‘Why now? Why? Why? Why? Why? That’s the question I think everyone is asking.” So agonized the half-brother of Lee Malvo, the alleged 17-year-old sniper, baffled by the causes behind the Washington, D.C.-area shooting spree that left 10 people dead....
POLITICS
The Rush From Judgment
Like many people, it crossed my mind early in the Beltway Sniper case that this might be a terrorist attack. I reserved judgment, realizing — unlike the armchair experts who flocked to fill airtime on cable news channels — that I did not know all of the...
In That Voting Booth
One of the most common laments in letters from readers is a sense of helplessness to do anything about the negative trends in politics and society. Yet the people who make those laments have the ultimate power in the most powerful nation on earth. All they have to do...
God Bless Our Assassins, Commandos and Bombs
In the past few weeks radical Muslims have attacked again, including a bombing of a French ship, a bombing that killed hundreds–mostly Australians–in Indonesia, bombings in the Philippines, and possibly a bombing of a Moscow McDonald’s restaurant....
The Investing Enigma
Investing is the most supremely arrogant thing that you can do. In effect, whenever you buy or sell an individual stock — or even if you trade an index fund with the intention of timing the market — you’re placing your judgment ahead of the judgment...
Rights vs. Wishes
We hear so much about “rights” — a right to this and a right to that. People say they have a right to decent housing, a right to adequate health care, food and a decent job, and more recently, senior citizens have a right to prescription drugs. In a...
Cognitive Child Abuse in Our Math Classrooms
The test results are in: America’s children are flunking math. In 1996 American high school seniors finished close to the bottom on an international mathematics test. At the end of last year, American eighth-graders ranked below those of Malaysia, Bulgaria, and...
Explaining to the Grandkids
Those of us who are optimists believe that someday sanity will return to our society. Our media, our officials — perhaps even our schools and colleges — will begin to talk sense. Those of you who are young may live to see it. But there is a downside to...
Good Advertising is Salesmanship
Let us emphasize that point. The only purpose of advertising is to make sales. It is profitable or unprofitable according to its actual sales. It is not for general effect. It is not to keep your name before the people. It is not primarily to aid your other salesmen....
Boring Sportscasters: Fans Want to Watch Sports, Not Hollywood Gimmicks
There are people who find sports exciting and people who find sports boring. Unfortunately, the latter seem to be the ones in charge of baseball telecasts. And they seem to be trying to make those telecasts boring for the rest of us. Somehow the people who televise...
Personal Health and Safety: Whose Business Is It?
My health and other aspects of my well-being are the business of whom? You say, “What’s it now, Williams?” I’m simply asking whose business is it if I don’t adequately plan for retirement or save money for my child’s education? If I...
Hate is not a Crime
Last month, the Canadian government detained several newsletters from the Ayn Rand Institute (ARI) defending “Israel’s moral right to exist” out of concern that “they may constitute obscenity or hate propaganda.” Although the government...
More Gun Control, Please!
Gun-control proponents, predictably, in the wake of the Beltway sniper, urge still more gun-control laws. So, as news watchers sit through another round of softball interviews with gun-control advocates, we humbly offer Second Amendment-challenged hosts some...
High Stakes Elections and Voter Turnout
During election years, people in the media seem to be forever lamenting the fact that millions of Americans who are eligible to vote do not in fact go to the polls. When speculating as to why those people don’t vote, the media often assume that there is...
COPS Makes for Crooked Cops
Martin Chavez has a problem, and it carries a substantial price tag. Chavez, the mayor of Albuquerque, N.M., may have to find up to $7.6 million for his police department in the coming year. The city could wind up repaying the federal government $4.1 million it...
The Foreign Policy of George Bush: A Grand Illusion
Somewhere, there is a warlike American administration obsessed with smashing an Axis of Evil, an administration itching to blow away any regime tainted by terrorism and willing to lash out preemptively and unilaterally, invading and occupying any country that resists....
Islam’s New Strongholds
The recent bombing of a nightclub in Bali, Indonesia, killing at least 183 and injuring hundreds, fits into a larger pattern. Militant Islam used to be mostly confined to Middle Easterners, but in recent years it has spread to Muslims in other parts of the world. This...
Paralyzing America’s Producers: The Government’s Crackdown on American Businessmen Is Devastating Our Economy
When it comes to what to do about our teetering economy, nearly everyone is out of ideas. Economic analysts and federal officials are mystified after repeatedly seeing their predictions of an economic recovery fall flat. Republicans ignore the economy and offer no...
Bombings in Bali, Indonesia: Self-Inflicted Wounds?
It seems an open-and-shut case to many Americans. Car bombs go off in an entertainment district, leaving 180 dead and many more missing or wounded. It occurs in Bali, Indonesia, a country that has allowed terror groups–some affiliated with al Qaeda–to take...
Castigating America: How Jimmy Carter Won the Noble “Peace” Prize
As a patriot and a man of honor, Jimmy Carter should refuse the Nobel Peace Prize. Such an act of integrity would win him more respect and admiration from his countrymen than anything he has done since he left the White House in 1981. The Nobel Peace Prize committee...
The Irrationality of Treating Dictators as ‘Rational Actors’
This piece is occasioned by the “discovery” that North Korea has been violating the Agreed Framework and working on nuclear weapons. However, it could just as easily have been written after the collapse of the Oslo Accords, after the discovery of Saddam...
Capitalism Key to Ending Poverty
At about the same time a hodgepodge of protesters descended on Washington, D.C. last month to protest capitalism, globalization and free trade, the United Nations and the Institute for International Studies released a triad of studies declaring that humanity is, for...
The Beltway Sniper: Can’t We All Just Get Along?
[HUMOR] If I have learned anything from world leaders over the past several decades, it is that the war-mongering methods of people like Montgomery County Police Chief Charles Moose just don’t work. Police and government officials should stop their oppressive,...
Appeasement Never Works
By definition, every dictatorship’s hands are drenched in blood, yet some people still think they can be placated by simply appeasing them. Consider the revelation that the Stalinist dictatorship of North Korea now has nuclear weapons, despite promises to the...
INS In Denial
The very first line of defense for the U.S. homeland consists of those who issue visas (the consular division of the State Department) and those who control the borders (the Immigration and Naturalization Service, or INS). Trouble is, neither of those agencies has...
Big Plus Rich Equals Evil: How Hollywood Dug Its Own Grave
As executives from almost every studio chatter nervously about the need for better “content protection” technology, those responsible for piracy continue to hide somewhere Hollywood hasn’t bothered looking: the mirror. “Piracy is a huge...
Unfiltered Intelligence
Who knows more about the latest Hollywood blockbuster — the people who read the reviews or the people who see the movie? The second group, obviously. The others must depend on the reviewer, who decides what’s worth going to see and what isn’t....
The Sniper and the Gun Controllers
It was perhaps inevitable that the recent sniper killings in the Washington area suburbs would be seized upon by advocates of gun control. Like so much in the agenda of the political left, gun control arguments would collapse like a house of cards if people just...
America’s State Sponsored Terrorists: The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency
This time, it’s a traveling museum exhibit entitled “Target America: Traffickers, Terrorists and You.” The exhibit harmonizes chunks of World Trade Center rubble and pictures of the scarred Pentagon with paraphernalia seized in international drug...
Investing Strategy: Swap Up
You probably know the old joke: “How do you make a small fortune in the stock market?” “Start with a large fortune.” After three years in which the market has lost between a third and a half of its value (depending on your favorite index), this...
The White-man-Holds-You-Back-Don’t-Trust-Republicans Mindset
Singer/activist Harry Belafonte viciously lashed out at Secretary of State Colin Powell, calling Powell a house slave and a lackey to “master” George W. Bush. “You got the privilege of living in the house,” said Belafonte, “if you served...
Jimmy Carter’s Ignoble “Peace” Prize
The politicization of prizes was never more blatantly revealed than in the comments of two of the members of the committee that awarded former president Jimmy Carter the Nobel Prize for peace. One member clearly implied that the prize was meant as a criticism of the...
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