Walter E. Williams from Creators Syndicate

Oklahoma Rebellion for 07/16/2008

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

One of the unappreciated casualties of the War of 1861, erroneously called a Civil War, was its contribution to the erosion of constitutional guarantees of state sovereignty. It settled the issue of secession, making it possible for the federal government to increasingly run roughshod over Ninth and 10th Amendment guarantees. A civil war, by the way, is a struggle where two or more parties try ...

Updated: Wed Jul 16, 2008

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Black Education for 07/23/2008

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

"Hard Times at Douglass High," is an HBO documentary that aired last June. It captured much of the 2004-2005 school year at Baltimore's predominantly black Frederick Douglass High School. The tragedy is that what is seen in the documentary is typical of most predominantly black urban schools.

Douglass' students are four to five years below grade level. Most of its ninth-graders ...

Updated: Wed Jul 23, 2008

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Environmentalists' Hold on Congress for 07/30/2008

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Let's face it. The average individual American has little or no clout with Congress and can be safely ignored. But it's a different story with groups such as Environmental Defense Fund, Sierra Club and The Nature Conservancy. When they speak, Congress listens. Unlike the average American, they are well organized, loaded with cash and well positioned to be a disobedient congressman's worse night ...

Updated: Wed Jul 30, 2008

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A Nation of Thieves for 08/06/2008

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Edgar K. Browning, professor of economics at Texas A&M University, has a new book aptly titled "Stealing from Each Other." Its subtitle, "How the Welfare State Robs Americans of Money and Spirit," goes to the heart of what the book is about. The rise of equalitarian ideology has driven Americans to steal from one another. Browning explains that certain kinds of equality ...

Updated: Wed Aug 06, 2008

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Patterns of Black Excellence for 08/13/2008

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Most people know the tragic state of black education today. We know that billions of dollars are spent on federal government programs such as No Child Left Behind and the billions spent by state and local governments. If you were to ask an education "expert" to explain the tragedy, you'd get answers such as racial discrimination and underfunding.

My colleague Dr. Thomas Sowell ...

Updated: Wed Aug 13, 2008

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Economic Myths for 08/20/2008

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

By taking a couple of courses in economic theory, we could immunize ourselves from nonsense spouted by politicians and pundits, but in the meantime check out Professor John R. Lott's "Freedomnomics: Why the Free Market Works."

His first chapter is "Are You Being Ripped Off?" It addresses myths about predation where it's sometimes alleged that corporations will charge ...

Updated: Wed Aug 20, 2008

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Is College Worth It? for 08/27/2008

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

As parents pack their youngsters off to college, they might ask themselves whether it's worth both the money they will spend and their children's time. Dr. Marty Nemko has researched that question in an article aptly titled "America's Most Over-rated Product: Higher Education (www.martynemko.com/articles/americas-most-overrated-product-higher-education_id1539)."

The U.S. Depart ...

Updated: Wed Aug 27, 2008

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Academic Mismatch I for 09/03/2008

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Which serves the interests of the black community better: a black student admitted to a top-tier law school, such as Harvard, Stanford or Yale, and winds up in the bottom 10 percent of his class, flunks out, or cannot pass the bar examination, or a black student admitted to a far less prestigious law school, performs just as well as his white peers, graduates and passes the bar? I, and hopefull ...

Updated: Wed Sep 03, 2008

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Academic Mismatch II for 09/10/2008

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Last week's column demonstrated the harm, suffered by black students, that results from law school race-based admission policies. The bottom line was that black students who might have done well at lower-tier law schools were recruited to more highly competitive law schools and turned into failures. One might be tempted to place the full blame for such callousness on deans of law schools, but t ...

Updated: Wed Sep 10, 2008

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Stubborn Ignorance for 09/17/2008

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Here's what the U.S. Constitution says: "All bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills." How many times have we heard politicians, pundits and guardians of our news media say that President Bush cut taxes, or Obama is going to raise taxes? The fact of the matter is that presidents h ...

Updated: Wed Sep 17, 2008

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Scaring Us to Death for 09/24/2008

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

There is a H.L. Mencken quotation that captures the essence of this year's politics: "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, and hence clamorous to be led to safety, by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." The media, economic "experts" and both presidential candidates are making bad-talking our economy key fe ...

Updated: Wed Sep 24, 2008

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Destroying Liberty for 10/01/2008

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis warned, "The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding." The freedom of individuals from compulsion or coercion never was, and is not now, the normal state of human affairs. The normal state for the ordinary person is tyranny, arbitrary control and abuse mainly by their own ...

Updated: Wed Oct 01, 2008

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Lessons From the Bailout for 10/08/2008

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

In my more cynical moments, I think that we Americans deserve what we get from our politicians, many of whom can be generally described as nothing less than loathsome. You say, "Williams, that's a pretty heavy putdown." My question to you is how else would you describe these congressmen who are now blaming the financial mess on the failure of the free market? Starting with the Communi ...

Updated: Wed Oct 08, 2008

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Political Monopoly Power for 10/15/2008

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

The Federalist Papers, written by James Madison, John Jay and Alexander Hamilton, is the document most frequently referred to when trying to get a feel for the original intent of the framers of the Constitution. One such intention is found in Federalist 56 where Madison says, "...it seems to give the fullest assurance, that a representative for every thirty thousand inhabitants will render ...

Updated: Wed Oct 15, 2008

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Affordable Health Care for 10/22/2008

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

One of the campaign themes this election cycle is "affordable" health care. Shouldn't we ask ourselves whether we want the politicians who brought us the "affordable" housing, that created the current financial debacle, to now deliver us affordable health care? Shouldn't we also ask how things turned out in countries where there is socialized medicine?

The Vancouver, ...

Updated: Wed Oct 22, 2008

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Wackonomics for 10/29/2008

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

For the U.S. Congress, news media, pundits and much of the American public, a lot of economic phenomena can be explained by what people want, human greed and what seems plausible. I'm going to name this branch of economic "science" wackonomics and apply it to some of today's observations and issues.

Since July this year, crude oil prices have fallen from $147 to $64 a barrel. S ...

Updated: Wed Oct 29, 2008

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Capitalism and the Financial Crisis for 11/05/2008

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

There has always been contempt for economic liberty. Historically, our nation was an important, not complete, exception. It took the calamity of the Great Depression to bring about today's level of restrictions on economic liberty. Now we have another government-created calamity that has the prospect of moving us even further away from economic liberty with the news media and pundits creating t ...

Updated: Wed Nov 05, 2008

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Getting Beyond Race for 11/12/2008

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Despite the fact that President-elect Barack Obama's vision for our nation leaves a lot to be desired, the fact that he was elected represents a remarkable national achievement. When the War of 1861 ended, neither a former slave nor slave owner would have believed it possible for a black to be elected president in a mere century and a half, if ever. I'm sure that my grandparents, born in the 18 ...

Updated: Wed Nov 12, 2008

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Evil Concealed by Money for 11/19/2008

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Evil acts can be given an aura of moral legitimacy by noble-sounding socialistic expressions such as spreading the wealth, income redistribution or caring for the less fortunate. Let's think about socialism.

Imagine there's an elderly widow down the street from you. She has neither the strength to mow her lawn nor enough money to hire someone to do it. Here's my question to you that I'm ...

Updated: Wed Nov 19, 2008

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Trade versus Protectionism for 11/26/2008

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

There's a growing anti-trade sentiment in our country. Much of the dialogue is grossly misinformed. Let's try to untangle it a bit with a few questions and observations. First, does the U.S. trade with Japan and England? Put another way, is it members of the U.S. Congress trading with their counterparts in the Japanese Diet or the English Parliament? An affirmative answer is pure nonsense. When ...

Updated: Wed Nov 26, 2008

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