Colin Powell has failed, so far, in his attempt to browbeat Israel into joining America's official surrender in the War on Terrorism. Yet Ariel Sharon has repeatedly stated that his armies will eventually withdraw from the West Bank, and that Israel does not intend to...
POLITICS
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
Eliminate Double Taxation of Dividends
In attacking the credibility of many public companies' financial statements, and calling for yet more stringent regulations, the U.S. government claims to champion the small investor; but in reality its own dividend taxation policy is largely to blame for the problem...
Irrationality in Our Legal System
When the sentence for Andrea Yates' killing her five children was announced, most of the media reported it as a life sentence and some noted that she would be eligible for parole in 40 years. In reality, Andrea Yates can be freed at any time by any present or future...
Should Genes Be Patented?
On October 2000, I argued in "Who Owns Your Genes?" that naturally occurring genes should not be patented because they are not inventions, but discoveries of what already exists in nature. On January 2001, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) issued its...
The Price of Peace “At Any Price” is Death
You cannot make sense of the Israeli-Palestinian war without first making sense of 1993. That year found Israel in reasonably good shape. Its economy was the most powerful in the Middle East. Its military power was respected and feared throughout the region. Its...
A Reparations for Slavery Scam at Tax Time
At tax time this year, some blacks are going to end up paying more than they owe -- and not all of it to the Internal Revenue Service. Confidence men are especially targeting elderly blacks in the South, charging them a fee for filing claims for tax refunds based on...
Ozzy and Busta: MTV’s Drunken Stupor
Once again, MTV is basking in the glow of critical acclaim. This time it's a cultural breakthrough called "The Osbournes," a "brilliant" (Time magazine) reality show chronicling the family life of heavy metal has-been Ozzy Osbourne. It's "the most refreshing, funny...
Cloning In A Free Society?
"Life is creation, not a commodity," says President Bush, defending his view that all cloning should be permanently outlawed. Life is a creation of whom -- and for whose purpose? Do we make our own lives, for our own sakes, or is somebody else doing the making for us?...
Israel vs. The Palestinian Dictatorship: Netanyahu’s Speech before the U.S. Senate
These concerns first surfaced with the appearance of a reprehensible moral symmetry that equates Israel, a democratic government that is defending itself against terror, with the Palestinian dictatorship that is perpetrating it.
Campaign Finance Reform Diversions
There's a story about Catholic priests who contracted to have a new church built for their congregation. When the church was completed, and just before the priests came for their final inspection, the contractor cemented a Buddhist statue in the center of the altar....
Is America Winning?
With the war on terrorism now six months old, it's time to review the bidding. How goes the war? Let's grade four areas:* Military: The bulk of the war in Afghanistan was won in two months. Trouble was, to minimize casualties, U.S. troops avoided some of the dirtier...
Who is Janis Sposato?
In response to last week's DeadHijackerVisa-gate, the Immigration and Naturalization Service "reassigned" four managers to replace four other managers -- whom the agency refuses to name -- in order to "begin the process of accountability." Begin? Here's a closer look...
Live from Ramallah: The Theater of the Absurd
In the late 1940s, a group of playwrights started a movement called the Theater of the Absurd, based on the Existentialist notion that life is rationally incomprehensible. According to one description, practitioners of the Theater of the Absurd sought "to convey their...
Cuba’s Bravest and Best
HAVANA -- "There are no banned books in Cuba," Fidel Castro declared in February 1998, "only those which we have no money to buy." Of course, books *are* banned in Cuba; just try to locate one that criticizes Castro. Bookstores and public libraries here carry works...
On Bataan and Balikatan
To your average Howard Stern fan, the Philippines is nothing more than a carnival land of shoe-crazy, dog-eating jungle dwellers who are a perennial source of cheap jokes. Some Americans know better. Just ask the thousands of surviving U.S. soldiers who fought in the...
On Tax Day Thank the Rich and Support Lifting the Tax Yoke off Them
On Tax Day consider some basic facts. The wealthiest 1% of the taxpayers pay 34% of all federal income taxes. The top 50% pay 96% of the total bill. This means that the least wealthy 50% pay almost nothing. In short, the income tax system soaks the rich. In the name...
The Welfare State Grand Slam
The welfare state enjoyed a stellar week. First, the Victims Compensation Fund, set up by Congress, announced compensation averaging $1.85 million for the families of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. While deducting life insurance and some pension benefits, the payout...
Another Lesson in Rioting 101: They Do It Because They Can
They did it again. In their alcohol-soaked delirium, students at the University of Maryland managed to make national fools of themselves and of the grown-ups who supposedly supervise their campus. These bright young scholars trashed the school grounds and surrounding...
Cuba on No Dollars a Day
"This is the real Havana," Miguel said as we turned from Avenida Simon Bolivar to a gritty side street cratered with potholes. "Here you see how Cubans live. Tourists don't come to *this* street." Well, they might if they were simply walking around, as I had been when...
We Are Either With Israel, Or We Are With the Terrorists
We may be about to witness a major victory in the War on Terrorism, a victory as important as any in Afghanistan or Iraq. But American troops will not win this victory, and the battle will be fought without the support and even against the wishes of our president....
The Andrea Yates Verdict
The only good thing about the Andrea Yates case is that the jury was obviously not influenced by the months of propaganda for her by radical feminists, while the judge's gag order kept the prosecution from telling the public the other side of the story. This is a case...
Criminality and Psychology
Q: While it is clear that you think that being insane and being held criminally liable for one's actions are not necessarily mutually exclusive, I am unsure of whether you think those two things are NEVER mutually exclusive. In other words, might there ever be a time...
Giving Back
How many times have we heard people being applauded for "giving back"? People seem to believe that, if you've been successful and made a lot of money, you're somehow obliged to give back by making donations to this or that cause, program or people. Giving back is not...
Motivation: Give Action A Chance
Q: In your recent article on motivation you conclude by stating that after doing the work to achieve one's goals " ... most often the motivation you desire will start to follow." Would you explain further why this is? Most of us usually think that the motivation must...
Growing Old
Random thoughts about growing old: Despite the problems that come with aging, I would not be a teenager again for $1,000 a day plus expenses. I never really felt old until my younger brother retired. This is the period of life that Disraeli referred to as...
Stand Up to the PLO
What is wrong with a people who choose to live under a terrorist organization, as opposed to a state that respects freedom of worship, democracy and -- to a great extent -- individual rights? Why do Palestinian Arabs pick a terrorist dictator over an essentially free...
More Clintonian Deeds Go Unpunished
Clinton-era sleaze is like a stubborn toe fungus. It just won't go away. Fourteen months after the 42nd president of the United States left office, news is spreading of yet another unsightly scandal under his watch. And true to Clintonian form, it looks like those...
“Diversity” In India
If facts carried some weight with those who are politically correct, the recent outbreak of savage and lethal violence in India's state of Gujarat might cause some reassessments of both India and "diversity." This is only the latest round in a cycle of violence and...
Beware of the Library of Congress
1. Some time in the 1960s, I believe, the Library of Congress invited Ayn Rand to will the manuscripts of her novels to them. She replied that she was happy to do so. Subsequently, they sent her a form to fill out, in order to make her intention legally binding upon...
The “For Your Own Good” Police Are Coming…After You
Most Americans were pleased with the legislative attack on cigarette smokers, not to mention confiscatory tobacco taxes. We reveled in the EPA's dishonest study concluding that second-hand smoke causes cancer. And, by the way, I'd like to hear whether the Food &...
Shibboleths: A Great Labor-Saving Device for Rational Thinking
A recent e-mail from a reader said that he could not find the word "shibboleth" in his desk dictionary, even though he had seen this word in my column. That was an unfortunate omission in his dictionary because shibboleths explain a lot about what is said and done in...
The SimpleCare Story
I graduated from the University of Washington and am a board-certified Family Physician. I owned five family medicine-integrated medical clinics in the Seattle, Washington area, and as a consequence was very involved with all medical insurances--including Medicare,...
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