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

A Pro-Capitalist Foreign Policy (Part 7 of 10)

In the present-day world, a procapitalist foreign policy is indistinguishable from a pro-American foreign policy.

Good Riddance to Dan Rather

Good Riddance to Dan Rather

Ordinarily, the retirement of a TV newsman would be something to be more or less passed over in silence by friend and foe alike. But the retirement of Dan Rather as anchorman of CBS news has caused so much spin in the media that some of this spin may become...

Debating Social Security

In a romantic mood, I was reading “Anna Karenina” flying down here and stumbled across one of Tolstoy’s brilliant insights. At a party at the home of his friend Prince Oblonsky, Konstantin Levin, the philosophical farmer, muses about the futility of...

More Social Security Deceit

More Social Security Deceit

A fortnight ago, I explained some of the congressional deceit that has become part and parcel of Social Security. One was the 1936 promise of maximum wages subject to Social Security tax of three percent — $3,000 — which, controlling for inflation, comes...

Saudi Venom in U.S. Mosques

Those of us following the development of Islam in America have for years worried about the unhealthy influence of Saudi money and ideas on American Muslims. We watched apprehensively as the Saudi government boasted of funding mosques and research centers; as it...

AARP Invests in Hypocrisy

The President has made fixing Social Security his number-one domestic objective, but the fight won’t be easy — in part because of fierce opposition by the AARP, the seniors’ lobby, with 35 million members. The AARP is using an old strategy: trying to...

Social Security’s Demographic Tsunami

Social Security’s Demographic Tsunami

“Santa Claus. The Tooth Fairy. Social Security. It’s Time for E*Trade.” That’s the message on a San Francisco billboard. It’s saying that stock trading on the Internet provides a better shot at a secure retirement than depending on the...

Free Broadband From Socialism

Should municipalities be allowed to build and operate broadband networks in competition with private companies? States around the country are considering laws making it difficult for cities to do so. Informed, honest debate over municipal broadband is rare. Advocates...

Are CEOs Overpaid?

In the wake of the Enron and WorldCom corporate scandals, the purveyors of envy have found another opportunity to preach about what they consider the evils of high CEO salaries, retirements and bonuses. After all, according to them, evil must be afoot when a corporate...

Healthcare To Die For in Britain?

Healthcare To Die For in Britain?

In “Die in Britain , survive in U.S. ,” the cover article of the February 2005 issue of The Spectator, a British magazine, James Bartholomew details the downside of Britain’ s universal healthcare system. Among women with breast cancer, for example,...

Social Security Deceit

Social Security Deceit

President Bush’s call to allow Americans to take a portion of the money they pay as Social Security taxes to set up private retirement accounts has to be a good idea. Why? The more of what a person earns that’s in his pocket and under his control, the...

Random Thoughts February 2005

Random Thoughts February 2005

Random thoughts on the passing scene: How many other species’ members kill each other to the same extent as human beings? How can you be an “insurgent” in someone else’s country? Yet despite the fact that the wave of terrorism in Iraq is led by...

Who’s Really to Blame for High Gasoline Prices?

Gas prices are on the rise again. While no one has begun to complain yet (at least not too loudly), gas prices are still higher than they need to be. Many think oil companies are to blame for high gas prices. In fact, in May 2004 a poll showed that 77% of Californians...

Social Security Reform: The Capitalism Alternative

Social Security Reform: The Capitalism Alternative

The end of Social Security and its diversion of funds into government consumption—the return to private, individual saving and provision for the future—will mean a great increase in saving and the accumulation of capital, because the savings of individuals will be invested, not squandered.

Drug Safety vs. the FDA

As studies continue to be released that explore the cardiovascular risks of Vioxx, Celebrex, Bextra, and other pharmaceuticals, the FDA has come under widespread criticism for failing to protect the public from “unsafe” drugs. The lesson commonly drawn...

Tainted Media

Tainted Media

The recent resignation of CNN’s news director, Eason Jordan, after his outrageous remarks about our military at an international forum were reported on the Internet, is only the latest in a series of media scandals, of which Dan Rather’s forged documents...

Bush’s Budget: The Welfare State Lives

Bush’s Budget: The Welfare State Lives

Get ready for the interest groups and beneficiaries to squeal, scream, cry and ultimately demean. The issue? Why, President George W. Bush’s “lean” 2006 budget. Americans want their welfare state. The president’s budget, excluding defense,...

Thwarting America’s Energy Needs

Editor’s Note: This editorial was originally attributed to Tom DeWeese. The actual author is Alan Caruba. Well of course you want the entire shoreline of the East and West Coast to be filled with windmills producing insignificant amounts of energy. Nothing...

Dishwasher Economics

With TV cameras in tow, Channel 11 stopped at our restaurant last Tuesday to ask the afternoon kitchen crew how it felt about the new $52 occupation tax. Not surprisingly, no one liked it. Also not surprisingly, not much of the half-hour of filming ended up on TV,...

Do Corporations Have Social Responsibility?

On Jan. 20, 2005, J.P. Morgan Chase announced that it had completed research to determine whether it had any links to slavery. Its website (www2.bankone.com/presents/home/) announced: “Today, we are reporting that this research found that between 1831 and 1865...

Letter to the Editors: February 2005

Who is against human values? Dear Dr. Lewis, I am doing a paper on the topic of “What does a soul or center, if we have one, have to do with human values? I am taking the position of having a soul to be important and as a need in today’s society. I will...

“Academic Freedom”

“Academic Freedom”

Professor Ward Churchill of the University of Colorado seems to be enjoying his 15 minutes of infamy for his childish rants against people who were killed in the 9/11 attacks. Others of course resent his cheap shots at the dead, and some are trying to get him fired....

The Kind of “Freedom” Religion Brings

It appears increasingly likely that the U.S. backed government in Iraq will lose by a landslide, in favor of–surprise, surprise–Muslim fundamentalists. There will be official public statements from the U.S. government in coming days and weeks that the U.S....

Social Security: Saving Failure

Social Security: Saving Failure

It’s wrong to force people to pay into a coercive retirement system, run by the government at a poor return rate, when they could be making better and more profitable decisions on their own.

Filtering Out The Best

Filtering Out The Best

Having lost the White House, both houses of Congress, and a majority of the governorships and state legislatures, the Democrats are in an ugly and desperate mood, lashing out without regard to how their words and actions will affect this country’s position...

Not Yours To Give

Charity to man’s fellow man is praiseworthy, and Americans are the most generous people on Earth. According to a quote by American philanthropist Daniel Rose in “An Exceptional Nation,” an article in Philanthropy magazine (November/December 2004),...

Bury the Chains: How The West Ended Slavery

Bury the Chains: How The West Ended Slavery

To me the most staggering thing about the long history of slavery — which encompassed the entire world and every race in it — is that nowhere before the 18th century was there any serious question raised about whether slavery was right or wrong. In the...

Social Security: A Great Moral Failure

Social Security: A Great Moral Failure

In his State of the Union Address, President Bush said that many options were “on the table” to deal with Social Security’s problems, and that he “will listen to anyone who has a good idea to offer.” But there is one idea he will not...

Bedroom Economics in Germany

Bedroom Economics in Germany

Now that unemployment in Germany has hit 11.4 percent, it was perhaps inevitable that some politicians there would come up with various quick-fix “solutions” to the huge drain of unemployment compensation on the government’s budget. A young waitress...

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