EDITORIAL Showing 1251 - 1300 of 1951
'Civilized People Don't Buy Gold'
May 05, 2012
"Civilized people don't buy gold," Munger told CNBC yesterday in an exclusive "sit down" interview. It wasn't some off-the-cuff remark, either, as he went on to remind us that "gold is only useful if you're a Jewish family in Vienna in 1939" and "sewing it" int ...
Rich Bashing Is Unjust and Vicious
May 04, 2012
The casual manner in which President Obama proposes that various progressive tax measures be implemented against the so-called rich – ones who earn more than two million a year – is indicative of just how deep-seated and widespread is the prejudice against ...
The Physical Case for Happiness
May 04, 2012
We are all familiar with the basic guidelines for good health: exercise, eat right - more fruits and veggies, less red meat, more fish, fewer calories, more fiber, less sugar, don't smoke, don't abuse alcohol or drugs. If people would follow these guidelines an ...
The Costs of War
May 01, 2012
This month Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric K. Shinseki announced the addition of some 1,900 mental health nurses, psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers to its existing workforce of 20,590 mental health staff in attempt to get a handle on the epidemic ...
Fox TV versus The New York Times
April 30, 2012
My team of media researchers is on vacation just now, so I have to do this by myself, based on my non-scientific study of the journalistic lay of the land. What I have concluded from years of observation is that Fox TV news is widely scoffed at by erudite folks ...
If Attacks on Libertarianism Get Problem Wrong, Can the Solution Be Correct?
April 28, 2012
The alternative media shop Truthout has posted an article intended to "stimulate a healthy dialogue about whether there is a conservative political tradition that can actually work with progressives." The article focuses on today's American conservatism, which ...
The Banality of Tyranny
April 27, 2012
German-Jewish (and eventually naturalized American) philosopher Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) outraged the Left with her definitive account of modern tyranny, The Origins of Totalitarianism. Written in 1951 when Stalin was still ruling the Soviet Union and worshipp ...
The Economic Tyranny of the Interstate Commerce Clause
April 26, 2012
Here is an instructive comment from Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg during the recent oral arguments presented about Obamacare: "People who don't participate in this market are making it much more expensive for the people who do; that is, they will ge ...
CISPA is the New SOPA
April 24, 2012
Earlier this year, strong public opposition led by several prominent websites forced congressional leaders to cancel votes on two bills known in Washington as "SOPA" and "PIPA." Both of these bills threatened search engines and websites with possible shutdowns ...
Altruism Isn't Generosity
April 23, 2012
A big error has haunted humanity for centuries: it's the equivocation between generosity and altruism. The former is a virtue any decent human being will practice: It asks of one to reach out to deserving others in times of dire need. The latter is a policy of ...
Is Zimmerman America's Dreyfus?
April 21, 2012
I've been tracking the George Zimmerman case and it does seem to have some surface parallels to the infamous Dreyfus Affair. For those of you who may not know, Dreyfus was a Jew who was accused of passing French military secrets to the German Embassy in Paris. ...
The JOBS Act: Washington Takes One Step Back Toward Capitalism
April 20, 2012
I know my editorial credibility and reader confidence will suddenly collapse when this goes to print but I have some good news out of Washington and Congress. Yes, I know what you are getting ready to do but don't hit the delete button just yet! The JOBS Act is ...
Paradoxes About Intruding on Nature
April 19, 2012
Whether this is deliberate I don't know, but many movies made for children these days have strong moralistic messages that say: "We human beings are the scourge of the universe!" The very popular production of Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park onto the big scree ...
Professor Obama Gets an F
April 17, 2012
Last week President Obama made some rather shocking comments at a press conference regarding the Supreme Court's deliberation on the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare. His comments belie a grasp of constitutional ...
On Misreading Sunstein
April 16, 2012
A while back The New York Times Magazine ran what amounts to a puff piece about Harvard Law Professor Cass Sunstein, President Obama's long-time friend, former colleague and one of America's regulation czars. It was penned by Benjamin Wallace-Wells, who is iden ...
Panic
April 16, 2012
Panic: 'of Pan,' the god of woods and fields who was the source of mysterious sounds that caused contagious, groundless fear in herds and crowds, or in people in lonely spots (World English Dictionary). At the famous Battle of Marathon in 490 BC, the outnumbere ...
Merck baldness drugs destroy sperm, cause infertility and ejaculation disorders, even after you stop using them
April 15, 2012
Hey, men! Looking for a way to ruin your sex life and become infertile? Try Propecia or Proscar, two drugs from the vaccine giant Merck, whose top vaccine scientist Dr. Maurice Hilleman already admitted that Merck's vaccines contained "stealth viruses" that cau ...
Regulation, Kobe Beef – and the Titanic, Too
April 14, 2012
What do Kobe Beef and the Titanic have in common? They both are the subjects of articles this week that deal with regulation. Regulatory democracy is surely a meme of the 20th century, a dominant social theme of what we call the power elite, a small group of dy ...
Part II – Paul Supporters: Why Our Political Future Is In the GOP
April 12, 2012
So What is the Future for Liberty in Our Closed Political Monopoly? Let's take over the GOP from the inside rather than fight them in a rigged election process where third-party candidates are hidden by a news blackout enforced by both parties and the main stre ...
What About Those Hoodies?
April 12, 2012
Actually, I didn't encounter such an explanation at the time, nor since then, after the role the hoodie had in the Florida fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin, the African-American teen, a shooting that has unleashed much controversy about hoodies, starting with F ...
Part I – Beware the Establishment's Third Party Trap
April 11, 2012
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." – Albert Einstein Recently, Justin Raimondo wrote a thoughtful editorial, "Ron, Don't Let Your Heroic Effort End In Tampa." I agree with Justin about how the GOP is actually ...
In Praise of Private Charity
April 10, 2012
One of the great fallacies of our time is that if government doesn't do something, no one will. Its corollary is that if you are opposed to the government doing something, you are opposed to anyone performing that function at all. These disastrous fallacies col ...
America's JOBS Act Power Elite Yelp
April 09, 2012
Did you read that on March 27th Congress passed the JOBS act, which stands for "Jumpstart Our Business Start-ups." There have been several write-ups of this bill now, including a lengthy one in the Economist magazine. Is this the beginning of a reversal of the ...
Instead of Zoning…What?
April 09, 2012
I have argued before why zoning laws are inconsistent with a free society's principles, in particular with the principle of private property rights. Basically they amount to impositions by some people on others of conditions for using property that the owner is ...
Tax Bill Is Beginning of Formal Debt Criminalization
April 07, 2012
The United States Congress is steadily headed to a place where those who owe money to the US government shall be treated criminally. The first shot in this latest campaign took place in 2010 when US President Barack Obama signed into law The Foreign Account Tax ...
How Not to Treat Ideas
April 05, 2012
The philosophical school I consider most sensible sees ideas as the means by which human beings gain understanding of reality. Ideas are what help us navigate reality so we can live successfully, which is why so much effort has been spent on developing, critici ...
Sleep Like a Hobbit: Calming a Mistaken Anxiety
April 04, 2012
Hobbits, as you know, are the adorable and heroic creatures of J.R.R. Tolkien's books, and "The Lord of the Rings" movie trilogy. When it comes to sleep, we may be more like hobbits than even Tolkien imagined. Getting a good night's sleep is one of the fundamen ...
The Supreme Court and Obamacare
April 03, 2012
Last week the Supreme Court heard arguments concerning the constitutionality of the Obamacare law, focusing on the mandate requiring every American to buy health insurance or pay fines enforced by the IRS. Hopefully the Court will strike down this abomination, ...
Ayn Rand's Case for Human Liberty
April 02, 2012
Although most libertarians and classical liberals are champions of human (individual) liberty, the reasons they give vary. Some are utilitarians and hold, along with John Stuart Mill, that when free, men and women are most likely to advance the cause of the gre ...
Afghan al-Qaeda 'Plotting' Another 9/11?
March 31, 2012
The UK Telegraph is reporting that "Al-Qaeda fighters have returned to Afghanistan and will use the country as a base to launch September 11-style attacks on Western cities." This gem has been launched – like a lead balloon – by the American ambassador to K ...
Disputing Positive Rights
March 30, 2012
An influential idea in contemporary political philosophy is positive rights (or liberty). It has been advanced by political thinkers on both the Right and the Left. In contrast to the theory of basic natural rights that John Locke developed, in terms of which e ...
Genuine Military Defense, Anyone?
March 29, 2012
As much as one may object to Iran's government's efforts to build atomic weapons, the American government isn't supposed to be some kind of meta-police that embarks upon restraining such governments! Certainly spending American taxpayers' funds on conducting mi ...
The Progressive Mistake
March 28, 2012
"A year from now, ten? They'll swing back to the belief that they can make people... better. And I do not hold to that. So no more runnin'. I aim to misbehave." – Captain Malcolm "Mal" Reynolds, in "Serenity" The Progressive Movement is based on a mistaken vi ...
A Fistful of Euros
March 27, 2012
This week, my congressional committee will hold a hearing to examine how the Federal Reserve bails out European banks, propping up spendthrift European governments in the process. Unfortunately, this bailout comes at the expense of American citizens, in the for ...
The Tenacity of the Nihilists
March 26, 2012
In the book Reading Obama (Princeton, 2010), James T. Kloppenberg makes a case for how the kind of approach President Obama takes to public policy is now widely preferred, to put it paradoxically, on principle at the most prestigious universities. Obama's rejec ...
The FATCA Partner Framework – Automatic Information Exchange is Firmly Planted
March 26, 2012
"A great wave of oppressive tyranny isn´t going to strike, but rather a slow seepage of oppressive laws and regulations from within will sink the American dream of liberty." ~ George Baumler (Libertarian, Blogger 'Baumler's Rant') Across the world, but particu ...
UN Strikes Back at 'Net With ITU Agency?
March 24, 2012
The Empire is most definitely striking back. Between the huge and secretive data center being built in Utah to intercept and analyze the world's communications, Barack Obama's newly signed executive order that allows him "emergency" powers and the near-passage ...
There are No Magic Shortcuts to Genuine Human Love and Caring
March 24, 2012
When I was a boy, I was very impressed by an old 1936 movie based on an H.G. Wells short story called "The Man Who Could Work Miracles." I am about to spoil the movie for you. George McWhirter Fotheringay is given the power to perform miracles. He stumbles abou ...
Prudence versus Greed
March 22, 2012
Most people mean by greed an "excessive or rapacious desire, especially for wealth or possessions." As to prudence, it is the quality of being cautious with regard to practical matters and especially in regard for one's own economic interests, being careful in ...
Demolishing Due Process
March 20, 2012
It is ironic but perhaps sadly appropriate that Attorney General Eric Holder would choose a law school, Northwestern University, to deliver a speech earlier this month in which he demolished what was left of the rule of law in America. In what history likely wi ...
A Prominent Pair of False Alternatives
March 19, 2012
Jon Gertner, author of the forthcoming The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation,* writes for The New York Times (in an excerpt from his book), about innovation in America. I spotted the piece and immediately suspected there was a hid ...
Winning
March 17, 2012
We track dominant social themes here at The Daily Bell, and the spectacular implosion of the "Stop Kony 2012" campaign is a further example of how these memes are disintegrating under the pressure of what we call the Internet Reformation. We commented on this i ...
Thanks for the Technology!
March 15, 2012
In 1972 I bought a Volvo P1800 off the Chevy used car lot in Santa Barbara, California. I owned that car for 20 years and am still sad to have had to sell it in 1992, after putting 250,000 miles on it and driving it back and forth over the USA about 17 times. I ...
The Virtue of Independent Thought and Action – In Your Investments, Too!
March 15, 2012
"For those who would joyously march in rank and file, they have already earned my contempt, for they were given a large brain by accident when a spinal cord would have sufficed." ~ Albert Einstein In order to keep up with what is going on in the world, and in o ...
An Administration Gone Rogue
March 13, 2012
Have certain parts of the Constitution become irrelevant, as a former Republican leader once told me at a Foreign Affairs Committee hearing? At the time, I was told that demanding a congressional declaration of war before invading Iraq, as Article I Section 8 o ...
Having to Fund Immoral Policies
March 12, 2012
At the outset I am talking about what someone considers immoral, not what is objectively immoral. Nonetheless, millions are coerced by governments, backed by other millions, to work and pay for what they consider morally wrong. Is that right? Is it avoidable in ...
Real Reason for Prosecutions of Bodog.com and Megaupload?
March 10, 2012
With the attacks on Internet websites Megaupload and Bodog we find what we call the Internet Reformation is providing us with a good look at the evolving face of Western-style civil and criminal justice. Kim Dotcom, the founder of Megaupload, a file-sharing fac ...
No Paul = No Vote in November
March 10, 2012
I would also say of Ron Paul – he doesn't need to win. In his view he is winning already. This is an ideological point he is making. But here's why it's electorally significant – a lot of people, I mean 41 percent in Virginia, only two people on the ballot, ...
Egalitarian Fallacies Galore!
March 08, 2012
I assume that writers like me want to be read, not ignored. But, alas, there isn't much we can do about this except perhaps fine-tune our craft. Even that merely improves the odds. No one can make others read one's works. Thousands are simply left unread. (Do t ...
Culture and Envy
March 07, 2012
We have a genuine problem. Envy, fear of envy and deflecting envy may be the most dangerous and difficult aspects of human nature for us to wrestle with as we seek to progress toward greater freedom. As formerly poor and unfree countries open up and allow the p ...
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