The Lincoln Review, a Washington-based black think tank, published an article titled “What Does the Future Hold for Historically Black Colleges?” in its September/October 2007 edition. It recalled the experiences of Bill Maxwell, a St. Petersburg Times...
POLITICS
No Culture Can Stand Still
Among the interesting people encountered by my wife and me, during some recent vacation travel, were a small group of adolescent boys from a Navajo reservation. They were being led on a bicycle tour by a couple of white men, one of whom was apparently their teacher on...
The Assasination of Benazir Bhutto and The Pakistan Crisis
The assassination of Benazir Bhutto has, we’re told, upended Washington’s foreign policy. “Our foreign policy has relied on her presence as a stabilizing force. . . . Without her, we will have to regroup,” explained Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.)...
Hiding Black Interracial Crimes
If you’re like I am, you’ve heard scores of media reports about the 2006 Duke University rape case, in which three white lacrosse players were falsely accused of raping a black stripper at a wild party at the home of one of the team members. These guys,...
Say It Ain’t So: Shoeless Joe Jackson, Michael Vick, and Barry Bonds
Shoeless Joe Jackson was the only man to bat .382 in his last season in the major leagues. After that he was banned for life for his role in the “black sox scandal,” the deliberate throwing of the 1919 World Series. It was to Jackson that a youngster was...
Racial Hoaxes and the NAACP
Last May, firefighters at a Baltimore, Md., fire station came under scrutiny for displaying a deer with an afro wig, gold tooth, gold chain and a cigarette hanging from its mouth. Marvin “Doc” Cheatham, president of the Baltimore chapter of the NAACP, went...
At Last!
People for whom indignation is a way of life — and there seem to be an increasing number of such people — repeatedly have outbursts of outrage whenever the police fire a lot of shots at some criminal. People who have never fired a gun in their lives, and...
National Grocery Reform
One of the great scandals of our age is the fact that America spends more on food than any other nation. Many political leaders are now calling for urgent reform to bring spending on food under control. Even worse, while the result of this uncontrolled spending...
Income Mobility
Listening to people like Lou Dobbs, John Edwards and Mike Huckabee lamenting the plight of America’s middle class and poor, you’d have to conclude that things are going to hell in a handbasket. According to them, there’s wage stagnation, while the...
What Mandatory Health Insurance Really Means
When talking about health insurance, “mandatory” is an increasingly popular term among politicians of both major parties, including presidential candidates. What do they really mean by it? Put simply, being uninsured would no longer be a misfortune or a...
Random Thoughts December 2007
Random thoughts on the passing scene: Since electricity is generated mostly by burning coal, has anyone calculated how much pollution is created by electric cars, even though none of that pollution comes out of their tailpipes? You may scoff at the Tooth Fairy if you...
Universal Health Scare
An increasingly popular argument in favor of socialized medicine goes like this: “If universal health care works for the elderly under Medicare, then why not for the rest of us?” If that’s true, then the Democratic nominee for President should...
Why Was Washington Surprised by the Pakistan Crisis?
Few reports about the Islamist threat are more alarming than the situation right now in Pakistan–a nuclear-armed country that Washington hails as a “major non-NATO ally.” Having supported Musharraf’s regime, Washington is now...
Expanding Opportunities
Stanford, Yale, and Princeton are all in the process of considering whether to increase the number of students they admit. Meanwhile, Professor Richard Vedder of Ohio University and director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity in Washington, says...
Bitter Partisan Politics and Education
Some people complain about bitter partisan politics. I welcome it. The greater the number of decisions made in the political arena the greater the conflict. Let’s look at it by way of a few examples: I like the Lexus LS 460. I also like Dell computers. Many...
That “Top One Percent”
People who are in the top one percent in income receive far more than one percent of the attention in the media. Even aside from miscellaneous celebrity bimbos, the top one percent attract all sorts of hand-wringing and finger-pointing. A recent column by Anna...
Whittaker Chambers’s Review of Ayn Rand’s Novel “Atlas Shrugged” in The National Review
“Mr. Chambers is an ex-Communist. He has attacked Atlas Shrugged in the best tradition of the Communists–by lies, smears, and cowardly misrepresentations.”
Yesterday’s Highlights: Stories From Home
We at VanDamme Academy love hearing stories about things the students do or say at home that reflects their VanDamme Academy education. I recently asked parents to share some stories from home. Here are a few highlights: Calvin (5): I was talking to Calvin about the...
Income Confusion: Part II
When most of us look at income statistics, we are not just being numbers junkies. We want to find out something about actual flesh-and-blood human beings — specifically what their standard of living is like. But you cannot always just take statistics at face...
The Greatest Generation
The “greatest generation” is a term sometimes used in reference to those Americans who were raised during the Great Depression, fought in World War II, worked in farms and factories and sacrificed for the war effort while maintaining the home front....
Income Confusion: Part I
Anyone who follows the media has probably heard many times that the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, and incomes of the population in general are stagnating. Moreover, those who say such things can produce many statistics, including data from the...
Don’t Save Social Security
With the first Baby Boomer collecting Social Security last week, on the heels of a Bush administration announcement that Social Security faces a $13.6 trillion shortfall, the issue of how to “save” Social Security is once again on the table. While we can...
“Muni Wi-Fi” and Other Broadband Blunders in Oregon
The development of municipal wireless broadband networks has been popular with local government officials across the country, including the city of Portland. However, a closer look at a southern Oregon city reveals “Muni Wi-Fi” could be the latest losing...
The Burdern of Taxes and Other Congressional Lies
An important component of the leftist class warfare agenda is to condemn President Bush’s tax cuts for the rich. This claim is careless, ignorant or dishonest on at least two counts. First there’s the constitutional issue. Article I, Section 8 reads,...
Autism: Crusades Versus Caution, Part II
The recently launched crusade to have every child tested for autism before the age of two has as its reason an opportunity for “early intervention” to treat the condition. Dr. Scott Myers, a pediatrician, has been quoted by Reuters news service as saying...
Autism: Crusades Versus Caution
Autism is a devastating condition, both for those who have it and for their parents. At this point, its causes are unknown and if there is any cure for it, that is unknown as well. There are many ways of coping with tragedies. One of the less promising, and often...
The Injustice of “Doing Something” about Subprime
As we witness large numbers of defaults on subprime loans–loans extended to those with no credit or bad credit–many are calling for the government to do something to stop the suffering. At the same time, many recognize that a bailout of struggling...
Stop “Making a Difference”
Among the many mindless mantras of our time, “making a difference” and “giving back” irritate me like chalk screeching across a blackboard. I would be scared to death to “make a difference” in the way pilots fly airliners or brain...
Academic Cesspools II
In last month’s column “Academic Cesspools,” I wrote about “Indoctrinate U,” a recently released documentary exposing egregious university indoctrination of young people at prestigious and not-so-prestigious universities...
Running with Robbers
One of the most perplexing things about the current fight over Oregon land use laws is how many wealthy Oregonians publicly support restricting development rights. Many of them are landowners. So it would seem they are advocating against their own interests and the...
Are the Poor Getting Poorer?
People who want more government income redistribution programs often sell their agenda with the lament, “The poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer,” but how about some evidence and you decide? I think the rich are getting richer, and so...
Political “Solutions”
It is remarkable how many political “solutions” today are dealing with problems created by previous political “solutions.” Three examples that come to mind immediately are the housing market crisis, the wildfires in southern California, and the...
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