I was recently forced to break off an amicable correspondence of several years because of 9/11 conspiracy theories and this person’s acceptance of them. Our conversations became nothing but this person trying to convince me that the terrorist attacks of 9/11...
Illegal immigrants are pouring into the United States. Pro-immigration rallies and anti-immigration rallies alternated with equal fervor this spring, while the number of illegals living in the country continued to grow towards 10 million. Pending legislation threatens...
As if things weren’t crazy enough already in the Middle East, here’s the officially sanctioned message in sixth-grade Palestinian textbooks for 11- and 12-year-old kids: “The noble soul has two goals: death and the desire for it.” The goal...
When you enter a boxing ring, you agree to abide by the rules of boxing. But when you are attacked from behind in a dark alley, you would be a fool to abide by the Marquis of Queensbury rules. If you do, you can end up being a dead fool. Even with a nuclear Iran...
Recently one of those increasingly familiar New York Times editorials disguised as news stories was headlined “Conservatives Help Wal-Mart, and Vice Versa.” There was a chart with photos of people from conservative think tanks saying things favorable to...
Each year since 2004, on Sept. 17, we commemorate the 1787 signing of the U.S. Constitution by 39 American statesmen. The legislation creating Constitution Day was fathered by Sen. Robert Byrd and requires federal agencies and federally funded schools, including...
With the anniversary of 9/11 approaching, here are a few facts worth circulating…
Our leaders have failed to answer the evil moral ideal of Islamic totalitarianism with a rational ideal of our own.
A true “War of Ideas” would be one in which we proclaim loudly and with moral certainty the secular values we stand for: reason, rights, freedom, material prosperity, and personal happiness on this earth.
There’s so much confusion and emotionalism about discrimination that I thought I’d take a stab at a dispassionate analysis. Discrimination is simply the act of choice. When we choose Bordeaux wine, we discriminate against Burgundy wine. When I married Mrs....
One of the bitter ironies of the 20th century was that communism, which began as an egalitarian doctrine accusing capitalism of selfishness and calloused sacrifices of others, became in power a system whose callousness toward others made the “sins” of...
Here is how America could solve her terrorism problem in 5 easy steps: 1. Stop sacrificing American soldiers to bring “freedom” to savages in Iraq. Pull our soldiers out of that hell hole, and let the savages have their civil war. ( Iraq is not and never...
Dear CEO: As a grateful customer of America’s productive businesses–as someone who knows that his well-being depends on yours–I implore you to stop apologizing to your attackers. Stop pledging to “reform,” to become “better...
Does the United States have the power to eliminate terrorists and the states that support them? In terms of capacity, as opposed to will, the answer is a clear yes. Think about it. Currently, the U.S. has an arsenal of 18 Ohio class submarines. Just one submarine is...
It is hard to think of a time when a nation — and a whole civilization — has drifted more futilely toward a bigger catastrophe than that looming over the United States and western civilization today. Nuclear weapons in the hands of Iran and North Korea...
Do higher rates of imprisonment reduce crime? Is crime a result of poverty, unemployment, and the like? Are alternatives to incarceration more effective in preventing criminals from repeating their crimes? Some people would hesitate to try to answer any of these...
The general mindset of the political left is similar from country to country and even from century to century. The softness toward dangerous criminals found in such 18th century writers as William Godwin and Condorcet has its echo today among those who hold protest...
Grove City College publishes an excellent newsletter titled “Visions and Values.” Its July 2006 edition features an interview with Dr. Richard Pipes, acclaimed Russian historian and Harvard University professor of Sovietology. The interview was conducted...
How many cease-fires have there been in the Middle East — or is the number too large to remember? Over the past half century, there must have been more cease-fires in the Middle East than in the rest of the world combined. What will this latest cease-fire do? It...
The Government of Israel deserves moral condemnation for its overall response to Hezbollah. The primary purpose and moral obligation of any legitimate government is to protect the lives and rights of its own citizens. Hezbollah, a military wing of the Islamic...
If termites are weakening a home’s foundation, what do we do? We call the exterminator and eliminate the problem. If armed robbers are at our doors trying to break their way in, what do we do? We defend ourselves to the best of our abilities until the...
My late mentor, Nobel Prize-winning economist George Stigler, used to say that it could be very instructive to spend a few hours in a library checking up on studies that had been cited. When I began doing that, I found it not only instructive but disillusioning. A...
There are decent people, without a selfish hidden agenda, who support increases in minimum wages as a means to help low-skilled workers, and there are other decent people, with the identical goal, who strongly oppose increases in the minimum wage. So the question is:...
Whenever I hear the phrase “studies prove” this or that, it makes me think back to the beginning of my career as an economist at the Labor Department in Washington. Secretary of Labor Arthur Goldberg was scheduled to appear before Congress to argue in...
It was a common political move when Chicago’s city council voted recently to impose a $10 an hour minimum wage on big-box retailers. There is nothing that politicians like better than handing out benefits to be paid for by someone else. What was uncommon was the...
Secretary of State Rice has stated that Israel has an “obligation” to respond to the U.N.’s demand for a cease-fire in Lebanon. Since when does any sovereign government have an obligation to reply or have anything at all to do with the U.N.? Keep in...
Lebanese Government Has No Legitimacy Dear Editor: President Bush is urging Israel to preserve the fragile government of Lebanon, which was recently chosen in democratic elections supported by Bush himself. But Israel should do exactly the opposite. Hezbollah, the...
The widespread acceptance of altruism (the fallacious notion that being moral consists in self-sacrificially serving others) causes continuous human suffering and death. Yet another example of this fact is illustrated in a recent article by Dr. Sally Satel (a resident...
Colleges and universities will start their fall semester soon. You might be interested in what parents’ and taxpayers’ money is going for at far too many “institutions of higher learning.” At Occidental College in Los Angeles, a mandatory...
Responsibility for the tragic deaths of scores of Lebanese women and children in Qana, Lebanon falls primarily on Hezbollah and its backers, Syria and Iran, not on Israel. To initiate a war against Israel and then use children as shields is so evil and disgusting that...
When the United States of America got its start, the general idea was that individuals should be left free to carve out their own lives free of government interference, based on the principles of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Gradually...
Now that Hezbollah, Hamas, the Palestinian people (who elected Hamas), the people of southern Lebanon (who sit idly by as a group of armed thugs turn their country into a base of operations), Syria, and Iran have showed their hands and begun a shooting war with Israel...
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