Free Republic

Sometimes someone inadvertently performs a public service by bringing an unbelievably stupid and dangerous idea to the surface, where it can be exposed for what it is. The New York Times can be credited — if that is the word — with performing this public service in a recent editorial against proposals to allow law-abiding citizens to carry concealed guns. They refer to what they call the National Rifle Association's "fantasy that citizens can stand up to gunmen by shooting it out." Nobody has suggested any such thing. Data collected over many years — but almost never seeing the light...

We are now in a kind of political no-man's-land between an administration on its way out and a new administration taking shape. Predictions are always risky — and nowhere more so than in times like these. What we can do, however, is assess where we are, and what some of the opportunities and dangers are. The opportunities are many, which is to say that many things are in desperate need of changing, beginning with rebuilding our dangerously neglected and undermined military forces. The monstrosity of ObamaCare needs to be gotten rid of, not just cosmetically adjusted. Our fundamental freedoms under...

Sometimes life forces us to make decisions, even when we don't have enough information to know how the decision will turn out. The risks may be even greater when people make decisions for other people. Yet there are some who are not only willing, but eager, to take decisions away from those who are directly affected. Something as personal as what doctor we want to go to has been taken out of our hands by ObamaCare. What job offer, at what pay rate, someone wants to accept has been taken out of their hands by minimum wage laws. Sick people...

This is a football story with both political and legal implications. It was fourth down in a National Football League game, and the punting team came onto the field. The other team went into their formation to defend against the punt. Then somebody noticed that the man set to kick the punt was black. "Fake!" one of the defenders cried out. That cry was immediately echoed by others, and the defending team changed their formation, to guard against the kicker either running with the ball or throwing it. But in fact he punted. Why did anyone think he was not...

People who call themselves "progressives" claim to be forward-looking, but a remarkable amount of the things they say and do are based on looking backward. One of the maddening aspects of the thinking, or non-thinking, on the political left is their failure to understand that there is nothing they can do about the past. Whether people on the left are talking about college admissions or criminal justice, or many other decisions, they go on and on about how some people were born with lesser chances in life than other people. Whoever doubted it? But, once someone who has grown up...

It is especially painful for me, as an economist, to see that two small cities in northern California — San Mateo and Burlingame — have rent control proposals on the ballot this election year. There are various other campaigns, in other places around the country, for and against minimum wage laws, which likewise make me wonder if the economics profession has failed to educate the public in the most elementary economic lessons. Neither rent control nor minimum wage laws — nor price control laws in general — are new. Price control laws go back as far as ancient Egypt and...

The political left keeps announcing, as if it is a new breakthrough discovery of theirs, that life is unfair. Have they never read Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard," more than two and a half centuries ago? What about economic historian David S. Landes' statement: "The world has never been a level playing field"? In the joint autobiography of Milton Friedman and his wife Rose, they say: "Everywhere in the world there are gross inequities of income and wealth. They offend most of us. Few can fail to be moved by the contrast between the luxury enjoyed by...

Claiming the role of champions of the masses is something the political left has been doing ever since there has been a political left — which is to say, ever since the late 18th century, when people with such views sat on the left side of the French National Assembly. Like so much that is claimed by the left, their compassion for the masses has seldom been subjected to any factual test. Both their words and their deeds reveal their low opinion of the people they claim to be championing. When Barack Obama referred to ordinary working people as people...

The greatest moral claim of the political left is that they are for the masses in general and the poor in particular. That is also their greatest fraud. It even fools many leftists themselves. One of the most recent efforts of the left is the spread of laws and policies that forbid employers from asking job applicants whether they have been arrested or imprisoned. This is said to be to help ex-cons get a job after they have served their time, and ex-cons are often either poor or black, or both. First of all, many of the left's policies to...

It is never easy to tell what people's motives are. But, when the political left proclaims their devotion to improving the lives of others in general, and of the poor in particular, we can at least get some clues from the way they go about it. One of the first things the left does is take away the right of other people to make their own choices. For example, under current California law, Hispanic school children cannot be taught in Spanish if their parents want them taught in English. Like parents in other immigrant groups before them, Hispanic parents tend...

Claiming the role of champions of the masses is something the political left has been doing ever since there has been a political left — which is to say, ever since the late 18th century, when people with such views sat on the left side of the French National Assembly. Like so much that is claimed by the left, their compassion for the masses has seldom been subjected to any factual test. Both their words and their deeds reveal their low opinion of the people they claim to be championing. When Barack Obama referred to ordinary working people as people...

Donald Trump's gutter talk about women shows yet again that he is bad news. The problem is that Hillary Clinton is far worse. Trump's talk is indefensible. But Hillary Clinton's actions as Secretary of State, carrying out the Obama administration's foreign policies, have cost many lives in many places, including the American ambassador and others killed in Benghazi. Women have a right to be offended by Trump's words. But women have suffered a far worse fate from Secretary Clinton's and President Obama's actions. Pulling American troops out of Iraq, despite military advice to the contrary, led to the sudden rise...

Back in the days of the Cold War between the Communist bloc of nations and the Western democracies, the Communists maintained pervasive restrictions around Eastern Europe that were aptly called an "iron curtain," isolating the people in its bloc from the ideas of the West and physically obstructing their escape. One of the few things that could penetrate the "iron curtain" were ideas conveyed on radio waves. "The Voice of America" network broadcast to the peoples of the Soviet bloc, so that they were never completely isolated, and hearing only what the Communist dictatorships wanted them to hear. Ironically, despite...

Thomas Sowell, the legendary conservative economist and Hoover Institution fellow, announced on this morning's Ben Shapiro Show that "even though Donald Trump has no coherent vision that looks that promising," he will "vote against Hillary Clinton" in November. Sowell has been a vocal critic of Donald Trump throughout and beyond the GOP primaries, and his decision centers around the enduring legacy of the next president's Supreme Court appointments, which he believes have the potential to subvert constitutional law and undermine specifically the First and Second Amendments. Here is the full text of Sowell's comments: Well, my preference would be to...

Back in the 1960s, as large numbers of black students were entering a certain Ivy League university for the first time, someone asked a chemistry professor -- off the record -- what his response to them was. He said, "I give them all A's and B's. To hell with them." Since many of those students were admitted with lower academic qualifications than other students, he knew that honest grades in a tough subject like chemistry could lead to lots of failing grades, and that in turn would lead to lots of time-wasting hassles -- not just from the students, but...

There is no point denying or sugar-coating the plain fact that the voters this election year face a choice between two of the worst candidates in living memory. A professor at Morgan State University summarized the situation by saying that the upcoming debates may enable voters to decide which is the "less insufferable" candidate to be President of the United States. My own take on this election is that the voter is in a situation much like that of an American fighter pilot in World War II, whose plane has been hit by enemy fire out over the Pacific Ocean...

Ordinarily, it is not a good idea to base how you vote on just one issue. But if black lives really matter, as they should matter like all other lives, then it is hard to see any racial issue that matters as much as education. The government could double the amount of money it spends on food stamps or triple the amount it spends on housing subsidies, and it will mean very little if the next generation of young blacks goes out into the world as adults without a decent education. Many things that are supposed to help blacks actually...

Election year politics generates much rhetoric and confusion. And the media often adds its spin. But, fortunately, there are some books around that deal with reality and can cut through the nonsense. Most of these books were not written during this election year, but what they presented can be very eye-opening on the issues raised by politicians this year. If you are concerned about issues involved when some people want to expand the welfare state and others want to contract it, then one of the most relevant and insightful books is "Life at the Bottom" by Theodore Dalrymple. It was...

Mark Twain famously said that there were three kinds of lies — "lies, damned lies, and statistics." Since this is an election year, we can expect to hear plenty of all three kinds. Even if the statistics themselves are absolutely accurate, the words that describe what they are measuring can be grossly misleading. Household income statistics are an obvious example. When we hear about how much more income the top 20 percent of households make, compared to the bottom 20 percent of households, one key fact is usually left out. There are millions more people in the top 20 percent...

Why would a country with the world's largest Jewish population, outside of Israel, admit large numbers of immigrants from countries where hatred of Jews has been taught to their people from earliest childhood? This question is ultimately not about Muslims and Jews. It is about discussing immigrants in the abstract, rather than in terms of the specific concrete realities of particular immigrants in particular circumstances at a particular time and place — that time being now and that place being the United States of America. A hundred years ago, when immigration from other parts of the world was a major...