My previous columns here have been about President Bush's bold tax-cut proposal -- how it will help the economy grow, and how some of the criticisms of it are wrong. Today's column sets those issues aside and looks at the simple short-term impact that the plan would...
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
Reason, Not Pretense
The cloning debate resumed late last December with the announcement--still unconfirmed--that a cloned baby was born to an American woman. This report essentially mocked the consensus that emerged in Congress over the past year, which agreed that reproductive cloning...
The State of the Union 2003: A Fascist Stance on Several Domestic Issues
In terms of domestic affirms, the President presented a contradictory message on health care. On the one hand, he praised the "skill and innovation" of America's medical system. But he also said that the role of the federal government was to ensure "high quality,...
The Impoverished Values of “Joe Millionaire”
Fifty percent of marriages in America today are said to end in divorce. "Joe Millionaire," the popular "reality" TV show, provides an example as to why romance too often dies. The show is allegedly a test of "true love." That test, however, starts with a lie: Evan...
What the American Economy Needs
President Bush's critics wasted no time denouncing his latest economic plan. "An irresponsible, ineffective, ideologically driven wish list," Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., put it. "Too steeped in conservative ideology," The Washington Post said. The president is...
Forcing Newspapers to Publish Against Their Will
This Monday the U.S. Justice Department crossed the line when they decided the First Amendment no longer applied where antitrust issues are concerned. According to today's New York Times, the DOJ will announce a "consent decree" today with Village Voice Media and New...
The Self-Made State of the States
In an admission that they have no congressional leadership to offer, the Democrats won't send Tom Daschle or Nancy Pelosi to deliver the Democratic rebuttal to the president's State of the Union address. They have given that job to Washington Governor Gary Locke, who...
Social Insecurity: 401(k)s Under Attack
401(k) retirement plans -- those marvelous engines of empowered financial liberation, in which an employee decides how much to contribute toward his own tax-advantaged retirement account, and directs the account's investment himself -- have come under heavy attack...
The State of the Union 2003: A Pro-American Foreign Policy
In this year's State of the Union address, it was said by many that President Bush would have to clearly make the case for war with Iraq before the American people to answer the fears of a wavering public. In the President's speech before the nation, that case was...
Medicare Can’t Be Reformed
In the January 6th, 2003 Wall Street Journal editorial it is stated: "Adding a drug benefit [to Medicare] makes sense, but only if it is added as part of reform that introduces market incentives and competition to Medicare." Wrong. Adding a drug benefit to Medicare...
The Future of the Airwaves: Feingold’s Anti-Property Bill?
Senator Russ Feingold, Wisconsin Democrat, announced on January 7th, 2002 that he would sponsor legislation to limit the number of radio stations a single company could own. Feingold seeks to challenge the looming relaxation of ownership rules sought by Federal...
Militant Islam Reaches America
An excerpt from the Introduction of Daniel Pipe's latest book Militant Islam Reaches America.Ayatollah Khomeini came to power in Iran in 1979 with "Death to America" as his slogan, and hundreds of Americans lost their lives to militant Islam over the subsequent two...
America’s “Friendly” Allies
On the eve of its planned war against the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, the United States -- led by President Bush -- is once again hesitating. Why? Because Russia, France and Germany have declared that they won't like us and will call us mean if we attack the...
Public Education is Not Accountable to Parents
Alberta's premier, Ralph Klein, recently mused out loud about implementing a voucher system for education, which lets individual parents decide which school, public or private, will receive their education dollars. Predictably, champions of public education were quick...
Racist Secretary of State Colin Powell Should Resign
Earlier this week, on CNN's Late Edition and CBS's Face the Nation, Secretary of State Colin Powell proclaimed his support of the University of Michigan's use of racial preferences to bolster minority enrollments in its undergraduate and law school programs. The...
Blacks and Guns
Black Americans have a serious problem with guns. They don't have enough of them. Despite being victimized by crime at several times the rate of whites, only 30% of black adults own guns, compared to 43% of whites.(1) Blacks are also heavily represented in California...
Historian Keith Windschuttle: Bringing Objectivity Back to the “Queen of the Humanities”
There is a battle that is raging down in Australia that may well have ramifications throughout academia. Academic, historian and author Keith Windschuttle is conducting a courageous one-man crusade against Australia's academic establishment--and has them under siege....
History, Truth and Postmodernism
The writing of history is one of the most enduring cultural activities of Western civilisation. It originated in ancient Greece some 2400 years ago and has continued in roughly the same form down to this day. Its first great practitioner, Thucydides, decided that to...
Killed by Social Services
Angelo Marinda was a cute little baby but he never lived to see his first birthday because he was another victim of a widespread pretense of knowledge that has produced many tragedies. Twelve days after he was born last April, little Angelo was in a hospital being...
Guns: A Loaded Argument
The language of the Second Amendment seems straightforward: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." Yet the debate rages on: Does each American citizen have the...
North Korea: True Concessions for Real Disarmament
The objective of US policy must be the destruction of the nuclear capability of the North.
Reform the Pennsylvania Medical System By Upholding the Rights of Medical Providers
An acute disruption in vital health care services in Pennsylvania may have been prevented for now by Gov.-elect Ed Rendell's and Gov. Mark Schweiker's "stop-gap" economic intervention. However, the recent threats issued to all the state's physicians regarding their...
End the Double Taxation of Dividends
President Bush's critics reacted in predictably uniform fashion to his latest economic proposal: Playing the class-warfare card.Good luck making that charge stick. America isn't France. The politics of hate-and-envy doesn't resonate here like it does in Europe. We...
PC Migration Tools: A Bad Idea
In chapter 4 of my book, PC Fear Factor, I provide a step-by-step process for transitioning from your old computer to a new computer. The process includes all of the steps required to migrate your data from your old machine to your new, and how to install all of your...
The Iraq Charade
The headline of an Associated Press report from Tuesday declares, "Gaps Appear to Widen over Iraq within UN Security Council." The wording is, perhaps unintentionally, precise: the gaps only appear to be widening. The report informs us -- to no one's surprise, I hope...
The Truly Dismal Science
In science, you start with a hypothesis. Then you conduct an experiment to see if your hypothesis is true. If the experiment proves the hypothesis wrong, you throw it out and come up with a new hypothesis based on what you've learned. I guess economics must not be a...
Europe vs. America
Things looked so clear in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, when the forces of civilization stood on one side and the barbarians on the other. The very evening after the attack, President Bush announced that "America and our friends and allies join with all those who...
Marxist Molly Ivins Flunks Economics
Upset with President Bush's tax cut plan, columnist Molly Ivins warns that America's more well-to-do taxpayers might go out and doing something unproductive if the government seizes a smaller portion of their incomes."There's no guarantee," Ivins writes, "that rich...
Learn to Earn: Investment Newsletters and Investment Books
For the past 20 years, a newsletter based in Annandale, Virginia called the Hulbert Financial Digest (866-428-6568) has been keeping track of the performance of other newsletters. Of the original ones it monitored, only 17 remain, and, at last count, the model stock...
Dogs of the Dow
When I heard that President Bush was proposing to eliminate the double taxation of dividends, I immediately exclaimed, "Arf!" I was thinking of the Dogs of the Dow, those high-yielding blue chips that gained notoriety nearly a decade ago. If it becomes law, the White...
An Idea Not Worth Drafting: Conscription is Slavery
Since the attacks on 9-11, the issue of the draft has sat simmering on the backburner of American politics with intermittent bouts on the front pages of political news. Its latest proponent is Congressman Charles Rangel, a left-darling from New York, whose entire...
The “Diversity” Fig Leaf
As a justification for racial preferences, "diversity" is one of the great fig leaves of modern American academia. It first appeared in 1978 -- well after affirmative action had degenerated into the practice of admitting students on the basis of color. That was the...
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