Former New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial, now head of the National Urban League, complained on NBC’s Today Show on September 1 that the U.S. Government had refused to give funding for upgrading the city’s flood defenses. Numerous city and Louisiana State...
Random thoughts on the passing scene: Different people have different ideas about humility. One man said: “I don’t think I’m half as good as I know I really am.” What can we be certain of from history? That human beings have been wrong...
More than 170 political leaders from around the world recently met at the United Nations to consider what the New York Times called “the most sweeping institutional changes” in the organization’s history. But this exercise was, predictably, hopeless....
United Nation Reforms Worse Than Doing Nothing September 21, 2005 To the editor; Mr. Journo’s cogent article (The UN’s “Virtue” Is Its Vice) hit the nail right on the head: what is wrong with the UN is not economic corruption, improperly...
Last week, President Bush promised the nation that the federal government will pay for most of the costs of repairing hurricane-ravaged New Orleans, adding, “There is no way to imagine America without New Orleans, and this great city will rise again.”...
One of the things that happens when you get old is that what seems like news to others can look like a re-run of something you have already seen before. It is like watching an old movie for the fifth or sixth time. A headline in the September 14th issue of the New...
Where have our leaders gone wrong? What kind of leadership failure can demoralize a whole nation of honest, productive citizens, while leaving suicide murderers stirred to righteous action?
Adapted from Chapter 1 of Loving Life: The Morality of Self-Interest and the Facts that Support It by Craig Biddle. In case there are any doubts, history provides conclusive evidence of the sacrificial nature of all three forms of subjectivism. Let us look first at...
Adapted from Chapter 1 of Loving Life: The Morality of Self-Interest and the Facts that Support It by Craig Biddle. There are hundreds of religions. Each is vying for your allegiance. Each denies the validity of the others. Each claims to be based on the...
Hurricane Katrina was a disaster, not only for the obvious reasons but for the less obvious reasons: the aftermath. By aftermath, am I referring to the alleged ineptitude of the federal government? No way. By aftermath, I mean the spectacle of political and...
Adapted from Chapter 1 of Loving Life: The Morality of Self-Interest and the Facts that Support It by Craig Biddle. Whereas religion holds that God creates truth and moral law, subjectivism holds that people do; it is the view that truth and morality are not...
If you want to live your life to the fullest, if you want to achieve the greatest happiness possible, this book is for you. It is about the essential means to that end: a proper code of values–a proper morality. Contrary to popular myth, morality does not come...
Whatever later investigation may turn up about the mistakes of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in New Orleans, it is unlikely to show the shrill charges of “racism” to be anything other than reckless political rhetoric. FEMA has bungled...
Dr. Roy Spencer is a principal research scientist for University of Alabama in Huntsville. In the past, he has served as Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, where he directed research into the...
The fallout from Hurricane Katrina has featured a lot of ignorance and demagoguery about prices. Let’s look at some of it. One undeniable fact is that the hurricane disaster changed scarcity conditions. There are fewer stores, fewer units of housing, less...
During my first semester of teaching, many years ago, I was surprised to encounter the philosophy that the brightest students did not need much help from the teacher because “they can get it anyway” and that my efforts should be directed toward the slower...
For many, the American Dream means buying a family home after years of saving or building a small business from the ground up. No one imagines the government will take that property only to hand it over to someone else so they can make more money off the land. But it...
Why is there looting and raping in New Orleans? What does it say about the people there? What nobody wants to talk about is the psychology of helplessness. We all know that a large number of the victims in New Orleans are poor, black, and in many cases dependent on...
In Washington, nothing’s certain except death, taxes and special-interest lobbying groups. So it makes sense that the death tax has its own lobbyists. That’s right. “Americans for a Fair Estate Tax” knows a Senate vote is coming soon, and...
As much of Europe struggles with double-digit unemployment this year, the United States has been creating an average of 200,000 new jobs a month. One of our great advantages is the relative ease with which Americans can start new businesses. Physical disability, the...
The most important effect of America‘s attack on Iraq has been the removal of Iran‘s strongest regional opponent, and an increase in the regional power of Iran . As I wrote in Capitalism Magazine in June of 2004: “[President Bush] threw down a...
The physical devastation caused by hurricane Katrina has painfully revealed the moral devastation of our times that has led to mass looting in New Orleans, assaults on people in shelters, the raping of girls, and shots being fired at helicopters that are trying to...
Reading Kurt Eichenwald’s fascinating book on Enron Corp., “A Conspiracy of Fools,” is enough to make an investor throw up his hands (or his lunch), sell all his stocks and buy a bundle of nice short-term U.S. Treasury bonds. Eichenwald shows, in...
The ability of the human mind to rationalize is one of the mysteries — and the marvels — of the ages. A recent e-mail from a reader in Santa Barbara, California, was a classic example of a widespread rationalization of the severe home-building restrictions...
To listen to most of our foreign-policy commentators, the biggest problem facing America today is the fact that many Muslims are mad at us. “Whatever one’s views on the [Iraq] war,” writes a New York Times columnist, “thoughtful Americans need...
They say time is money but a lot depends on whose time and whose money. For example, in California the San Mateo County Planning Commission has spent five years deciding what can and cannot be done with the site of an old racetrack that is no longer economically...
Nationally, the average per gallon price for regular gasoline is $2.50. Are gasoline prices high? That’s not the best way to ask that question. It’s akin to asking, “Is Williams tall?” The average height of U.S. women is 5’4″, and...
Those who claim that the use of atomic bombs in Japan was not necessary often point to Japan’s weakened military condition, and the possibility that the war could have been ended without Japan’s unconditional surrender. Such an attitude fails utterly to...
In 1997, George Zeliotis, a Quebec citizen, learned that he needed hip-replacement surgery. But his troubles were just beginning. As is standard in Canada for non-emergency surgery, Zeliotis was put on a waiting list behind everyone else in Quebec who needed the same...
Soaring oil prices have revived the old bogeyman that the world is running out of oil. Economics is a great field for nostalgia buffs because the same old fallacies keep coming back, like golden oldies in music. Back in 1960, a best-selling book titled “The...
The Israeli withdrawal from Gaza is being portrayed as a wise (albeit unpleasant) move by Ariel Sharon. By addressing a longtime grievance of the Palestinians and their supporters–the presence of Israeli security forces and Jewish residents on the Gaza...
Driving through downtown Washington, D.C., a few weeks ago, I asked myself: What’s happened to the character of the American people? There were barricaded landmarks, armed guards and people waiting to be searched. Several weeks ago, I visited downtown...
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