Articles: November 2006 Archives

George Mason University economics professor Russell Roberts, who runs the CafeHayek blog along with his colleague Don Boudreaux, has put together a short but sophisticated presentation about the trade deficit and its effect on domestic employment. Roberts seeks to rebut the common claim that the trade deficit leads to a loss of American jobs More

If people were asked about actor Michael Richards' epithet-laced outburst at a Los Angeles nightclub, there would be a lot of focus on the verbal assault but very little on an assault on freedom of speech. In truth, however, if there's anything at all relating to this story that rises above gossip-column fodder, it's that it's also fuel for demagogues who seek control over discourse in America. More

The scene is a darkened, wood-paneled office with a huge oak door providing entrance to a dimly lit, sanctified chamber. On each side of the portal stands a tall, husky man wearing a 3-piece suit and a sinister countenance. More

On November 27, 2006, the media stepped up their demands for an immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq by officially naming the incursion a civil war. While questioning their motives, Americans must also be extremely concerned with how quickly these same voices will demand our military be sent back in a humanitarian effort to halt the inevitable post-retreat genocide. More

Thanks to the development of mass media inclined to oppose the nation's efforts to obtain military victory, a new path to victory has opened up for America's enemies. More

The Democrats have an interesting method of turning events into self-fulfilling prophesies. They say they're for the troops, but against the war (after they were for it). Then, they proceed to endanger the lives of the troops by condemning the war, thereby giving aid and comfort to the enemy More

"It is 1938; Iran is Germany; and it is racing to acquire nuclear weapons." Benjamin Netanyahu repeatedly punctuated his speech in Los Angeles earlier this month with that sentence. It was an effective rhetorical device, conveying both a sense of threat and a sense of urgency. But 1938 may be relevant in more ways than as a rhetorical device. Revisiting that year, through Winston Churchill's compelling account in "The Gathering Storm," is an instructive exercise More

Elections have consequences. And for our recent election, the consequences have been a major setback in the war on terror and a greater threat to terrorist attack at home. This is so because a public with an attention deficit disorder has elected a liberal congress that wants pull the plug on Iraq at the first face-saving chance they get. More

According to the exit polls at the November election the American people think that the Democrats are more likely than Republicans to limit government spending. Can this really be true? In reality, we should be encouraged. The opinion polls are telling us that Democrats, at least when they are talking to the voters rather than among themselves, are talking spending restraint More

Things are getting positively biblical in the War on Terror's African front. According to Agence France Presse, Ethiopia is about to attack the Somali Islamists single-handed, on their own hook, and with assistance from nobody. On Thursday Prime Minister Meles Zenawi told the Ethiopian parliament that the Islamists represented "a clear threat to Ethiopia" and that the government had "completed the preparations" for full-scale war. More

In the last thousand years there has been only one new idea regarding government: that government should not be left in the hands of a divinely-guided king, or pharaoh, or caliph, but that so far as possible it should be in the hands of unwashed slobs like us. Those nations that have adopted this approach have grown prosperous, dynamic and tolerant. Those that resisted it, or perverted it by creating "a state of the peasants and workers" that in fact was ruled by a tiny despotic clique, have slid into stagnation, or catastrophe. More

Every single day, hundreds of African tribesmen are killed in Darfur by militias acting with the blessing of Sudan's Arab Islamist government. Each day, Hamas bombs from Gaza deliberately target innocent Israeli civilians in Sderot: although the weapons are crude, they occasionally find their mark More

Christmas came early to the Sheppard residence this year. A Daily Kos diarist wrote a blog post on the day before Thanksgiving about some articles I penned over the summer. This precipitated a flood of glorious tidings to my inbox from strangers across the fruited plain the entire holiday weekend. More

It's easy to say what the Democrats won't be in 2008. They won't be the Party of Franklin Roosevelt or Harry Truman or John Kennedy. They won't even turn to Woodrow Wilson for inspiration. None of these presidents truly capture who the Democrats are today, at least when it comes to the War on Terror. So, who are today's Democrats, or, better, who will they be in 2008? More

The peaceful transfer of political power in this country is taken as a given and is rightly considered a distinguishing characteristic of American governance. Not one of the presidential Inauguration Days that occur every four years has ever been marred by violence and only once, when Abraham Lincoln took the oath of office, was the use of violence threatened. It cannot be said, however, that political power is always transferred tranquilly. More

According to the New Testament, is it possible to be honored by God and be a weapon-carrying soldier or law enforcement officer, at the same time? Does God approve of soldiers and officers of the State? Does he condemn the military? If not, may individual Christians serve, Scripturally speaking, in law enforcement and the military? More

I first encountered classical music in summer camp when I was ten. The cabin next to ours had the only record player in camp, and the only record was "Voices of Spring" by Strauss, which they played over and over and over again. That fall, in a New York City public school, I had to attend a twice weekly class called Music Appreciation. More

There comes a time in all marathons when the temptation to give in becomes overwhelming. We are facing such a moment in our national response to 9/11. The enticing voices of ease and retreat are sounding louder and more confident, and our will to persist is suffering the death of a thousand cuts. Yet if we fail to persist in our response to the terror attacks we will fail, period. More

Islam has spawned many sects that are master practitioners of the art of double standards. As far as Muslims are concerned what is good for Muslims is not good for the non-Muslims; and, what is bad for Muslims is good for non-Muslims. What complicates matters is that there is no way of knowing which of the dozens of at-each-other's-throat sects is the legitimate Islam. More

The founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan al-Banna, whose disciples are now celebrating his birth 100 years ago, would have been ecstatic to witness their progress in implementing his plans to compel the world to submit to Islam. Radical Islam have made inroads in most countries with a Muslim majority, reached supremacy in several countries and its influence is steadily growing in western nations as well. Petrodollars fuel this progress. More

I've never been a fan of Seinfeld, and I'm not very familiar with the characters. I don't know anything about Michael Richards, the guy who played Kramer on the show. When I read about his onstage rant at a comedy club in Hollywood last week, I figured the guy has some serious anger management problems. More

Several media reports indicate that the Iraq Study Group chaired by former Secretary of State James Baker is close to revealing proposed strategies for dealing with Iraq. One of the expected policy shifts is expected to be a move towards diplomacy with Syria and Iran in order to gain their support in stopping the sectarian violence in Iraq. Quite simply, this course of action would be disastrous More

Over the extended holiday weekend, big change is coming to American Thinker. I want to share with readers why this is happening, and describe some of the new features that will be appearing. Conservatives tend to have a bias against change, so we would not undertake this metamorphosis without good reasons. You, our readers, deserve to have them explained. More

The intentions of the realists, as represented by the Iraq Study Group, appear to be perfectly straightforward: convene a conference of all concerned parties, sit them all down, get everybody talking, carry out some behind-the-scenes diplomatic swashbuckling in the classic mode and emerge in relatively short order with a settlement of the Iraq Question resulting in a "stable" status quo. Provided with this cover, the U.S. can then "honorably" pull out. More

There's something new in the world. It comes courtesy of the Muslims. In their earnest and admirable struggle toward world domination, jihadi fighters now seem to openly embrace using their own people as "human shields." More

Democratic Representative Charles Rangel of New York has renewed his long-time quest to reinstate the military draft. While all signs from the incoming Democratic leadership indicate that the issue is dead in the water,... More

'Shake it off.' That old coach's nugget seems to be most Republicans' response to the recent devastating election results. The message of many is that it was a unique situation, a massive one—time blow that has left the party with a mild concussion, but from which we can... More

In 1992, Bill Clinton campaigned for president by promising tax cuts for the middle class. Fourteen years later, his Party ran on a similar "tell the people exactly what they want to hear" motif, this time the mantra being a speedy withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. More

Last week, the Supreme Court began hearings on the federal partial-birth abortion ban that would prohibit the gruesome abortion procedure across the country. The court heard oral arguments over the question of whether the procedure is ever medically necessary and whether a health exception should be imposed if the life of the mother is endangered. More

November 12th, 2006 marked the 60th anniversary of the movie Song of the South. Perhaps this cultural milestone did not capture your attention. Perhaps you don't even remember celebrating the 50th anniversary. There is a reason for that, and it is not your faulty memory. More

Press and politicians have decided Iraq's fate. And so we ask them: What do we do with the remains? More

Did Jesus endorse and encourage violence in the four Gospels, presumably a righteous kind of violence? Did he call his original disciples to this? Did he order all of his disciples to really buy swords? Two verses may indicate that he did these things. More

Egalitarianism is a seductive political perspective, offering a beautiful vision of the future, and appealing to some of our noblest ideals. It is the perspective of reformers like John Dewey and Roger Baldwin and Martin Luther King, some of the most prominent figures in American social history. More

One of the alleged sins held against the West by Islamic radicalism - which has declared war on us through Osama bin Laden's fatwa issued in 1998 in London - is imperialism: the imperialism of the Dutch, the British and the French from the 17^th to the 20^th centuries. ... More

There have been but 17 federal officials impeached by the House of Representatives since 1787 when the framers included the process in the U.S Constitution. Of these were two presidents, one cabinet member, one senator, and one Supreme Court Justice. The remaining defendants were all... More

Watching their liberal American Congressional Democrats triumph at the polls, Canadian Liberals now are looking for a star candidate to take over the reins of their party and lead them back into power. But it's far from certain they will find such a candidate and uncertain whether they'll be... More

The BBC, known familiarly to many Britons as "Auntie Beeb", has mounted a landmark High Court bid to hide from public scrutiny an internal report alleged to be 'highly critical' of its journalistic coverage of the Middle East.

The Balen Report was set in motion back in 2003 amidst... More

Just prior to the mid—term elections, Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV and his wife Valerie Plame sued Scooter Libby, Vice—President Cheney, Richard Armitage and ten as yet unnamed others, charging a variety of tort and constitutional claims.

More

French economic growth is slumping and the problems at Airbus are getting blamed for it. The two year delay in delivery of the A380 super jumbo is reverberating throughout the French and EU economies. Politics, always a factor at the mammoth 'social enterprise,' continues to intrude, as fear of... More

The San Francisco Board of Education has voted to phase out and ban Junior ROTC, sparking a nationwide uproar. The excuse for denying 1,600 students the opportunity to... More

Almost within hours of the release on Wednesday morning of summaries of the national exit polls, conducted with voters across the county on Election Day, I received several gloating emails from liberal Jewish acquaintances, pointing to one specific result within the More

Twelve years in the congressional minority failed to make a dent in the Democrats' core belief that the universe is unfolding as it should, only when they are in power. They don't bother to argue that their victory in 2006 marks a return to Democrat domination of national politics. They assume... More

The problem with government education, according to James Tooley in Reclaiming Education, is its addiction to "neat—and—tidy" solutions.

The government experts and bureaucrats, not to mention the voters, all want things neatly tied down with comprehensive, mandatory national... More

A review of Jimmy Carter, Palestine:Peace Not Apartheid (Simon & Schuster, November 2006) More

With the resignation of 5 Hezb'allah and Amal cabinet ministers following the breakdown of the National Dialogue talks last weekend, the tiny nation of Lebanon may be on a downward spiral toward civil strife or worse — a wave of violence that would... More

When consummate Rumsfeld critic Ralph Peters finally comes to the conclusion that maybe the senior level military commanders running the war just might have had... More

The Iraq Study Group (ISG), a purportedly bi—partisan group chaired by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Congressman Lee Hamilton, has been convening hearings and soliciting opinions from experts regarding the future course America should take regarding Iraq.

This... More

'The problem, Mr. President, is people don't believe we're at war.' — a law student speaking to George W. Bush

The 2006 midterm elections mark the worst defeat for the... More

It goes without saying that November 7, 2006, will be viewed by history as a bad day for the Republican Party. The question is, how bad?

Despite suggestions by an exuberant media that this Democrat victory represented a significant change in the political makeup of the country, the... More

I have been diagnosed with the neuromuscular disease myasthenia gravis. I got that diagnosis in May. Making a long story short, about three weeks ago, the MG started to get much more acute. Since my limited experience up to that time was that the medications I was taking would... More

In politics, it seems like nothing goes the way the experts thought it would. Conventional wisdom had it that the Democrats would likely take over the House in the 2006 mid—term elections, but the Republicans would retain a majority—albeit reduced—in the Senate.

Such was... More

My wife was shocked and understandably angry when our 19 year old son, Justin, informed us of his intention to enlist in the the United States Marine Corps Reserves. Maybe it was the man in me, but my own shock was tempered by an inner voice saying, "I wish I were that brave when I was his... More

In his compelling new book, America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It, conservative commentator extraordinaire Mark Steyn analyzes the current state of the 'clash of civilizations' (in Samuel P. Huntington's much—used... More

One of the most dangerous police activities, placing at risk not only men and women in uniform, but the general public as well, is the chasing of suspicious people driving vehicles. During my police years in plainclothes investigations, I found myself embroiled in many hair—raising... More

Are Christians permitted to carry the sword (or modern weapons)? What should the Church's policy be on war and peace? Should it counsel the State to turn the other cheek? Are Christians permitted to join the police force and the military? How can they 'love their enemies' and have to kill some... More

The past week, which saw Europe celebrating the triumph of America's Democrats, produced more bad news for Airbus. Europe's champion 'social enterprise,' intended to serve the interests of more than just shareholders, and its chosen instrument rival to America in the... More

November 10, 2006

First Order of Business for Democrats: The Draft

Ray Robison

November 10, 2006

Letter from Kuwait

anonymous

November 9, 2006

Finding Wisdom in the Wreckage

J. Peter Mulhern

November 9, 2006

Republicans Squander Historic Mandate

Noel Sheppard