A video released by the militant Islamic group Hamas shows a proud Naima al-Obeid holding a rifle beside her favorite son, Mahmoud, a 23-year-old college student. Mrs. al-Obeid is saying good-bye to her son as he heads out to kill some Jews. The video starts with a...
POLITICS
The Moral Basis of Capitalism
With the fall of communism and the alleged end of the “era of big government,” many commentators and politicians grudgingly acknowledge the practical value of capitalism. The free market, they concede, is the best system for producing wealth and promoting...
How to Really Secure the Homeland
Put me down as an agnostic on the proposed Department of Homeland Security. Most of official and unofficial Washington is for it, but that is hardly a recommendation. I realize that ensuring the security of the homeland is critical, especially when we are at war with...
Stereotypes About Stereotypes
Vanderbilt University is one of a number of academic institutions that are making a special effort to attract Jewish students. The idea is that these students tend to have higher test scores, which will raise the average test scores of these institutions — which...
Objectivity vs. Marxism in Reporting: Tainted Facts from a Tainted Well?
One of the standard arguments we get at the Center is because we take stands that defend business and receive financial support from businessmen, we are somehow part of a grand conspiracy to suppress the truth. I don’t know how many times I personally have given...
Creating Poverty in South America
Several years ago, I was invited to deliver a lecture in Porto Alegre, a beautiful city in southern Brazil. Before my lecture, I did a bit of window-shopping and visited a couple of computer supply stores. Everything in the store sold for two and three times the...
America: The Secular Republic
On July 4, Americans will take a day to honor our Founding Fathers, who gave birth to the first nation dedicated to individual freedom. This day comes, unfortunately, at a moment when our politicians are united in their venomous attacks on a crucial element of the...
Rebuilding the WTC: The Greatest Tribute Possible
“To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a country of money — and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay to America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement. For the first...
Threats to the Rule of Law in America
Institutions — established law, custom and practices — matter and should not be ignored. How is it that Western Europe and the United States managed to amass unprecedented wealth while countries of the former Soviet Union, China, Africa, South America and...
Doctors Without Principles
The AIDS activists have based their campaign on a socialist agenda that is focused on bashing the drugs industry.
Survey This! The Republican Party Census Document
Because I subscribe to some magazine or journal that sells its subscription list, I now receive a varying degree of fundraising letters from the Republican National Committee. By far the most frequent letters I receive are of the infamous “push-poll”...
The Prudent Speculator: Frank Investing Advice
Al Frank, who died of cancer April 25 at age 72 in Carmel, Calif., was one of the very best stock pickers in America. He never sought the spotlight and few investors recognize his name, but he deserves a place in the investing pantheon with gods like Warren Buffett,...
Intel: Doomed by Moore’s Law
A seasoned Silicon Valley businessman — an older man of the pre-dotcom generation who’s seen his fair share of booms and busts — once told me that he had discovered the fatal weakness of the technology industry. It is that semiconductors are the most...
Tough Questions: The Enemy Within
Hardly a week goes by without at least one reader asking a really tough question. The latest tough question dealt with a recent column [Homeland Security and the Enemies Within] which said that, in a war for survival, the government has not only the right but the duty...
Fuel Cell Follies
The national news media recently became all warm and fuzzy over the news that a DaimlerChrysler fuel-cell vehicle completed a cross-country trip from San Francisco to Washington, DC. The 3262 mile journey took a leisurely 15 days (contrasting with the coast-to-coast...
An Ancient Fallacy: Price Controls
When Hawaii recently passed a law controlling how high the price of gasoline can go in that state, it was the first law controlling the price of gasoline since 1981, when President Ronald Reagan ended federal control over oil prices. What was unusual about the...
Bush’s Vision For Peace for the Middle East: A Prelude To War
As Israel reenters the West Bank in another attempt to drive out the terrorists, President Bush offers his vision for peace in the Middle East. Israel, he says, should withdraw to its pre-1967 borders and the Palestinians (under “new leadership”) should be...
Don’t Be Seduced by the Beautiful Line in Investing
When you own a stock, you become a partner in a business. And the most important characteristic of a business — a good one, anyway — is that it grows. Over time its revenue and profits rise, and your stock becomes worth a lot more. The prospect of strong...
Death Sentences: An Arbitrary Reversal
Some more murderers may escape the death penalty as a result of the recent decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, declaring it unconstitutional to execute those who are “mentally retarded.” The larger question, however, is whether a death sentence is being...
Individualism vs. Serfdom in Defense of Freedom
In his June 6th column, Ross Mackenzie reprints a salty speech by US Third Army General George Patton to his men prior to the invasion of D-Day in 1944. In his speech, Patton is reported to have made the following comments: “An Army is a team–lives,...
Limits on Taxation: It’s the Spending Stupid
It’s that time of year when the old tax limitation constitutional amendment bill gets dusted off before it receives its yearly summary defeat. An expansion of the 1994 “Contract with America” provision that modified House rules to require a...
Pedophile Priests: What should be condemned the Pedophile or the Priest?
The appalling story of the pedophile priests deserves all the negative press it has been getting. But is the press critical of them because they are pedophiles or because they are priests? After all, there are many other pedophiles, some of them with their own...
Microsoft’s Nose, Technology’s Face
When future policymakers want to understand the law and economics surrounding one of the most watched antitrust cases in history, they will look to “Microsoft, Antitrust and the New Economy,” a recent compilation of essays published by the Milken...
Let’s Not Execute Capital Punishment
Every argument opposing capital punishment — e.g., it fails to deter would-be murderers, it’s administered according to racial/economic bias, it kills innocent people — evades the fundamental basis for why state execution, when used with discretion,...
Public Relations vs. Reality: The “American” Muslim Council
FBI directors don’t make a habit of breaking bread with organizations their agents may soon be investigating, perhaps even closing. Robert S. Mueller III, however, is about to make precisely this blunder: On June 28, he is scheduled to deliver a lunch talk to...
Martha and the Tall Poppies
Why do so many people hate Martha Stewart? How does a home-decorating and entertaining expert with a sweet, wholesome public persona come to be portrayed as a major cultural villain? Consider the past week’s media frenzy over charges that Stewart engaged in...
A is Non-A: Barbara Boxer’s World of Development Restriction and “Affordable Housing”
Politics, according to an old adage, is “the art of the possible.” But, during election years especially, politics has increasingly become the art of the impossible. What politicians promise to all the various groups adds up to more than anyone can...
A World Without “F’s”
School’s out. What did your children learn this year? Across the country, one poisonous lesson was pumped into the systems of self-esteem-inflated students: There is no such thing as failure. Christine Pelton, a now-famous former biology teacher at Piper High...
The Forest Service Smokescreen
Terry Barton, a U.S. Forest Service worker, was charged this week with intentionally setting the largest wildfire in Colorado history. It is a black mark on the beleaguered federal agency. But it’s not the blackest mark. Last summer, four young firefighters died...
Do We Want Democracy?
What’s so good about democracy — generally understood as having trust in the general will of a democratic people, as expressed by a vote of the majority, to make all important decisions? If a majority of our 535 congressmen votes for one measure or...
Israel Needs a Border, not a Fence
IN ITS MOST RECENT IMPOTENT attempt to put an end to the suicidal butchery arriving from the Palestinian territories, the Israeli government has proposed a fence that would run from the Salem checkpoint in the north to Kafr Qasem in the south, while another stretch of...
After Enron: The Cure is Worse The the Disease
After any breakdown of a public institution, politicians feel the urge to “fix” things so it doesn’t happen again. Often, however, the cure is worse than the disease. That’s the case with the proposed remedies following the collapse of Enron....
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