"Billy Blazes," a New York firefighter action figure, is one of the biggest-selling items on the Christmas toy market this year. Also high on the holiday gift list: "FDNY" and "NYPD" caps, shirts and sweaters. The two city departments earned global fame -- and a...
POLITICS
Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams: Grace Under Fire
Someday, many of their critics will apologize. Who am I talking about? Two economists, who happen to be black, Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams. For over 30 years, Thomas Sowell, currently with the Hoover Institution, and Walter Williams, chairman of the economics...
Why Christmas Should be More Commercial
Christmas in America is an exuberant display of human ingenuity, capitalist productivity, and the enjoyment of life. Yet all of these are castigated as "materialistic"; the real meaning of the holiday, we are told, is assorted Nativity tales and altruist injunctions...
How John Walker Turned into a Taliban Terrorist
It isn't the case that the parents of John Walker -- the Marin County child of privilege turned Taliban terrorist -- never drew the line with their son. True, they didn't do so when he was 14 and his consuming passion was collecting hip-hop CDs with especially nasty...
Value Judgments, Ideology, and Writing Editorials
There's an interesting methodological difference between Ayn Rand Institute (ARI) op-eds and the usual ones you read by non-Objectivists (and boy, there sure are a lot of non-Objectivists around, aren't there?). I can best illustrate the difference by a kind of...
A Lesson in U.S. Foreign Policy for India: With Friends Like Us …
India is beginning to learn what Israel has learned, brutally, over the past year: the U.S. State Department loves to betray our friends. It is now more than a week since Pakistan-backed Islamic terrorists shot up the Indian Parliament in New Delhi, killing 12 people...
Rocky Mountain Bigot?
NBA Denver Nuggets coach Dan Issel, after another tough loss at the buzzer, walked off the court toward the locker room. A fan, however, taunted the white coach, calling out, "Issel sucks." Issel angrily fired back, "Hey, go buy another beer. Go drink another beer,...
Yassar Arafat’s Suicide Factory
In declaring his own war on terrorism last week, Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon made a surprising claim. He said that Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader, "is responsible for everything that is happening here," a reference to the onslaught of four suicide...
University Professors vs. America
Many simply shake their heads in confusion and disbelief at reports of peace rallies on college campuses from coast to coast. At such an unprecedented time of pro-American sentiments, and in light of the magnitude of horror of September 11, it seems almost impossible...
Support the Liberty Bill Act And Put the Constitution on our Dollars
Congressional office-holders take an oath that says: "I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic . . ." Wouldn't it be nice if the Constitution had an amendment requiring...
Two Kinds of Tax Cuts
[http://www.CapitalismMagazine.com] Politicians are considering tax relief to help a sputtering economy, but not all tax cuts are created equal. There is a vast difference between "supply-side" tax cuts and "Keynesian" tax cuts. Supply-side tax policy focuses on how...
Health Care is a Privilege, Not an Entitlement for All
I must say that one of the best things about the Clinton presidency was that he was not able to pass his health care plan. The proposed system was nothing more than a step toward complete socialization of health care in this country, and it overlooked one simple fact:...
Taxpayer Handouts in the Name of “National Security”
You'd be surprised by the newly discovered requirements for national security revealed by the Sept. 11 terrorist attack. We discovered that a thriving airline industry is necessary for national security. Congress acknowledged this by bailing out airline stockholders...
Interview: The Well Trained Mind and Homeschooling
When her daughter Susan started kindergarten in Virginia in 1972, Jessie Wise quickly heard complaints from Susan's teacher that the child would become a social misfit because she wanted to read during free time instead of playing. This was not good news for Wise,...
Education Fraud in Philadelphia
Education in Philadelphia's public schools is so rotten that the state government is threatening a takeover. There are 176 out of 264 schools on the failing list. The primary victims of Philadelphia's public schools are black students whose chances for upward mobility...
Media Fraud
Media bias is no longer news. Poll after poll has shown that the vast majority of journalists vote for Democrats, even though the country as a whole is pretty evenly split between the two major parties. By itself, there is nothing wrong with this. It becomes a problem...
Therapeutic Cloning is Pro-Life
On November 25 Advanced Cell Technologies announced the creation of the first cloned human embryo. The company described its achievement as a crucial step in therapeutic cloning research, which aims at cloning new organs to replace damaged ones. Like healthy new skin...
Stupid Accounting Tricks: Pro Forma Accounting, Part 3
Well, I just can't seem to get away from this subject. You all keep writing, and in doing so, engender material for follow up columns. Hopefully, this will be the last for a while, but a couple of letters bought up important points that I wanted to address today.The...
Israel May Be Winning
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell recently observed that the Palestinians "need to understand that [terrorism] leads nowhere," and on this basis he urged them to stop their violence against Israelis. Good policy advice, but does the Palestinian use of violence truly...
Deflation: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
This commentary continues a series intended to address some of the misconceptions in the flurry of recent media reports about deflation. My last commentary ("Deflation: The Basics") began by defining deflation as strictly a monetary process, and one that is solely in...
A Palestinian Education
Last month, retired Marine General Anthony Zinni began a visit to Israel and the Palestinian Authority, the latest in a depressingly long line of US envoys sent to nudge along the Israeli-Arab "peace process." Zinni's mission, it is safe to say, will achieve what all...
Stupid Accounting Tricks: Managing Earnings, Part 2
I received so much feedback on my column (Stupid Accounting Tricks) that I thought I would respond en masse today and elaborate a bit on the subjects of pro forma accounting and managing earnings. First, the title of my column "Stupid Accounting Tricks" offended some....
The Military Draft and Draft Registration Versus Freedom
No organization has done more for the federal government than al Qaeda. What other group could free it of so much restraint? Our elected officials swear to support and defend the U. S. Constitution as part of their oath of office. We, the people, through the...
Ending the “Peace Process War”
When Yasser Arafat unleashed his intifada against Israel last year, I named it the "Peace Process War." I wanted to capture the irony of mob violence and bombings as the culmination of seven years of an alleged "peace process." I did not realize, at the time, how...
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