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
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 sanity. Once...
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....
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...
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 don't wear a seatbelt while driving...
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 later decided that the material...
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...
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 something...
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...
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....
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...
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...
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 root,...
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...
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 Hussein's...
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...
[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,...
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...
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...
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 issue," warned John Mass,...
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. Second-hand information...
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...
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 busts, and offers a...
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 bit of humor hits too...
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 the master exactly the way the...
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...
Since when did being a journalist mean forgetting your responsibilities as a human being? If you think I'm being too harsh on today's press, consider the coverage of the Beltway Sniper attacks. It goes beyond just publishing leaked information about messages left by...
He struck during morning rush hour. He used an AK-47 rifle. He killed two people and wounded three outside the CIA headquarters in Langley, Va. Then, he slipped out of the country and eluded authorities for four, long years. He was the other Beltway shooting spree...
Friday marked the 1001st day since the Dow Jones Industrial Average touched its all-time high at 11908.50 on Jan. 14, 2000. 1,001 days was the precise duration of the bear market that followed the peak of Sept. 7, 1929 -- which included the Great Crash and ushered in...
Here's what I said in last year's November column: "George Mason University economists are leaders in economic thinking. They include scholars such as Nobel Laureate James Buchanan, who along with his colleague Gordon Tullock, pioneered the field in economics known as...
Perhaps the massive bomb blast on the Indonesian island of Bali will cause some second thoughts -- or perhaps first thoughts -- by those who blamed the United States for having provoked the September 11th attacks by its actions and policies in the Middle East. Very...
Hollywood loves using the "it takes a thief to catch a thief" plot in its movies. But even the most creative scriptwriter couldn't top the real-life plot twist the U.N. Commission on Human Rights will have concocted when Libya becomes its chairman. That's right --...
Among the many commemorations of the September 11th anniversary, the one at Berkeley was unique. The American flag was banned because it might offend people from other countries. "The Star Spangled Banner" was banned because it was considered too militaristic, while...
Latest pro-Capitalism goodness sent weekly to your email box.
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.