Showing posts with label culture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label culture. Show all posts

Jay D. Homnick: Uncle Sam Finds His Snitch

The IRS invents a whole new kind of tax refund.   My attitude to the second Obama administration is captured in the old joke about Bertha who gets on the New York-to-Chicago Greyhound bus and asks the driver to let her know when they get to Cleveland. She keeps loudly reminding him every half-hour or so until he is ready to pull his hair out. But he    ... MORE

Walter E Williams: Cultural Deviancy, Not Guns

A problem of standards.    There's a story told about a Paris chief of police who was called to a department store to stop a burglary in progress. Upon his arrival, he reconnoitered the situation and ordered his men to surround the entrances of the building next door. When questioned about his actions, he replied that he didn't have enough men to cover  ... MORE

Zorianna Kit: Brad Pitt Blasts US 'War On Drugs'

Actor joins call for policy rethink. Brad Pitt has thrown his weight behind a documentary that blasts America's 40-year war on drugs as a failure, calling policies that imprison huge numbers of drug-users a "charade" in urgent need of a rethink. The Hollywood actor came aboard recently as an executive producer of filmmaker Eugene Jarecki's ... MORE

Art Carden: Isn't It High Time We Legalize Marijuana?

Filling prisons and ruining lives is not winning. On a couple of different occasions, I have used this space to call for an end to the economic, moral, and cultural disaster that is the drug war (1, 2, 3). American governments at all levels have been fighting the war on drugs for over four decades now, and it’s overwhelmingly clear that   ... MORE

It's Capitalism, Not Culture, That Fuels Economic Success

by Fareed Zakaria. Mitt Romney has explained that his comments abroad were simply truth-telling. “I tend to tell people what I actually believe,” he said. With regard to one much-debated comment — on the cultural differences between Israelis and Palestinians — many agree with him. The Wall Street Journal editorial page and columnists including     ... MORE

Lars Walker: Coexisting With Our Forefathers

Will young people understand the mindset of their ancestors? On the Fourth of July a friend and I visited Historic Fort Snelling in St. Paul, a reconstruction of the old fort as it looked about 1820. An interpreter, greeting us in uniform and shako, asked us if we'd ever been there before. I said I had, but it had been a while. "Well, we've made a few    ... MORE

Janice Shaw Crouse: Sacrificing Boys To Promote Girls

Pop culture is producing male losers. Casual observation of popular culture reveals that boys and men increasingly are being portrayed negatively, in contrast to women, who invariably are seen as more competent, efficient, successful and in charge. Television and Hollywood movies are producing a tsunami of negative stereotypes depicting  ... MORE

Walter E Williams: How Times Have Changed

A devolving society.    Having been born in 1936 has allowed me to witness both societal progress and retrogression. High on the list of things made better in our society are the great gains in civil liberties and economic opportunities, especially for racial minorities and women. People who are now deemed poor have a level of material wealth that would    ... MORE

Thomas Sowell: A Political Glossary - Part III

The distinction between cosmic justice & social justice. This is Part III in a series. Part I can be found here. Part II can be found here. If there were a Hall of Fame for political rhetoric, the phrase "social justice" would deserve a prominent place there. It has the prime virtue of political catchwords: It means many different things to many different  ... MORE

William Ward: The Unseen Message Of The Hunger Games

Sparking a thirst for liberty?    Though the liberal media and leftist Hollywood are wrapping themselves in The Hunger Games, the book series' pro-individualism, anti-socialist/communist/totalitarianism message has thus far eluded them -- but the legions of children reading the books are getting the message. When I learned that my teenage sons -- macho young lads ... MORE

Danielle Sullivan: Political Correctness Runs Amok In N.Y.

Words banned as protection from "unpleasant emotions." In an extreme case of political correctness, New York City has recently created a list of words that will be banned from New York State tests. You might be thinking that perhaps the words might be slanderous or even elude to atrocities, like slavery, and while words pertaining to slavery have ... MORE

Jonathan Turley: Free Speech Under Fire

First Amendment gives way to blasphemy and hate speech. The recent exchange between an atheist and a judge in a small courtroom in rural Pennsylvania could have come out of a Dickens novel. Magisterial District Judge Mark Martin was hearing a case in which an irate Muslim stood accused of attacking an atheist, Ernest Perce, because he was wearing a  ... MORE

Charles Murray: Why We Dislike The Rich

It's not just the money. The Pew Foundation discovered in a recent poll that tensions over inequality in wealth now outrank tensions over race and immigration. But income inequality isn’t really the problem. A new upper class is the problem. And their wealth isn’t what sets them apart or creates so much animosity toward them. He is not just in the 1%;   ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - Legalize Blackmail


Note the difference between blackmail and extortion. Extortion indicates the use or threat of force to obtain money or favor. Blackmail is simply the use or threat of an inconvenient truth to obtain money or favor. To avoid blackmail, one only needs to live a life they are not ashamed of. No one is suggesting extortion be legal.

Thomas Sowell: Social Degeneration, Part One

Facing reality. Someone at long last has had the courage to tell the plain, honest truth about race. After mobs of young blacks rampaged through Philadelphia committing violence -- as similar mobs have rampaged through Chicago, Denver, Milwaukee and other places -- Philadelphia's black ... MORE  
Social Degeneration Part Two                     Social Degeneration Part Three

Walter E Williams: Education Is Worse Than We Thought

Last December, I reported on Harvard University professor Stephan Thernstrom's essay "Minorities in College — Good News, But...," on Minding the Campus, a website sponsored by the New York-based Manhattan Institute. He was commenting on the results of the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress, saying that the scores "mean that black students  ... MORE