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
Stop me before I eat again! This explains a recently filed lawsuit against four fast-food restaurant chains: McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's and KFC Corporation. A lawyer, seeking to eventually file a class-action lawsuit, found three plaintiffs who claim that the...
Does the IRS always merit the harsh criticism it receives? No. Politicians deserve much of the blame for the way our tax system operates. Take, for instance, the Earned Income Tax Credit. It was Congress that created the EITC-essentially an income-redistribution...
Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle has seen the light. People -- specifically, people who live and vote in his home state of South Dakota -- must come before plant life. This sudden insight was illuminated by the glare of 50,000 forest fires, which have burned through...
Someone, finally, has stated the truth to the administration and to the world: Saudi Arabia is our enemy. According to the Washington Post, that was the message of a recent briefing to the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board. The presentation, by Rand Corporation analyst...
A precondition of freedom is the recognition of the individual's capacity to make decisions for himself. If man were viewed as congenitally incapable of making rational choices, there would be no basis for the very concept of rights. Yet that is increasingly how our...
The ancient Scottish game has expanded in popularity steadily since the simultaneous rise of Arnold Palmer and television coverage of the PGA Tour in the 1950s; in recent years the game has seen increased participation at all professional and amateur levels, and much...
Two years ago, politicians and bureaucrats at the European Commission announced their intention to turn the 15 nations of the European Union into "the most competitive knowledge-based economy in the world by 2010." This is a tall order. Smothered by oppressive tax...
Most Americans, including our politicians, continue to believe the insidious proposition that we must "strike a balance" between liberty and security. Even though the House's new homeland security bill specifically prohibits the President's proposals for national IDs...
Even after its 489-point rally last Wednesday, the stock market's recent performance remains dismal. What's wrong? The economic news is good, if not great. Earnings have been better than expected, with positive surprises outnumbering negative by four to one. Interest...
Does anyone seriously believe the Palestinians want peace? The Israelis retaliated against a man who had plotted the deaths of hundreds of their countrymen and, in return, his colleagues kill whom? University students. Young people among whom were four Americans. The...
Now that we have all breathed a sigh of relief at the rescue of the miners trapped underground in Somerset, Pa., perhaps we might reconsider some of the things that send men down into such hazardous places to get us the fuel to power our economy. The cost of coal is...
The Wall Street Journal editorial page is a reliable beacon of truth and common sense. Except when it comes to immigration. The open borders zealotry of the newspaper's editorial writers has led to positively Clintonian rationalizations for undermining the rule of law...
The world just became a little safer. Such a statement may sound puzzling in an age of "dirty" bombs and other terrorist threats, but it's true. That's because this June the United States now has officially withdrawn from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, a...
Osama bin Laden gets help from the strangest creatures. As America's military struggles to prepare its forces for the War on Terror, radical environmentalists are using marine life -- whales, dolphins, and even squid -- to try to block sea-based training exercises and...
What can be even worse than a stock market crash -- including the great crash of 1929 -- are politicians rushing in to fix things. At one time, it was widely assumed that the 1929 crash led directly to the Great Depression that lasted throughout the decade of the...
Q: What does it mean to love someone so much that you can't live without them? A: In most cases, such an emotion is not healthy. As profoundly traumatic as it is to lose a beloved romantic partner to illness, accident, or break-up, life must go on. Life should not go...
While much attention has been focused on the trial of American Taliban John Walker Lindh, another trial halfway around the world may be more relevant to our own future. This was the trial in Pakistan of terrorists who killed Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl....
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the Cleveland school voucher case, Zelman vs. Simmons-Harris, that taxpayer funds that go to parents who might use the money to enroll their children in religious schools was constitutional. One need not be a rocket scientist to...
For years, Grant's Interest Rate Observer was noteworthy for being both exceptionally witty and consistently wrong. Times have changed. The newsletter, edited by James Grant, who has written wonderful books on such topics as the life of Bernard Baruch and the history...
One of the latest in the seemingly endless rounds of alarming statistics is that one out of 12 American children has some form of disability. With all the things that are supposedly getting worse, you have to wonder how our life expectancy keeps increasing. A cynic...
While Washington buzzes over President Bush's homeland security plan to secure America's borders, untold numbers of foreigners continue to pour into our country illegally through limitless unsecured cracks and crevices. Joining the ranks of the estimated 9 million to...
Newsflash: Hauling CEOs Away in Manacles Makes Markets Soar! This is not a headline from The Onion, the satirical weekly newspaper that prints fake news stories. No, it is the story that was repeated last week by most of the nation's supposedly serious financial...
Are American corporations being run by crooks in pinstripe suits? According to Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, "infectious greed" is to blame for the scandals engulfing firms like Enron, WorldCom and Global Crossing. On this view, which virtually all public...
You will often hear experts in the media -- particularly psychologists and the like -- use the phrase, "Society tells us ..." For example: "Society tells us that women should look perfect all the time." Or: "Society tells us that men can't be vulnerable." Or: "Society...
A recent front-page story in The New York Times was headlined: "In Ecuador's Banana Fields, Child Labor is Key to Profits." This is part of an ongoing orgy of indignation by the intelligentsia at low-paid labor in the Third World. The question they never ask is:...
Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories has developed an injectable antibiotic called Tigecycline. It can be used to treat resistant pathogens -- bacteria that are immune to standard antibiotics. However, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has changed the rules for measuring...
In a stunning reversal, California's liberal Senator Barbara Boxer has come out in favor of allowing airline pilots to carry guns if they wish, while the Bush administration opposes it. Meanwhile, the House of Representatives has passed a bill to permit pilots to...
If Rep. James P. Moran of Virginia were a Republican, he'd be a household name by now -- right up there in the infamous conservative pantheon with Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond and Newt Gingrich. He'd be lambasted by leading opinion-makers for his greed, hypocrisy and...
"The soft bigotry of low expectations." President George W. Bush once used this expression to chastise America's education establishment for the underperformance of minorities, specifically blacks and Latinos. Bush urged teachers and administrators to apply high...
Earlier this year big institutional investors were blithely telling themselves that Enron was just an exception. After all, it was a case of outright fraud. How often does that happen? And sure, every company cooks the books a little. But we expect it of them and make...
The recently passed amendment to the Senate's Sarbanes bill preventing corporations from making loans to their officers is just another step in the socialization of private property in America -- and must be fought on that basis. The concept of property inherently...
There's a game of "can you top this?" going on, with the Senate, the House, and the White House all trying to one-up each other to see who can talk the toughest tough-talk about corporate crooks. The media sits on the sidelines, egging on the politicians, lavishing...
Latest pro-Capitalism goodness sent weekly to your email box.
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.