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
Most people seem to have responded to the demands for reparations for slavery in one of two ways. Either they have supported the demands or they have maintained a discreet silence. One of the few people to treat these demands as a serious subject requiring a serious...
Self preservation is said to be the first law of nature, and this applies not only to human beings but also to organizations and movements. The March of Dimes was set up to fight polio but it did not disband when polio was wiped out by vaccines. Nor did civil rights...
The murder trial of the year began a few days ago (January 7th) in Atlanta. The case began in May 1999, when a 55-year-old Black-American named Jamil Al-Amin was stopped in the outskirts of Atlanta for driving a stolen car. To avoid arrest, Al-Amin flashed a fake...
Dear President Bush, “What can we do to help win the war against terrorism?” Americans all across the country eagerly ask. In response, you insist that we “go about our daily lives,” but with a heightened sense of awareness. To live in fear,...
The prospect of war between India and Pakistan shows how profoundly things have changed since Sept. 11. “From this day forward,” President Bush announced just days after the attack, “any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be...
I had been thinking that Harvard did well to make former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers its new president last summer, and when the news broke recently that Summers had so offended the stars of the university’s Afro-American Studies Department that they were...
Globalization is bad news for the world’s over-taxed welfare states, particularly those in Europe. Thanks to the increased mobility of capital, individuals can more easily shift their economic activity to low-tax jurisdictions. Such tax competition liberalizes...
“We will not rest until we stop all terrorists of global reach, and for every nation that harbors or supports terrorists there will be a day of reckoning,” says President Bush. Let’s hope he means it. Until we overwhelmingly smash every government...
Other than being rich and famous, what do David Rockefeller, Ted Turner, Sam Donaldson and Scottie Pippen have in common? They all feed at the public trough. More precisely, they collect subsidies from the federal farm program, as do at least 14 members of Congress....
While the world’s attention has been focused on the Middle East, South America has been headed toward chaos and collapse. And worse, it is not merely an economic collapse, but a collapse into a disastrous intellectual confusion that threatens to make recovery...
Newspaper readers have been treated in recent days to an orgy of gut-spilling by Clinton administration officials rather painfully eager to show that when they were in office they, too, exerted themselves mightily to get rid of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda...
Say you fall and break your leg. The leg hurts, so you take aspirin for the pain. But you don’t stop there. You go get a cast, so the leg can heal permanently. Yet the wisdom of treating the cause of suffering rather than merely masking the pain, appears to...
A century ago, it was one of the seven richest nations on Earth. But that was long ago, well before it was racked by a lengthy recession and a climbing unemployment rate. Today, Argentina is a shell of its former self. The street riots that broke out just before...
If you were an ailing foreigner in need of sanctuary and free medical treatment, it’s obvious where you would turn: America. Where could Osama bin Laden, the terrorist mastermind with bad kidneys and a shrinking bank account, be hiding? Well, if you were an...
President Bush had barely finished announcing his intention to withdraw the United States from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty when the cry went up among missile-defense foes: Why now? After all, they said, it’s not as if we’re about to deploy a...
Even before the amount of Taliban-controlled territory in Afghanistan had shrunk to virtually nothing and Osama bin Laden’s forces had beat a hasty retreat deep into the mountains, the question arose: Where should we carry the war on terrorism next? Iraq,...
Worrying about bacteria, New Jersey banned restaurants from serving eggs sunny side up. The ban has since been lifted. Some New Jersey localities have a ban on people pumping their own gasoline. Policemen issue citations for driving without a seatbelt. By law, new...
In the next few days, the Wall Street Journal will announce the results of its Investment Dartboard contest for the second half of 2001. In the competition, Journal editors ask four market professionals each to choose a single stock for the six months ahead. Their...
Webster’s Dictionary defines harm as: to hurt, damage, injure. People who don’t or can’t think believe that government should step in to prevent one person from harming another, such as in the case of tobacco smoke. But harm is a two-way street, and...
How and why had I changed from a young leftist to someone with my present views, which are essentially in favor of free markets and traditional values? In a sense, it was not so much a change in underlying philosophy, as in my vision of how human beings operate. Back...
Politicians in Washington have spent two months fighting over how best to stimulate the economy. Yet while they squabble over tiny tax cuts that might — at best — add $20 billion to the national output (a drop in the bucket for a $10 trillion economy), the...
President Kennedy and President Reagan understood that the best way to put more money in people’s wallets is to leave it there in the first place. It may have taken a war and a recession to do it, but quite a few liberal politicians are jumping on the...
The Food and Drug Administration is currently spending its resources hunting the American Red Cross, a charitable non-profit organization that is responsible for many health advancements in America, by attempting to find ways in which the Red Cross has violated the...
The smartertimes.com [December 20, 2001] makes an interesting point which bears philosophical analysis. Smartertimes.com catches the New York Times labeling conservative groups, such as The Heritage Foundation, as being conservative, while liberal groups, such as...
This year marked not only the beginning of a new millennium, but of a truly new era as well. In one sense, that era began on September 11th but, in another sense, it began on January 20th, when George W. Bush became President of the United States. The new...
When Mark McGwire had his incredible 70-home run season in 1998, nobody thought that his record would be broken just three years later. Babe Ruth’s record of 60 home runs lasted 34 years, until Roger Maris broke it by one home run in 1961 and then held the...
Even if you have only a passing interest in today’s popular music, I urge you to pay attention to the loathsome record nominated this week by Washington Post staff writer David Segal as the “Best Album” of 2001. It’s a stomach-turning example...
A student, for an assignment, looked up the word “democracy” in Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 10th Edition. The following definition appears: 1. a: government by the people; especially: rule of the majority b: a government in which the...
Ayn Rand once said, “Wars are the second greatest evil that human societies can perpetrate.” Why only second? To understand, we must first do something that few have done since the peace ended on Sept. 11: We must ask what war is. From Webster’s...
I’ve held my mouth shut for some time concerning Napster and file-sharing in general. Mostly because I did not wish to offend people close to me that are participating in this activity. I realize that this has been a mistake. As a music-lover, I completely...
Free-market economists frequently speak of what is seen and not seen when assessing the drivel of government interventionists. While short-term results may benefit some group, in the long run economic meddling invariably hurts everyone, the free-marketers tell us....
In June of this year, Palestinian television broadcast a sermon in a Gaza mosque in which the imam, Ibrahim Madi, made the following statement: “God willing, this unjust state [of] Israel, will be erased; this unjust state the United States will be erased; this...
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