The handshakes in Evian were polite. The conversations were civil. Unlike the tens of thousands of European demonstrators who took to the streets to protest, none of the presidents or prime ministers at last week's Group of Eight summit in France raised his voice or...
POLITICS
The basic and crucial political issue of our age is: capitalism versus socialism, or freedom versus statism. For decades, this issue has been silenced, suppressed, evaded, and hidden under the foggy, undefined rubber-terms of “conservatism” and “liberalism” which had lost their original meaning and could be stretched to mean all things to all men. – AYN RAND
Accountability in Sports–and Teaching
Major league umpires are complaining about an electronic device that is being used to check how accurately they are calling balls and strikes. They say that the device itself is too variable to be relied on. Whatever the merits of each side in this issue, it all...
New York Times and the Child Tax Credit
Conservatives everywhere were celebrating last week with the announcement that Howell Raines was forced out as executive editor of The New York Times. Raines had pushed the paper yet further to the left and had done so in ways that were intended to be as irritating to...
Star Wars: Why We Need a Missile-Defense System
Let's face it: Perfect safety doesn't exist. No matter what we do, there will always be those who want to kill us because they hate our freedoms, because they hate freedom, or just because they hate Americans.That's why we need a missile-defense system -- today more...
The Fat Police and Mandatory Menu Labels
The fat cops are on the prowl again. Not content with the current spate of obesity-inspired lawsuits, "nutrition" interests have taken to the state legislatures, looking to pass "menu labeling" laws that will pave the way for, yes, even more lawsuits. The state of...
Codependence
"Codependent" basically means taking too much responsibility for somebody else, materially and/or psychologically. It means a lack of personal boundaries, a willingness to sacrifice yourself to help somebody else (even if the sacrifice is unwanted or unappreciated)....
White Guilt, Black Exploitation: The National Slave Memorial Act
Few Americans have heard of the National Slave Memorial Act (HR 196) that proposes to erect a National Slave Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Last year, Sen. Trent Lott made this suggestion whilst groveling at the feet of black politicians and civil...
Blaming Tax Cuts for the Problems Inherent in Goverment Spending
On May 29, London's Financial Times reported some startling news about the U.S. national debt. Instead of being about $3.5 trillion, as commonly understood, it was actually $44 trillion, according to a suppressed Treasury Department report by economists Kent Smetters...
Proposition 13: Twenty Five Years Later
This Friday, June 6, marks the 25th anniversary of one of the most important political/economic events in American history: Proposition 13. This initiative, which was approved by the voters of California on this date in 1978, sparked a "tax revolt" that spread...
Al-Qaeda’s Limits
A day after suicide bombers killed 29 people in Morocco in mid-May, that country's interior minister noted that the five nearly simultaneous attacks "bear the hallmarks of international terrorism." More strongly, the Moroccan justice minister asserted a "connection to...
International Affirmative Action
As the Supreme Court of the United States wrestles with the issue of affirmative action as it exists in college admissions at the University of Michigan, the justices are taking on an issue that has been wrestled with in many contexts by courts in India for far longer...
The Road Map to Hell in the Middle East
After using America's military to achieve a brilliant success in Iraq, President Bush is intent on using his new-found clout in the region to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict. But the means he has chosen is renewed negotiations and a new diplomatic "road map." This...
Utopia vs. U.S.
The June issue of National Geographic contains one of the rare honest looks at India. The article "India's Untouchables" gives a shocking picture of some of the most persecuted people on earth. For far too long, India has been one of a number of countries used by the...
Arafat on Top?
A hole was torn last month in the international "road map" to Israeli-Palestinian peace when Mahmoud Abbas insisted that Yasser Arafat remains the unchallenged ruler of the Palestinian Authority. "Arafat is at the top," Abbas, the PA's prime minister, told Egypt's...
Building a Nation that Lasts in Iraq
Pundits say creating a free Iraq means "democratically" divvying up political power among its various religious and ethnic factions. "[We need] to make sure all the different groups get a fair shot," said Senator Trent Lott recently. That just goes to show how far...
Free Speech Protects Profit-Makers, Too
For a century after the Civil War, blacks in America's South were subjected to shameful acts of oppression and violence. Deprived of voice and vote, they had no choice but to suffer mutely as they were scurrilously attacked. Two California-based lawsuits indicate that...
Dopey Ideas and Expressions
How many times have we applauded those who "made a difference in the lives of others" and been admonished to do the same? On the face of it, that has to be one of the more mindless generalities of our modern era. After all, didn't Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and Castro...
The Politics of Tax Initiatives
In the early hours of May 23, the House and Senate both approved H.R. 2, a bill that reduces tax rates on wages, dividends and capital gains, among other things. The following day, before the legislation had even been signed into law, The New York Times pronounced it...
The Real Museum Looters
Initial reports of the looting of the Iraqi National Museum sparked a frenzy of outrage. Denied their desert quagmire, their civilian massacres, their oil-fire eco-disaster, and their inflamed "Arab street," leftists all but leaped at the opportunity to denounce our...
An Appalling Idiocy: A Slave Memorial (Part 3)
The idea of a slave memorial on the Washington Mall is so appalling that it is hard to understand how it has as much support as it does. Among politicians, it is much easier to understand why Democrats support the idea than why so many Republicans go along. Except for...
The Government Says You’re Fat
As if the government isn't trying to control every aspect of your life, it has now launched a program to determine what and how much you eat. In her book, "Dependent on D.C.: The Rise of Federal Control Over the Lives of Ordinary Americans", author Charlotte A. Twight...
Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist’s Irrationality
Rarely do you see a Supreme Court opinion with as little intellectual merit as Tuesday's judgment in Nevada Department of Human Resources v. Hibbs. Chief Justice William Rehnquist's reputation as a conservative, "states' rights" judge took a severe beating as he...
An Appalling Idiocy: A Slave Memorial (Part 2)
Old-time civil rights activist Bayard Rustin once said that blacks should issue a blanket amnesty to whites -- just so that guilty whites would not keep on doing counterproductive things in order to make up for the past. The proposal that Congress create a slave...
An Appalling Idiocy: A Slave Memorial
With the passing years, it becomes ever more painful for me to read the preambles of legislation. Time and time again, the wonderful and inspiring words in those preambles have turned out to have no relationship whatsoever to the actual consequences that followed. The...
Gross Politicization of The New York Times
The Jayson Blair scandal at The New York Times has engendered more commentary than any similar press scandal I can recall. Although in substance, the scandals involving Janet Cooke at The Washington Post, Stephen Glass and Ruth Shalit at The New Republic, and Mike...
Affirmative Action Grading
Dr. Mike S. Adams, an associate professor of criminal justice at University of North Carolina's Wilmington campus, has given me an excellent idea for grading students, which appeared in his commentary in the web-based Agape Press newswire. For 35 years, I've taught...
A Big Fat Target: From Parody to Reality
Six years ago, after tobacco companies agreed to settle lawsuits filed by the states, the Wall Street Journal published what seemed at the time to be a hilarious parody by Mark Bernstein. It was titled "A Big Fat Target." The parody claimed that junk food sellers...
Starve the Castro Regime, Help the Cuban People
Danny Glover, Harry Belafonte and other like-minded celebrities can cozy up to Fidel Castro all they want. But we deserve better from members of Congress. Just a few weeks ago, Castro locked up 75 dissidents and executed three Afro-Cubans accused of hijacking. Yet,...
Israel’s Fence and the Return to the Barbaric Past
Israel's proposed border fence, a necessary physical separation between a lawful nation and its homicidal neighbors, is a powerful symbol of the political gulf separating the West from the Arab world. When Israel was founded, its inhabitants established the only...
The Economics of Mass Destruction
Speech by Donald L. Luskin given at the Russell 20-20 Association Annual Meeting, May 7, 2003 I earn my living as an economist. I try to forecast how economic policies and ideas in the hands of government, business, media and academia move the world and move markets....
Is the Penguin Contaminated?
If there's one thing the open-source community is known for, it's chutzpah. In a recent online petition, more than 1500 Linux users told the SCO Group, which owns intellectual property rights to key components of the Unix operating system, to sue them. This show of...
Bailing Out Non-Performing Airlines
As U.S troops rushed into Baghdad last month, American politicians rushed toward a very different objective: Bailing out the ailing airline industry.Hard hit by a quartet of calamities -- recession, terrorism, war and SARS -- airline executives warned of financial...
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