 Why Taxes are Really a Bad Thing
by Tibor R. Machan
This is one of my favorite topics because I like to tell it like it is even when so many fashionable folks think I am way off base. You've heard it before, I am sure - taxes are the price we pay for civilization. Bunk - that's a ruse someone who loved big government dearly tried to perpetrate and, yes, and one with which he managed to fool quite a lot of people. Millions still believe that taxes are necessary just to have a decent community. (Read more...)
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 Thanks for the Technology!
by Tibor R. Machan
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 nearly 17 times. (Read more...)
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 Foreign Affairs Quandaries
by Tibor R. Machan
Since early in its history America has been a world power and even aside from the ambitions of some of its leaders and citizens, it has been called upon increasingly by many leaders of other nations to come and fight in their behalf. (Read more...)
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Europe's Welfare State Troubles
by Tibor R. Machan
The Hungarian economist Janos Kornia argued, in his book The Road to the Free Economy (W.W. Norton, 1990) that welfare states are a very bad idea for developing (and post-communist) countries because, well, they haven't enough rich people from whom to extort the resources with which to provide goods and services to those who have been promised these free of charge. (Read more...)
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Right to Privacy - is it in the Constitution?
by Tibor R. Machan
One old criticism of a more libertarian interpretation of the US Constitution, one leveled at the court when it overturned a Connecticut law banning contraception and when it spoke of the right to privacy in Roe v. Wade, is that no right to privacy is mentioned in that famous legal document. And there certainly is none listed explicitly, not at least in the original version. (Read more...)
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Film as Hazardous Propaganda
by Tibor R. Machan
As a regular viewer of Sundance films, mostly to satisfy my need for cultural anthropology lessons and because I do like some aspects of what they offer, I caught, just the other day, Jonathan Nossiter's "Signs & Wonders." The movie is about an American adulterer in Athens whose wife hooks up with a really angry, anti-American zealot. The zealot is, of course, depicted as a hero since he hates globalization, was a part of the Leftist resistance to the Greek dictatorship that the U.S. Government supported, and knows in his heart that he is absolutely right and expresses this in every move of his body. (Read more...)
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Why the Fuss about Gay Marriages?
by Tibor R. Machan
Canada is now recognizing gay marriages and many in America think it is scandalous that this country is lagging behind. What, Canada more free and tolerant than the USA? Surely that's shameful. (Read more...)
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Socialism in Santa Fe
by Tibor R. Machan
Santa Fe, New Mexico, is a very well known and fashionable desert town and, like its equivalent in California, Santa Barbara, largely in the hands of a bunch of meddlesome lefties. (Read more...)
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 Good Night David Brinkley
by Tibor R. Machan
Many moons ago, when he was still with NBC-TV, I wrote to David Brinkley and we got into a brief correspondence about journalistic objectivity. He was against it. Well, actually, he just didn't think it could be achieved, however hard anyone might try. (Read more...)
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Martha Stewart versus the State
by Tibor R. Machan
Did Martha Stewart do anything morally or ethically wrong? (Read more...)
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 Second thoughts
by Tibor R. Machan
It's important to challenge one's most deeply held beliefs. (Read more...)
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Addressing the Arguments of a Mayor
by Tibor R. Machan
The Mayor of Ft. Collins, CO, published a letter on his web site in response to a student who protested smoking ordinances and quoted me to indicate the problem with such laws. (Read more...)
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Terrorism, Government and Security
by Tibor R. Machan
In light of the very real threat of more terrorism to come, targeting Western type institutions around the globe, there is a great deal of temptation to simply abandon various principles of the rule of law, especially due process, in the name of an effective response. (Read more...)
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Redevelopment, Democracy and Property Rights
by Tibor R. Machan
We have in and around the community where I live, just as do millions of others throughout the country and, indeed, the world, many public projects beloved by large numbers of people, often even the majority. These are often called "redevelopments" and are unabashedly destructive of the institution of private property rights by deploying, quite brazenly and arbitrarily, the eminent domain powers of government so as to take property from some and lease it to others who would "improve" it. Usually, the improvements involve some prettying up of strips of roadside or altogether reconstituting a business neighborhood so it looks presentable to those who drive by or stop there to trade. (Read more...)
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Wrong Take on Basic Human Rights
by Tibor R. Machan
Academia's notion of "rights". (Read more...)
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So what is it With Liberty?
by Tibor R. Machan
Las Vegas, Nevada. At the annual meeting of the Association of Private Enterprise Education this year, there were about 200 participants and several dozens of meetings, come concurrent, some plenary, but the main question that kept coming up everywhere was roughly the same: Why is it so difficult to get people to realize that individual liberty is all around far better than government regimentation; (Read more...)
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America Alone?
by Tibor R. Machan
It would not be the first time. Certainly, philosophically America has been nearly alone all its history (Read more...)
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Politicizing the Courts
by Tibor R. Machan
The idea is that the country was founded and continues to be organized on the basis of certain basic principles of justice that its constitution embodies. (Read more...)
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Treated Like Children
by Tibor R. Machan
Safety, when it is mindless, tends to be short-lived. (Read more...)
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Can Industry Block Regulation?
by Tibor R. Machan
Well, in my book this last is all that would be necessary in a society in which adults are treated as, well, adults, not as babies. (Read more...)
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Terrorism and Provocation
by Tibor R. Machan
Provocation is not any kind of excuse to be either violent toward or intimate with someone. (Read more...)
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Safe at Any Speed
by Tibor R. Machan
Doesn't anyone remember Ralph Nader's first bestseller, Unsafe at Any Speed? (Read more...)
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Why Liberty is Necessary for Morality
by Tibor R. Machan
It is often taken to be a feature of a free society that it rests on the belief that no one can tell what is morally right or wrong. That is supposed to be why people are not imposed upon with strictures the government forces them to follow. If, however, we could determine what is right and wrong, then, the idea follows, government could just proceed to force everyone to behave right. (Read more...)
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Wednesday
February 26, 2003 |
 What's it with the Sopranos?
by Tibor R. Machan
Art and entertainment, especially, are a bit like fashion - some of it is really awful in any case but a lot of it is quite suitable for some, now and then, here and there. Ever since the Sopranos made it big on HBO, I've been wondering how this applies to them. Are they truly awful, in any case, or could they be bona fide entertainment for some decent folks, perhaps? (Read more...)
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The obtuseness of Sen. Lott
by Tibor R. Machan
Let me start by quoting the now infamous remarks of Sen. Trent Lott at the birthday bash for Sen. Strom Thurmond: "I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had of followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either." (Read more...)
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