POLITICS

Good government? Isn’t that an oxymoron? Many today believe so. Who can blame them? Our political system has increasingly become a chaotic jungle driven by competing pressure groups (“special interests”) seeking special “favours” and...

BOOK REVIEW: WAITING FOR FIDEL By Christopher Hunt (Houghton Mifflin, $13) The Pope’s visit to Cuba and Fidel Castro’s subsequent release of political prisoners this week are a reminder that the Communist dictator still has a grip on Cuba’s fate....

In the past year, foreign nations taking IMF advice on currency, tax and banking policies have suffered over $200 billion in loan losses and capital flight. The IMF has been pouring the funds of Western taxpayers into these regimes as fast as local wealth has been...

The Great Ice Storm of 1998 caught Canadians in Quebec and neighboring provinces totally off guard. Montreal, the hardest hit, looked as if it were bombed by ice. Millions suffered days to weeks of sub-freezing temperatures without electricity and heating. At least 25...

Contrary to media reports, the UN-sponsored “global” treaty banning land mines signed in December of 1997 by more than 100 nations, excluding the US, Russia and China, is not about preventing innocent people from being maimed or killed by the existing...

‘National unity crisis’ makes many Canadians immediately think of the looming threat of Quebec separation. But the crisis is broader. Many non-Quebeckers are fed up with the way the federal government is running the country. Quebec separatism is one...

Today’s students are often taught that our Founding Fathers were racists. Textbooks make comments like, “The sublime principles of the Declaration did not apply to them [blacks]. They were for whites only.” The late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood...

Reena Virk, a 14-year-old teenage girl, was brutally beaten and murdered on the night of Nov. 14, 1997, in the Victoria suburb of Saanich, British Columbia. Seven teens, six of them girls aged 14-16, face charges of aggravated assault. Paradoxically, this...

Dear Miss Reno: You’ve had some impressive victories lately. With a single press announcement, you’ve made Microsoft a marked company, targeted for the crime of promoting “unfair competition” – all because it insists that parts of its...

With all the hype about global warming and climate disasters filling the journals and air waves, here are some facts that need to be more widely known: The climate is never just “average”; it changes all the time, from season to season, year to year, and...

Many people have wondered: Will the death of Mother Theresa be mourned as greatly as the death of Princess Diana? But personally, I have wondered how many people would mourn the loss of Bill Gates. The philosopher Ayn Rand taught us that man’s highest moral...

The sports section of the November 18th edition of the Globe and Mail (Canada’s national newspaper) carried an article about Doug Flutie, the star quarterback of the Toronto Argonauts. The Argos are Toronto’s team in the Canadian Football League; they had...

Tom Alciere, an obscure Republican lawmaker from New Hampshire, received nationwide media attention this week for posting remarks on the Internet about killing cops. What a fool. If Mr. Alciere had written his crude rantings in rhyme and embarked on a music career...

Last month, Autumn Jackson was convicted of extortion, con- spiracy, and crossing state lines to commit a crime. When sentenced in October, she faces up to 12 years in prison and a fine up to $750,000. Miss Jackson’s in hot water because she demanded $40 million...

A Washington Post editorial (7/24/97) said that had the reading portion of the Stanford Achievement Test been used as this year’s criterion for promotion, 33 percent of D.C.’s third-graders and 29 percent of its eighth-graders would have been left down....

In pursuit of what’s deemed as worthy objectives, decent people often pave the way for tyranny. The process usually begins by the piecemeal destruction of the foundations of liberty: private property, rule of law, voluntary exchange and limited government. Those...

Jonas Salk once named the ambition that guided his career: “I wanted to do independent work and I wanted to do it my way.” His ideas were opposed by the scientific establishment, but he persevered, holding nothing above the verdict of his own mind. The...

Should we obey laws? It all depends; some laws aren’t worthy of obedience. “There you go again, Williams;” you say, “what kind of society would there be if people decided which laws they’d obey or disobey?” That might be a problem...