The results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a nationwide test to assess the abilities of elementary and middle-school children, are out. Though math scores showed some improvement over the last decade, reading scores did not. This should not be...
POLITICS
The New Medicare Program: A Prescription for Disaster
At a cost of $400 billion over 10 years, Congressional Republicans have agreed in Conference Committee–with the enthusiastic encouragement of a Republican President–to the greatest expansion of government in two generations. This new Medicare program can...
Harm’s A Two Way Street
The largest losers of America’s anti-tobacco crusade aren’t tobacco companies and smokers, it’s the American people who are incrementally giving up private property rights. You say, “Hold it, Williams, I agree that people have the right to...
America’s Failing War Effort (Part 1 of 12): A Report Card
Two years after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, there are two leading evaluations of the Bush Administration’s “war on terrorism.” One side, generally right-wing and supportive of the war, is optimistic about its progress, and regards...
How the Judiciary Effectively Repealed the 10th Amendment
Many years ago, someone did a study of the IQs of municipal transit drivers and their accident rates. Those with below-average IQs had higher rates of accidents, as you might expect. What was unexpected was the discovery that drivers with IQs above a certain level...
The Thinker
Back of the beating hammer By which the steel is wrought, Back of the workshop’s clamor The seeker may find the Thought, The Thought that is ever master Of iron and steam and steel, That rises above disaster And tramples it under heel! The drudge may fret and...
America’s European “Allies”: Liking Us When We’re Dead
In the days immediately following September 11, 2001 the outpouring of support from the governments and people of Europe was overwhelming. Americans living in or visiting Europe at the time remember the various Europeans hugging them on the streets and offering them...
Letters About Medical Care
Reader responses to the discussion of government-controlled medical care in this column raised questions that need answering. The most frequently raised question was why American pharmaceutical drugs sell for less in other countries. Some readers considered this proof...
Reverend Al Sharpton — The Democrats’ Moral Compass?
Democratic presidential candidate Reverend Al Sharpton, at the recent Democratic debate in Boston, took the front-runner, former Vermont Governor Howard Dean, to task. Dean’s sin? Dean, in an interview with the Des Moines (Iowa) Register on Saturday, Nov. 1,...
If a Flat Tax is Good for Iraq, How About America?
Few Americans would want to trade places with the people of Iraq. But come tax time next April, they may begin to wonder who’s better off. That’s because the Iraqis soon will enjoy something we don’t — a simple and fair tax system. Beginning in...
“Hate Crimes” Law Undermines Protection of Individual Rights
Leaders from both parties–Republican Senator Orrin Hatch and Democrat Ted Kennedy–have vowed to push through a new, wide-reaching federal “hate crimes” bill before the end of the current session. A “hate crimes” law would make...
The United Nations: A Totalitarian Appeasing Debating Society
The United Nations rose from the ashes of World War II, when the leaders of the victorious allies agreed to work together to prevent another full-scale war. They founded an organization aimed at maintaining security in a Cold War world. But now the world has been...
Vanity Fair on President Bush’s Failures
Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair, may be the all-powerful arbiter of what’s hot and what’s not in celebrity culture. But now, having declared Paul Krugman a “national treasure,” Carter is trying to reinvent himself as an angry liberal,...
Persecution of Microsoft is Immoral
The government’s persecution of Microsoft continues unabated. The U.S. appeals court is now considering whether the Bush administration and 19 states negotiated an adequate settlement in their antitrust case against Microsoft. It’s time for the American...
Free-Lunch Medicine
It is always fascinating to see elementary economics make front-page news. It was front-page news in the Wall Street Journal of November 12th that there are long waiting times for seeing medical specialists in Canada and in other countries with government-controlled...
Mercantilism and Protectionism: Don’t Worry About Trade Deficits
Earlier this month, the House Ways and Means Committee held hearings on legislation to impose tariffs on Chinese imports. While such action is unlikely, it shows that the political pressure to do something about growing imports from China is increasing. However,...
Why Racists and Unions Support Minimum Wages
History has seen many calls for minimum wages for the same reason — to eliminate competition with workers who’d work for less.
Cloning is a Pro-Life Technology
Biotechnological progress, long under moral and legal attack, was granted a two-year reprieve last Thursday when the United Nations announced that it is postponing consideration of an international ban on human cloning. Members of that body have been fiercely divided...
The Classic Libertarian Error
You might not have known it, but a self-styled Objectivist ran for California governor. Douglas Logan Darrow Clement’s, businessman and host of FreeNation.TV ran as a Republican. His website has him holding a copy of Atlas Shrugged and quoting Ayn Rand. Clements...
Deficit Politics
The recent announcements that the economy grew an astonishing 7.2 percent in the 3rd quarter while adding 126,000 jobs in October are necessitating a change in strategy by Democrats. Up until now, their mantra has been that Republicans gave us the worst economy since...
Left Coast Senator Feinstein vs. Property Rights
One of the reasons given by California’s liberal Senator Dianne Feinstein for opposing the confirmation of state Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown to the federal judiciary is that Justice Brown has refused to put property rights on a lower plane than...
Mysticism Alive and Well
The United States of America was a country founded upon human reason by some of the most adept political and philosophical minds the world has ever seen and today it is a country mired in an almost barbaric mysticism from sea to shining sea. There have been three...
Giving Real Meaning to Veterans Day: Fighting for Freedom is No Sacrifice
Veterans Day arouses three emotions in most Americans: solemnity, because it celebrates the veterans who have defended our great country; sadness, because so many have lost their lives in the process; and pride, because they have fought so well. The supreme value that...
Outlaw the Sun!
To the Honorable Members of the Chamber of Deputies. Gentlemen: You are on the right track. You reject abstract theories and little regard for abundance and low prices. You concern yourselves mainly with the fate of the producer. You wish to free him from foreign...
It’s Not the Late ’90s
The cover of the latest Business 2.0, one of the few surviving techie-financial magazines of the go-go 1990s, issues a dire warning: “Why This Tech Bubble Is About to Blow,” screams the headline. And the subhead: “Wall Street Is Doing It Again . . ....
The Flat Tax Makes a Comeback
The flat tax is making a comeback. After being banished to the political wilderness after Steve Forbes made it the central issue of his losing campaign for the Republican presidential nomination in 1996, interest is perking up again. One of the Democrats running for...
Man
Weak and puny, small and frail, Helpless he with tooth or nail, In a world of fang and claw Where sheer power makes the law. INto battle he had gone With the shaggy mastodon, With the cruel beasts of prey Snarling in their lust to slay, Thirsting for the taste of...
Gulag: Understanding the Magnitude of What Happened
by Anne Applebaum – Anne Applebaum is a columnist and member of the editorial board of The Washington Post. I am very delighted to be here–for a number of reasons, but mostly because Heritage was one of the organizations that continued to say what was...
Commerce Clause Abuse: How Congress Circumvents Both the Letter and Spirit of the Constitution
Several weeks ago, under the title “Is It Permissible?” I discussed how Congress systematically abuses the Constitution’s “welfare clause” to control our lives in ways that would have been an abomination to the Framers. Quite a few...
‘Living Wage’ Kills Jobs
Give credit where credit is due. The political left is great with words. Conservatives have never been able to come up with such seductive phrases as the left mass produces. While conservatives may talk about a need for “judicial restraint,” liberals cry...
The Absurdities Underlying Multiculturalism
What I celebrate as a source of pride and self-esteem is the fact that I have brown eyes. You say, “Williams, that goes to prove what we’ve been saying all along. You’re a lunatic! Is having brown eyes some kind of accomplishment?” Such a...
Radical Islam’s Assault on Human Life
The monstrous attacks on New York and Washington on September 11 shocked, saddened, and angered all Americans as well as the rest of the Western world. Some causes of this tragedy have already been identified: poor intelligence; inadequate airport and airplane...
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