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...
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
Altruism: The Morality of Suffering and Death (Exhibit 347R: Organ Donation)
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...
“The Unbearable Whiteness of Barbie” and Other College Stupidity
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...
Blame Hezbollah and Iran for Death of Qana Children
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...
Mandatory Health Insurance: Health Care by Force
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...
Israel at War: Problems and Fallacies
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...
United Nations is Guilty for the Death of its Observers
Responsibility for the death of four United Nations observers in Lebanon falls primarily on Kofi Annan and the UN–not Israel. Leaving aside the obvious question as to why these observers remained in the middle of a battle area, a totally irresponsible decision,...
Creating Unemployment
Her’s a fantastic idea that will make everybody richer. Let’s pass a law setting a minimum price on used cars. How about, say, $15,000? If you’ve got an old beater you want to sell, and you were worried that you’d only get a couple thousand...
Truly Disgusting: Internet Gambling Prohibition Act of 1999
The House of Representatives voted 245 to 159 to pass the Internet Gambling Prohibition Act of 1999. Because of a rule requiring two-thirds approval, the measure didn’t pass. Its sponsor, Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., plans to introduce it again when only a majority is...
Then and Now
Those of us old enough to remember World War II face many painful reminders of how things have changed in Americans’ behavior during a war. Back then, the president’s defeated opponent in the 1940 election — Wendell Wilkie — not only supported...
Pacifists versus Peace
One of the many failings of our educational system is that it sends out into the world people who cannot tell rhetoric from reality. They have learned no systematic way to analyze ideas, derive their implications and test those implications against hard facts....
Hands Off My Net
The S&P 500 has more than doubled over the last 10 years — a decade in which the Internet came out of nowhere, and established itself as the technology platform of the new global economy. The Internet has been the greatest engine of economic growth the...
Western Leaders Provide Comedy to Iran’s Dictators
When the mullahs of the Islamic dictatorship of Iran are not chanting “Death to America” and “Death to Israel,” or not issuing money, weapons and orders to their global terrorist networks, or not monitoring the progress of their nuclear weapons...
The Indispensable Condition of Peace in the Middle East
As Israeli soldiers reenter Gaza and bomb Lebanon, and Israeli citizens seek shelter from Hezbollah’s missiles, the world despairingly wonders whether peace between Israel and its neighbors can ever take root. It can–but only if America reverses course. To...
Appeasing a Mortal Enemy: The U.S.-Israeli Suicide Pact
The Iran-Hamas-Hezbollah axis is fully responsible for initiating the war on Israel, but the Islamists’ aggression is the logical product of U.S.-Israeli policy. The longstanding commitment of Israel and America to “diplomatic engagement” with...
A “Cycle” of Nonsense
Now that Israel has responded to rocket attacks and the abduction of its soldiers by terrorists by making military strikes into areas controlled by those terrorists, much of our media are deploring another “cycle of violence” in the Middle East. For...
Freedom vs. Democracy: How The U.S. Government Created a Crisis in the Middle East
Hezbollah, which has been waging war on Israel, and America, for years, is the immediate cause of the current fighting in the Middle East. The broader cause, though, is the United States government. When Washington declared that freedom could be advanced by elections...
Israel: No Longer a Paper Tiger?
The blame for the current fighting falls entirely on Israel’s enemies, who deploy inhuman methods in the service of barbaric goals. While I wish the armed forces of Israel every success against the terrorists in Gaza and Lebanon and hope they inflict a maximum...
Finding Alternatives to the Food and Drug Administration
Since the Federal Food and Drug Act came into law in 1906, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has had a century to develop their methodology for insuring drug safety. After expanding to an annual budget of $1.5 billion and a staff of 10,000, they continue to seek...
“Saving” What From Whom?
When conservationists talk about “saving” this and “protecting” that, a logical question might be: Saving it from whom? Protecting it from whom? And why should the government force what you want on someone else who obviously wants something...
Why Peace Eludes the Middle East
Why does peace so elude the Middle East? A recent MSNBC.com news report provides the answer: “Hezbollah [whose attacks on Israel triggered Israel’s recent retaliation in Lebanon] is an Iranian-backed militant Shiite faction which has a free hand in...
The Pretense of Knowledge
One of the great contributions of Nobel Laureate economist Friedrich Hayek was to admonish us to recognize the insurmountable limits to human knowledge. Why? Not even the brightest minds, and surely not the U.S. Congress, can ever have the knowledge to shape an...
Presumed Guilty: How Biased Reporters “Honor Our Troops”
The same newspapers and television news programs that are constantly reminding us that some people under indictment “are innocent until proven guilty” are nevertheless hyping the story of American troops accused of rape in Iraq, day in and day out, even...
Keep Our “Addiction” to Oil, End Our Allergy to Self-Assertion
Politicians and commentators from both parties are decrying our “addiction to oil.” They exhort us to embrace costly programs to reduce our consumption of oil as quickly as possible. The primary rationale for this is national security. Our oil consumption...
A Victory for the Rule of Law
The Florida Supreme Court has just upheld an appellate court decision to throw out a $145 billion verdict in the case of Engle vs. Liggett Group. While the decision is being hailed as a major victory for tobacco companies, it is far more than that. The court...
Back From Vacation
There is nothing like returning home to recover from a vacation. They say traveling is broadening and that has certainly been my experience. My waistline broadens by about an inch a week when I am traveling. The most dangerous mode of travel is the automobile. Every...
The Poverty in Black Education is Not Due to Racial Discrimination or Lack of Money in D.C.
Let’s look at the recent “Nation’s Report Card,” published annually by the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics. Nationally, in reading, only 13 percent of black fourth graders, and 11 percent of black...
Bully Boy Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt
A special issue of Time magazine celebrates the historic career of Theodore Roosevelt and the implications of his presidency for the development of American society. In the phony familiarity of our times, where you call people by their first names when you have never...
Universal Freedom on the Fourth of July
It is precisely because our health care is so important to each of us that we need to be especially careful to preserve and protect the rights of physicians and other health care providers.
Is Patriotism Obsolete?
On the eve of a holiday that used to stir patriotic emotions — the Fourth of July — it has been painful to see examples of how little remains of that glue that holds a society together. Perhaps the worst of these signs of national disintegration was the...
On a Deluded America
Diana West has written a fiery op-ed that, on its face, seems to provide a well-needed antidote to the moral platitudes that are preventing America from ridding the world of savage brutes (“Deluded America,” Washington Times, June 23, 2006). Certainly the...
Undermining the Rule of Law to Lynch an Unpopular Group
America is a nation that reveres the fact that ours is “a government of laws, not of men.” Under this principle, members of government can use their power only to enforce known and clearly defined laws. As a result, we do not worry about losing our...
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