer match between Mexico and the United States a few years ago, the stands were full of Mexican flags. The fans booed when “The Star-Spangled Banner” was played and those few fans who raised...
Ever Wonder Why Some People Hate America?
Ever wonder why some people hate America so? This is not a new phenomenon nor one confined to foreigners. More than 20 years ago, Eric Hoffer said: “Nowhere at present is there such a measureless loathing of their country by educated people as in America.”...
Rex Reed’s Review of Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11”
Michael Moore’s “documentary” Fahrenheit 9/11, having won the French Palm d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival earlier in the month, opened on June 25th in some 800 American theaters. In its first weekend, it led the box office with a $21.8 million...
Ever Wonder Why?
When you have seen scenes of poverty and squalor in many Third World countries, either in person or in pictures, have you ever wondered why we in America have been spared such a fate? When you have learned of the bitter oppressions that so many people have suffered...
Iraqi Optimists versus U.S. Pessimists
A majority of Americans, according to a recent poll, now call going into Iraq a mistake. Many Iraqis apparently failed to get the memo. A poll commissioned by the Coalition Provisional Authority found 63 percent of Iraqis expect conditions to improve after the...
SEC Ruling On Mutual Funds Conflicts with “Consumer Interests”
Nobel Prize economist Ronald Coase long ago warned of a political risk–that of wishing to be an “economic statesman,” which he defined as a person who gives answers when there were none to give. The newest such risk was the Securities and Exchange...
An Explanation for Third World Poverty
Did you learn that the United States is rich because we have bountiful natural resources? That has to be nonsense. Africa and South America are probably the richest continents in natural resources but are home to the world’s most miserably poor people. On the...
Price Controls, Unemployment, and World Hunger
A recent front-page story in the Wall Street Journal told of rising hunger and malnutrition amid chronic agricultural surpluses in India. India is now exporting wheat, and even donating some to Afghanistan, while malnutrition is a growing problem within India itself....
Egalitarianism vs. “Ladies Night”
The big news in town is that “Ladies Night” is illegal. Earlier this month, it had top billing on the marquee at La Costa, a seashore bar at the intersection where New York meets Philadelphia. But New Jersey’s top civil rights official, J. Frank...
Turtle Bill Oozes U.N. Agenda
On June 18, Congress cleared the way for the president to sign into law a bill committing $25 million over five years to save turtles. As expensively ridiculous as this taxpayer-funded initiative seems, its creation and ultimate passage cannot be blamed solely on...
Health Care Independence on the Fourth of July
Two hundred years ago Thomas Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark to explore the vast spaces of North America from St. Louis to the Pacific Ocean. Jefferson understood the enormous challenges for the growth of knowledge and liberty on a continental scale. These were the...
Can John Kerry Be Better Than Bush?
Can John Kerry be better than our current president, George W. Bush? This question begs another, better at what? The principle issue of importance in the 2004 election is the War on (Islamic) Terrorism. George Bush’s negatives on this topic are many....
Privatize Space Exploration: The Free-Market Solution For America's Space Program
SpaceShipOne, the first privately funded manned spacecraft, shattered more than the boundary of outer space: it destroyed forever the myth that space exploration can only be done by the government. Just a week earlier, a Bush Administration panel on space exploration...
Iranian Nuclear Program: Will Israel Save Us?
The Iranian state is rushing headlong into disaster and I’m not referring to an imminent invasion by the United States. Iran is developing nuclear weapons and is attempting to filibuster international agencies which are attempting to monitor Iranian actions. For...
Complacent Europe
At a symposium at my college reunion last week, my classmates — refugees from the ’60s, still lefties after all these years — were complaining that America wasn’t enough like Europe. You know, compassionate and unstressed, with free health...
Will Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11” Defeat a President?
Michael Moore, once a scruffy maker of cheap, funny, satirical documentaries, now puffs himself with the plaudits of the metrosexuals of Hollywood and Cannes. Having portrayed Americans as a bunch of gun-happy lunatics in “Bowling for Columbine,”...
How to Play the Rate Hike
I’m going to be on vacation all next week, riding horses on the western slope of the Rockies at the fabulous Home Ranch in Clark, Colorado. No phones. No TV. No Internet. No markets. So I’ll miss the Federal Reserve’s meeting on June 30. It’ll...
The Islamic World: At War with Western Civilization
The Islamic world is at war with Western civilization. We have the military might to thwart them. The question is: Do we have the intelligence to recognize the attack and the will to defend ourselves from annihilation?
Random Thoughts for June 2004
Random thoughts on the passing scene: The best thing about buying a house is that it puts an end to the exhausting process of house-hunting. Although Ronald Reagan was the only actor to become President, he was one of the few politicians who was not acting. Do the...
Summer Deprogramming
Parents who are worried because their children are receiving a steady diet of politically correct propaganda in the schools and colleges often ask for suggestions of things they should get for their children to read, in hopes of de-programming them. The summer is a...
Old World Love of Status Lives Strong
Spain’s Crown Prince Felipe has married former TV anchorwoman Letizia Ortiz, in the country’s first royal wedding in nearly a century. This occurred to the delight of thousands of onlookers who braved heavy rains, as well as representatives of the Royal...
The Burning of the First Amendment
In what on the surface could only be described as an acute case of masochistic dementia, Philip Morris USA owner Altria Group Inc. is now protesting the promotion of its own brand. In a May 20th letter to Paramount Pictures, Philips Morris Senior Vice President Howard...
Fat in California’s Budget
Whenever there is a budget deficit, politicians automatically want taxes raised. In our private lives, whenever we find ourselves running out of money, most of us think about cutting back on our spending. Not so in government. Despite California’s record budget...
Gross Minus Net Equals Zero: Repeal the Sixteenth Amendment
When I worked in Saudi Arabia as a technical consultant in the 1990s, my coworkers and I were astounded upon receiving our first paycheck: we actually were paid the full amount we had earned. Gross pay minus net pay equaled zero. Never before or since in my lifetime...
Hijacking a Peaceful Religion?
From President Bush to Ted Kennedy we hear the same refrain about Islamic terrorists; “These people have hijacked a peaceful religion. Islamic militants are a few radicals who do not represent Islam.” We are expected to believe that it is not the...
Reagan’s Early Victory in the War on Terror
After 444 days of humbling Jimmy Carter, the rulers in Tehran decided to conclude their drama at the U.S. embassy before they had to face the new president.
The Purpose of Speech Codes in Schools and Colleges
With all the noise being made — from traffic noise to Al Gore’s ranting — you might never suspect that there was a National Day of Silence. What you might also not suspect is that this day is observed in schools and colleges across the country, where...
Symbolism vs. Substance in Iraq
This must be the golden age of symbolism. In war-torn Iraq, its political leaders are demanding that foreign workers who are trying to rebuild that country must be subject to the Iraqi legal system. Do you have any idea what the Iraqi legal system is? Are you prepared...
Letters to the Editor (June 2004): Kerry’s Relativism vs. Bush’s Religion
The following is the correspondence between Ed Cline and John Lewis, Ph.D. concerning Dr. Lewis’ recent op-ed “ The Threat of a Faith-Based Defense of America , Capitalism Magazine, June 6, 2004: Dear Dr. Lewis: Your remarkable and succinct summation of...
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