For more than two centuries, the political left has been preoccupied with the fate of criminals, often while ignoring or downplaying the fate of the victims of those criminals.
So it is hardly surprising that a recent New York Times editorial has returned to a familiar theme among those...
It is painful to watch defenders of Barack Obama tying themselves into knots trying to evade the obvious.
Some are saying that Senator Obama cannot be held responsible for what his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, said. In their version of events, Barack Obama just happened to be in the wrong...
Leaders of the Democratic Party and much of the media are wringing their hands over what to do about Democratic voters in Florida and Michigan, in order not to leave them out of the process of picking a nominee, and perhaps alienating them as for as the general election in...
government may be incompetent, corporations
at times myopic, and the military imperfect, seeing politics through the
prism of a Thomas … "I began reading not only the economics of ThomasSowell (our greatest
contemporary philosopher) but Milton Friedman, Paul Johnson…
." -- ThomasSowell
We're far too cavalier as a society about tinkering with our society's most important traditions and customs … "There are no solutions, only trade-offs." -- ThomasSowell
The government is always promising to "fix" some problem or another…
Random thoughts on the passing scene:
Most of the problems of this country are not nearly as bad as the "solutions" -- especially the solutions that politicians come up with during election years.
Some people actually think that televising Congress gives us information. What it really does is give politicians...
There was a real irony in the recent intervention by the Federal Reserve System to provide the money that enabled the firm of JPMorgan Chase to buy Bear Stearns before it went bankrupt. The point was to try to prevent a domino effect of panic in the financial markets that...
The latest political crusade is the crusade to replace ordinary light bulbs with the new CFL light bulb that is supposed to save electricity, reducing the need for fossil fuels and helping the fight against global warming.
Since crusaders seldom stop to weigh the cost of what they are advocating,...
An e-mail from a reader said that, while Hillary Clinton tells lies, Barack Obama is himself a lie. That is becoming painfully apparent with each new revelation of how drastically his carefully crafted image this election year contrasts with what he has actually been saying and doing for many years....
If Senator John McCain needed to prove that he is a real Republican, he did it when he continued an old Republican tradition of utterly inept attempts to appeal to black voters.
Senator McCain was booed at a recent memorial on the anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King,...
Many years ago, a great hitter named Paul Waner was nearing the end of his long career. He entered a ballgame with 2,999 hits -- one hit away from the landmark total of 3,000, which so many hitters want to reach, but which relatively few actually do reach.
Waner hit...
Why does college cost so much?
There are two basic reasons. The first is that people will pay what the colleges charge. The second is that there is little incentive for colleges to reduce the tuition they charge.
Those who want the government to provide subsidies to help meet the...
Those who argue that the taxpayers should be forced to subsidize people who go to colleges and universities seldom bother to think beyond the notion that education is a Good Thing.
Some education is not only a good thing but a great thing. But, like most good things, there are...
Thomas Sowell's recent column, "Republicans and Blacks," (April 10, 2008) pointed out the foolhardiness of Republican strategy to secure … Sowell suggests that Republican strategy should be to highlight the liberal Democratic agenda that has done great harm to the poorest…
A front-page headline in the New York Times captures much of the economic confusion of our time: "Fewer Options Open to Pay for Costs of College."
The whole article is about the increased costs of college, the difficulties...
Sometimes unrelated events nevertheless tell a coherent story.
One newspaper story that caught my eye recently was about two high-powered schools in South Korea where Korean girls study 15 hours a day, preparing themselves for tests to get...
Sometimes unrelated events nevertheless tell a coherent story.
One newspaper story that caught my eye recently was about two high-powered schools in South Korea where Korean girls study 15 hours a day, preparing themselves for tests to get into elite colleges in the United States. Harvard, Yale and Princeton already...
In one of those typical San Francisco decisions that makes San Francisco a poster child for the liberal left, the city's Board of Supervisors is moving to block a paint store from renting a vacant building once used by a video rental shop.
That paint store is part of a...
Let's face it. Supply and demand will never replace "need" and "greed" in political discussions of economic issues.
Talking about the "need" for more affordable housing or more affordable medical care is what will get politicians more votes this election year.
Voters don't want to hear about impersonal things...
Some people think that the reason the public misunderstands so many issues is that these issues are too "complex" for most voters. But is that really so?
With all the commotion in the media and in politics about the high price of gasoline, is there really some terribly complex explanation?...
"Killing an Unarmed Man." That is how the front-page headline in the New York Times characterized an incident in which a man tried to run over a policeman with his car and was shot by three policemen on the scene, including his intended victim.
An automobile is a deadly weapon....
