In Iraq, what ought to be the role of Islam and its legal system, called the Sharia? In theory, this topic should be the subject of a soul-searching debate in America and all the other countries whose forces are occupying Iraq, for how it is answered will likely...
POLITICS
No Evidence of WMDs Required
It would have been convenient for the sake of the so-called "Bush Doctrine" for David Kay and his team of American inspectors - or Hans Blix and his team from the United Nations - to have found evidence of an active weapons of mass destruction program in Iraq.It would...
Bermuda: America’s Number One Enemy?
America's number-one enemy isn't Al Qaeda, Libya, North Korea or Cuba. It's Bermuda! At least that's what John Kerry seems to want American voters to believe. At almost every campaign stop, he attacks "Benedict Arnold corporations" that move to Bermuda. One could...
Korean Conundrum: “Negotiating” with North Korea
Negotiating with North Korea is like banging your head on the wall: It feels so good when you stop. Well, here we go again. Representatives from the United States, Japan, South Korea, North Korea, China and Russia will meet for a second round of Six Party Talks in...
The Strange Disappearance of the “L” Word
When did Democrats stop calling themselves "liberal"? Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., when asked whether he considered himself a liberal, treated the questioner as if she belonged to the House Committee on Un-American Activities during the McCarthy years. Elizabeth Bumiller...
Ralph Nader’s Glittering Record
Ralph Nader may have performed a real public service by running for President again, despite the pleas and outcries of his liberal admirers. Oblivious to charges that his candidacy cost Al Gore the 2000 election, Nader has again put his own agenda first and foremost....
President Kerry’s “Change”
"Change is coming to America." So says John Kerry, victorious in his quest for the Democratic nomination and anticipating victory against President Bush this fall. What change, exactly? President Bush expanded the welfare state a bit less than President Kerry would...
Capitalism and (Microsoft’s) Freedom
According to Kenneth W. Starr in his Feb. 19 Washington Times Op-Ed column, "A stitch in crime," the Microsoft antitrust settlement contains loopholes that allow Microsoft to avoid competing in the marketplace on the merits. Yet rather than attack Microsoft, perhaps...
Other People’s Wealth Benefits All of Us
The presidential hopefuls' common promise to "repeal the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy" is the campaign trail one-liner garnering the most empty-headed applause. It's simply false that only the rich benefit from the tax cuts, as any non-rich person who got money back...
Don’t Narrow My Gap! Why Narrowing “Income Gaps” is Unjust
As the 2004 presidential election nears, Americans will increasingly hear the Democratic candidate and his supporters demand that we "narrow the gap" between the incomes of the rich and the poor. That gap, however, isn't the injustice the Left portrays it to be. The...
Haiti Problem
I was watching Geraldo's "At Large" program this evening and to my horror both he and Col. David Hunt hypothesized that the only reason we aren't intervening in this third world mess in Haiti is racial prejudice from the White House. Huh?The United States has already...
Random Thoughts for February 2004
Random thoughts on the passing scene: People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything. My New Year's resolution is to stop trying to reason with unreasonable people. This should reduce my correspondence considerably. Benedict Arnold was a war hero,...
The State Should Get Out of the Marriage Business
Consider government-sanctioned or court-mandated same-sex marriage -- somewhere, at some point -- a virtual certainty. For the Massachusetts State Supreme Court recently advised its legislature that anything short of same-sex marriage constitutes a violation of the...
Congressional Miracles: Shooting Ourselves in the Foot
In Marcus Cook Connelly's spiritual play, "Green Pastures," God lamented to the Angel Gabriel, "Every time Ah passes a miracle, Ah has to pass fo' or five mo' to ketch up wid it," and adding, "Even bein God ain't no bed of roses." That's something our congressmen...
Parents with a Backbone
Parents in Fairfax, Virginia, have succeeded in getting rid of one of the endless series of fad programs that distract American public schools from real education in real subjects. Like most fad programs, this one had a high-sounding name: The International...
Big Lie of the Year
It may be too early in this election year to determine which will be the biggest of the Big Lies in this political campaign. However, my feeling is that it may be "the working poor." While there are working people who are poor, most poor people are not working full...
The Big Lie: Intelligence Failure in Iraq
If you repeat a line over and over again, eventually people will start to accept it. In this case, the line is that we had a big intelligence failure in Iraq. Even Bush has caved in: he is appoint a "commission" to look into the problems with our "intelligence...
Three Cheers for Wal-Mart
How would you like to be penalized because you do your work too well--for example, for running your business so effectively that it attracts hoards of happy customers? Well, this is what is happening more and more frequently to Wal-Mart. Recently the West Covina,...
The War on Terror: The Rest of the World Doesn’t Get It (Yet)
The conversation began harmlessly enough. Sunday morning, after breakfast, I walked out of the cafe and passed a gentleman sitting at an outdoor table. The man intently scribbled on a legal pad, engrossed in his subject. On the table among a stack of papers sat a book...
The Equality Dogma
Some readers objected to a statement in this column that black students usually do not perform as well in school as white students or Asian American students. These readers seemed to think that this was a personal opinion -- or even an immoral statement. It never...
The Dobbs Rogue Fund
Researching an article on outsourcing a week ago, I came across a remarkable list on the website of CNN's Lou Dobbs. It was a sort of rogues' gallery, touted nightly on the show. "These are companies," says the Dobbs site, "either sending American jobs overseas, or...
Equality, Inequality and Fate
One of the confusions that plagues discussions of equality and inequality is a confusion between the vagaries of fate and the sins of man. There are plenty of both but they need to be sharply distinguished from one another. The plain fact that there are large...
No Free Lunch: For Every Benefit There is a Cost
The first concept an economics student learns is that for every benefit there's also a cost -- or, as my longtime colleague and friend Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman has put it, "There's no free lunch." While the person who receives the benefit might not pay or even...
Exploiters vs. Victims in the Grocery Strike
The California grocery strike has entered its fourth month--and there is no end in sight. Workers are still picketing stores, the shelves are under-stocked, and profits are dwindling. Talks between the grocery chains and the United Food and Commercial Workers' union...
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