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...
POLITICS
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...
It’s The Tax Cuts Stupid!
Stock market punditry is a tough game, and victories are few and far between even for the best of us. So when a victory comes along, you do a victory lap. The third quarter’s gross-domestic product growth rate of 7.2% was a big victory. Representing the biggest...
George W. Hoover?
The Great Depression remains the central economic event in American history. Even today, politicians invoke its memory. For example, Democrats routinely accuse George W. Bush of having economic policies like those of Herbert Hoover, on whose watch the depression...
Lift the Cuban Travel Ban, Help the Dictator Castro
Members of Congress who want to lift the U.S. ban on travel to Cuba — and there are many — aren’t motivated by a desire to help its infamous dictator Fidel Castro. They simply want to stop “imposing limits on the American people’s right...
Achievements and Their Causes
In this age of specialization, experts are said to know more and more about less and less. There are undoubtedly specialists who can tell you more than you ever wanted to know about toenails or toads. However, the grand study of sweeping events has not died out...
Don’t Penalize Companies for Investing in America
Our tax code has many ridiculous features, but the booby prize may belong to a provision that discourages companies from investing profits in America and instead encourages them to keep money overseas. It’s a 35 percent tax penalty imposed on American companies...
Exploiting the Effects of Emotions on the Capital Markets
The late Benjamin Graham — erudite classicist, mentor to Warren Buffett, highly successful investor and probably the greatest financial mind of the 20th century — said it best: “The investor’s chief problem — and even his worst enemy...
A Boy’s Life or Death
James Long jumped out of bed and into his clothes. While rushing from his tiny bedroom plastered with photos of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and King’s Quest, he grabbed a bag of computer disks off his work desk. James was 13, black and a young man in a hurry. He flew...
Petty Annoyances
People think runaway government is the only thing that bothers me, but there’re some minor nuisances that bother me as well. Chief among them are people’s seeming inability to differentiate between the number zero and the letter “o” in...
Why Not?
Why shouldn’t the soul of a mortal be proud? Life goes, it is true, like a swift-flying cloud But while it is going and ere he has died A man may do many things worthy of pride The high and the humble, the meek and the brave, Are all of them destined in time for...
Legalizing the Illegals
Many Americans are concerned because millions of illegal immigrants enter this country and little seems to be done to stop them. But California Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, leader of the Democrats in the House of Representatives, is upset because now something is being...
Lessons from Adam Smith: Private Interest Public Good
Adam Smith, author of “The Wealth of Nations” (1776) and popularizer of modern economics said about people in general and businessmen in particular, “By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of society more effectually than when he...
Subscribe for free.
Latest pro-Capitalism goodness sent weekly to your email box.
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.