Stay the course in Iraq, says Taheri

Amir Taheri writes that the United States should not cut and run from Iraq.

John Kerry's economic advisor

Alan Reynolds dismantles Warren Buffett's economic proposals.

Buffett does not think his plan should be compared to the Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1930. He's right -- it's worse.

A lack of curiosity regarding WMD and Iraq

Larry Elder writes about the foiled terrorist attack in Jordan and its possible WMD connection with Iraq.

The Arab Street Reacts!

The Arab Street Reacts!

Colin Powell was right

Terence Jeffrey writes that Colin Powell correctly pointed out, in his February 2003 speech, ties between Al Qaeda and Saddam.

Will the real John Kerry stand up?

Deroy Murdock analyses the two John Kerrys we have seen over the past thirty three years.

The dogs that aren't barking in Iraq

Tod Lindberg writes about what is going right in Iraq and isn't being mentioned by the press.

Senator Pete Coors?

John Miller writes about the Colorado US Senate race and the odds of Pete Coors winning the seat left open by retiring Republican Ben Nighthorse Campbell.

Richard Epstein on Self-Ownership versus Slavery

From "Simple Rules for a Complex World," by Richard Epstein [Page 54]

If you go around the world trying to figure out who owns each of us, you would find nothing writ in stone which says that self-ownership is a necessary truth. To put it another way, to deny the proposition of individual self-ownership is not to engage in any logical self-contradiction. Slavery may be an evil system, but it is not internally inconsistent. Yet this system is vastly inferior to a position of self-ownership, and the comparison of the two has led many authors in the natural rights tradition to posit the moral necessity of self-ownership. John Locke, for example, took the view that we could properly say that each person owns his or her own labor. "Though the earth and all inferior creatures be common to all Men, yet every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has any right to but himself. The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his." He treated his position as a moral postulate, and not as a conclusion derivable from some other premise by some independent argument.

The conclusory case for his decisive premise has led other writers, most notably those who see a larger role for state control over both human and natural resources, to challenge his view by taking still a third tack. The centerpiece of John Rawls's magisterial Theory of Justice, published in 1971, is, after all, the proposition that the individual ownership of natural talents and abilities should be regarded as "morally arbitrary"; that is, though they may be taken into account in some extended scheme of political deliberation, they are hardly to be accorded any bedrock status.

The costs of war, present and past

Jeff Jacoby writes about John Kerry's dissembling and Mark Steyn writes that Ted Koppell has distorted the cost of the Iraq war.