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
First the good news: The new administration’s officials in the Department of Justice have decided not to murder the Microsoft Corporation and carve up its corpse. Now the bad news: They have chosen the more humane option of slow torture. The Justice...
To know what economics is, we must first know what an economy is. Perhaps most of us think of an economy as a system for the production and distribution of the goods and services we use in everyday life. That is true as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough....
President Bush showed spirited common sense on environmental policies — before he got elected. “I don’t believe in command and control out of Washington, D.C.,” Bush said during the second presidential debate last fall. “Not all wisdom is...
John McWhorter, linguistics professor at the Berkeley campus of the University of California, has written a compelling essay in the summer 2001 issue of City Journal titled, “Toward a Usable Black History.” Last year, he wrote “Losing the Race:...
What inspiring, bullish news. It’s the dawn of a great new era. I can feel my animal spirits rising. That’s right. Didn’t you feel the same way yesterday when you heard that the Department of Justice wouldn’t seek the break-up of Microsoft?...
With police on hand to try to maintain order, the Loudoun County (Virginia) board of supervisors recently imposed severe restrictions on the building of homes, despite angry protesters. The board’s plan allows only one house to be built for every 10 acres in...
When the new school year begins, Deena Esteban will not be among the legions of educators welcoming students back to class. That’s because Mrs. Esteban, a 43-year-old art teacher in Prince William County, Va., lost the job she loved after being convicted of a...
Perhaps Secretary of State Colin Powell’s decision to pull the American delegation out of the so-called U.N. World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa, will be just a footnote in history. But we can at least hope that it may be a turning point...
The predictable media reaction to Gary Condit’s bobbing and weaving has been to say that he should be candid, come clean and “get all this behind you.” It is the kind of advice that they have offered repeatedly over the years to people in trouble,...
“Society pushes you back into the same pile of s— you came out of.” Chino, a “hardened gang member,” offered this excuse as his rationale for joining a gang. Gang violence is up, says a chilling new Time magazine article on Los Angeles...
Previously, I told you that I would offer up my opinion of the one technology company to watch for evidence of a broad recovery in the economy and the markets. Today I make good on that promise. I told you that my choice would surprise you. It’s not an obvious...
There’s the old admonition: It’s better to be safe than sorry. The fact of life is that one can be both safe and sorry — that’s if we acknowledge the consequences of having too much safety. Let’s look at it. National Transportation Safety...
Hewlett Packard buying Compaq isn’t exactly going to save the world. If that’s the best thing this market can come up with as a catalyst, we’re in a heap of trouble. About the only good thing you can say about the market right now is that the major...
The UN World Conference Against Racism has met and taken up its primary agenda: the praise and protection of racists. The tone was set on the first day of the conference, when that paragon of progressive politics, Yasser Arafat, took the podium to condemn Israel as a...
There are few things more heartwarming than watching people rise out of poverty to a better life. When it is a whole nation in the process of doing so, it is especially inspiring. That is the theme of a marvelous new book titled “ India Unbound: The Social and...
A Seattle policeman explained de-policing as: “Parking under a shady tree to work on a crossword puzzle is a great alternative to being labeled a racist and being dragged through an inquest, a review board, an FBI and U.S. attorney investigation, and a...
When Ronald Reagan accepted his party’s nomination for president in 1980 he said, “When your friend is out of a job, that’s a recession. When you are out of a job, that’s a depression. And when Jimmy Carter is out of a job, that’s a...
Twenty years from now, when my baby daughter is on the brink of full adulthood, I will tell her about my experience as a 20-year-old intern in Washington, D.C. A decade ago, I headed to the District for a month-long stint in a Senate office. Like most dreamy-eyed and...
Time magazine: “Scientists no longer doubt that global warming is happening, and almost nobody questions the fact that humans are at least partly responsible.” U.S. News & World Report chimed in, referring to the United Nation’s Intergovernmental...
Four lucky ticketholders struck it rich last weekend, but here’s the real winner of the $295 million Powerball binge: the government. Powerball is a multi-state numbers racket that would be quashed by the U.S. Department of Justice if it were privately run....
The battle over restructuring America’s Social Security system into individual, privately managed accounts is heating up again. So the winds of change keep blowing, foreshadowing what may be the most profound economic transformation since the Reagan tax cuts of...
It has become all too common for some innocuous remark by a public figure to be seized upon and twisted to make it seem “racist,” setting off loud denunciations by those who are in the business of loud denunciations. Meanwhile, actions and policies that do...
Imagine that you are suffering from an incurable disease, which slowly wastes away your body and leads inevitably to death. One day, a scientist working with a pharmaceutical company discovers a drug that vastly increases your chance of survival. Do you: A) offer him...
Now that the rulers of Red China have clinched the 2008 Olympics, expect them to do everything in their authoritarian power to ensure that their athletes live up to the motto of the Games: “Faster, higher, stronger.” How will they accomplish this goal and...
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said, “No one is as hopelessly enslaved as the person who thinks he’s free.” That captures the essence of “Tethered Citizens: Time to Repeal the Welfare State,” written by Sheldon Richman, a senior fellow at the...
In one of my past columns, I discussed the challenges facing the deployment of broadband for the masses. I wish to re-visit that subject today. As my readers know, I recently switched from cable modem to BellSouth FastAccess DSL. In doing so, I learned that BellSouth...
Last month, the capital of an oppressive dictatorship has just been selected as the host city of a symbol of peace and civilization: the Olympic games. If you want to know how this happened, remember that it was done, not over the objections of civilized governments,...
Mark Twain once observed that “We all do no end of feeling, and we mistake it for thinking.” That’s precisely why the muddle-headed movement to ban Twain and his greatest work, “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” persists like gangrene....
Earlier this year, I wrote a column in which I argued that the only index that mattered was the Greenspan Index , that is, Alan Greenspan’s personal unannounced targets for the Dow, S&P, and Nasdaq indexes. Today I’m here to tell you that the...
You own a busy restaurant. Agile waiters and waitresses carrying hot food and coffee deftly avoid colliding with each other as they scurry from table to table. Good hostesses, you find, don’t grow on trees, and dang gummit, your experienced one just quit. You...
A beautiful young woman vanishes. For months, her family searches in vain. They suspect her boyfriend, a secretive and arrogant older man who is active in public life. But his friends, including many famous members of the political and cultural elite, refuse to...
My favorite stock in The Luskin Report’s model portfolios is Numerical Technologies. Now that I’m not running Other People’s Money in a mutual fund anymore, I’m free to buy individual stocks in my account for the first time in almost two years....
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