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

Are Taxes “the Price We Pay for Civilization”?

I want to challenge the premise that the tax-funded welfare state is the ideal civilized society.

Congress and the Politics of Bailouts

Congress and the Politics of Bailouts

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Nothing could more painfully demonstrate what is wrong with Congress than the current financial crisis. Among the Congressional “leaders” invited to the White House to devise a bailout “solution” are the very people who have for years created...

Who Buried Capitalism?

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A journalist wrote me the following: “I always say both Democrats and Republicans want to transfer wealth. Democrats want to take from the rich and give to the poor. Republicans want to take from the poor and give to the rich. This [proposed government bailout]...

Scaring Us to Death

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There is a H.L. Mencken quotation that captures the essence of this year’s politics: “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, and hence clamorous to be led to safety, by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of...

Dealing with Russia

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On Aug. 8, Russia decided to rewrite the rules of post-World War II European security. It repudiated the Helsinki Pact of 1975, which recognized the sanctity of borders in Europe, and violated the sovereignty and territorial integrity of NATO aspirant Georgia, whose...

The High Cost of Racial Hype

The High Cost of Racial Hype

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Sometimes you don’t know when you are lucky. Certainly I did not consider myself lucky when I left home at seventeen and discovered the hard way that there was no great demand for a black teenage dropout with no experience and no skill. In retrospect, however,...

Idols of Crowds

Idols of Crowds

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To find anything comparable to crowds’ euphoric reactions to Obama, you would have to go back to old newsreels of German crowds in the 1930s, with their adulation of their fuehrer, Adolf Hitler.

Academic Mismatch II

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Last week’s column demonstrated the harm, suffered by black students, that results from law school race-based admission policies. The bottom line was that black students who might have done well at lower-tier law schools were recruited to more highly competitive...

The Vision of the Left

The Vision of the Left

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Conservatives, as well as liberals, would undoubtedly be happier living in the kind of world envisioned by the left. Very few people have either a vested interest or an ideological preference for a world in which there are many inequalities. Even fewer would prefer a...

2008 Presidential Elections: McBama vs. America

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As the 2008 presidential election nears, and while John McCain and Barack Obama struggle to distinguish themselves from each other in terms of particular promises and goals, it is instructive to observe that these candidates are indistinguishable in terms of...

Academic Mismatch I

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Which serves the interests of the black community better: a black student admitted to a top-tier law school, such as Harvard, Stanford or Yale, and winds up in the bottom 10 percent of his class, flunks out, or cannot pass the bar examination, or a black student...

Foreign Policy “Experience”

Foreign Policy “Experience”

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Now that the Democrats have recovered from the shock of Governor Sarah Palin’s nomination as the Republican’s candidate for vice president, they have suddenly discovered that her lack of experience in general– and foreign policy experience in...

Anarchy on the Internet

Anarchy on the Internet

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The Internet provides vast amounts of information but it can also spread vast amounts of misinformation, or even deliberately misleading disinformation. For more than two weeks, scarcely a day has gone by without e-mails pouring in to me, asking about columns that...

Is College Worth It?

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As parents pack their youngsters off to college, they might ask themselves whether it’s worth both the money they will spend and their children’s time. Dr. Marty Nemko has researched that question in an article aptly titled “America’s Most...

Random Thoughts: August 2008

Random Thoughts: August 2008

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Random thoughts on the passing scene: If you took all the fraud out of politics, there might not be a lot left. The reason so many people misunderstand so many issues is not that these issues are so complex, but that people do not want a factual or analytical...

Why the Free Market Works

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By taking a couple of courses in economic theory, we could immunize ourselves from nonsense spouted by politicians and pundits, but in the meantime check out Professor John R. Lott’s “Freedomnomics: Why the Free Market Works.” His first chapter is...

Amateurs Outdoing Professionals

Amateurs Outdoing Professionals

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When amateurs outperform professionals, there is something wrong with that profession. If ordinary people, with no medical training, could perform surgery in their kitchens with steak knives, and get results that were better than those of surgeons in hospital...

Patterns of Black Excellence in Education

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Most people know the tragic state of black education today. We know that billions of dollars are spent on federal government programs such as No Child Left Behind and the billions spent by state and local governments. If you were to ask an education...

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