Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
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As I was channel surfing the other night, I went past one broadcast channel on which I saw and heard the following sentence uttered by a young woman: “He was a businessman so he would do anything to turn a profit.” I caught a glimpse of the name and it was “Law & Order: Special Victim’s Unit.” Then I moved on. But I could not shake the experience, so I stopped searching for something to watch and began to reflect on what I just saw and heard. The sentence in question was extremely revealing. It gave a rather unambiguo...
A Colorado teacher recently compared President George W. Bush to Adolph Hitler in one of his classes, saying later this was only one side of a controversy he had been covering and he would get to the other side soon. The president himself was asked about it when he addressed newspaper publishers the next day in Washington. And the president nearly got it right, but not quite. Bush said, “I think people ought to be allowed to criticism me all they want, and they do.” He added, “There are some certain basic freedoms that we’ve...
Yale law professor Bruce Ackerman has been a steady defender, via all his scholarly and semi-scholarly works, of America’s growing welfare state. He has volunteered umpteen times to step up to the plate with yet another bag full of sophistries with which to give pseudo-legal justifications for expanding the power of government, even as he laments those powers whenever his own favorite team doesn’t happen to run the show. His most recent vigilant efforts can be read in recent issues of that pink magazine, The London Rev...
The Jan. 30 edition of the New Republic contains a fascinating and alarming piece — maybe it's a parody, but it sounds mighty authentic to my ears — by Ali Salem, “The War of the Hotels,” which appeared in the London-based Al Hayat, a pan-Arab daily. The piece relates — or imagines — what one battlefield commander, Abu Fulan, supposedly narrated to some people about why it is so important to attack and kill all those from the West or anywhere else who are enjoying themselves, especially in hotels. The bottom line of the enti...
Only one thing stops poverty. It’s wealth. And there is but one sure-fire way to gain wealth. Work. Yes, some people get it by luck or accident, but such a path is quite undependable. So New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof’s wish that President Bush launch “a high-profile Global War on Poverty” is a bad idea. Contrary to Kristof’s contention, it would not “be one American-backed war that nearly all the world would thunderously applaud.” Most of the world’s development economists would be extremely doubtful about...
At year’s end, after columns and commentaries galore lamenting the state of contemporary society with respect to the slow growth and frequent setbacks on the road to individual liberty, it’s worth asking whether an attitude of pessimism or optimism is warranted. These attitudes are, unlike, say, hope or anxiety, capable of being given rational support. Pessimists and optimists can, in principle, debate the respective merits of their stance and reach a conclusion in favor of one or the other. In my case, I am without apo...
For some, the issue of taxation appears moot. Like death, they believe, taxation is unavoidable. Many others would like us all to fall for this because then they would gain the upper hand about political economy. For those who don’t much like the free society and its economic system, free market capitalism, it’s vital to show that taxation is just. That’s because taxation means government owns everything, we merely rent some space and time from it for which we have to pay a bundle. That is how it used to be in the era of fe...
Tibor Machan: Columnist Some ideas have so little merit to them they shouldn’t ever see the light of day — not in intellectually respectable forums. It’s as if we gave Nazis a place at the table when discussing how societies should be organized. Here, once again, I find a notable person, indeed, a Nobel Laureate in literature, voicing sentiments that look very much like denying the difference between humans and other animals. I am talking about J.M. Coetzee, who in his novel “Elizabeth Costello” has his protagonist articulat...
Some ideas have so little merit to them they shouldn’t ever see the light of day — not in intellectually respectable forums. It’s as if we gave Nazis a place at the table when discussing how societies should be organized. Here, once again, I find a notable person, indeed, a Nobel Laureate in literature, voicing sentiments that look very much like denying the difference between humans and other animals. I am talking about J.M. Coetzee, who in his novel “Elizabeth Costello” has his protagonist articulate a view that appears t...
Hospital ban should include junk food In reference to the smoking ban on hospital property: I understand that certain foods and snacks are also unhealthy. The policy should be expanded to include an employee or patient who wants a salty snack, hot dog or doughnut. They should first be offered an appetite suppressant. If this doesn’t eliminate the craving, they should clock out and leave the premises to eat these foods. After all, as Presbyterian officials would certainly agree, eating foods high in salt or fats is inconsisten...
“According to a confidential memorandum, IBM is cutting 13,000 jobs in the United States and in Europe and creating 14,000 jobs in India. From 2000 to 2015, an estimated 3 million American jobs will have been outsourced; one in 10 technology jobs will leave these shores by the end ...” That was the beginning of an op-ed piece titled “A Passage to India” by Suketu Mehta on July 12, 2005. The author showed us how far India has come into the contemporary world, and that it is moving more toward a society with relatively free in...
Now and then my pen dries up, as it were, and I rake my brain for something I should write. But actually the problem isn’t that. Rather, it’s that columnists or pundits are mostly expected to chime in with complaints about public affairs, and I am actually a bit satisfied just now. I mean with things falling apart in and near the White House, I am hard put to be upset. Indeed, I find it a relief. After all, it confirms my long-held view that making politics such a vital part of our lives is a big mistake. Most of these people...
At times I watch BBC World News because it covers more international issues than even CNN. So the other night I was watching and there was a report on the AIDS epidemic in Africa. The report gave some harrowing information as well as quotations from people trying to raise funds to combat AIDS. At one point the announcer read a quote from one AIDS worker to the effect that it is especially vital that the children be saved. The reason, I heard her quoting the AIDS worker, is that “children are the future of Africa.” I have hea...
Richard Roy, a state representative of Connecticut, was quoted in the Oct. 1 New York Times as saying, “There’s nothing worse than seeing someone driving down the road, on the phone or shaving or putting on make-up, and there’s a child in the back seat.” With this hyperbole he was defending the new law in Connecticut banning the use of cell phones while driving. Actually, cell phone use while driving can be just as safe or unsafe as combing one’s hair, fiddling with a CD player, searching for keys in a pocket or purse, or...
If the Ninth Amendment to the Constitution were heeded by our courts and legislatures, there wouldn’t be public controversies about whether a person has the right to commit suicide. This would be understood as one of the many unenumerated rights reserved to people, just as saying a prayer, worshiping Satan or playing bridge. We have the right to do all this, and no one has the just power or authority to interfere (beyond certain measure that make sure this is really what we want to do). Unfortunately, the United States has b...
In the beginning of the American republic there was a debate between the Hamiltonians and Jeffersonians. Neither side was advancing a fully consistent, coherent vision of politics for America, but, in the main, Hamiltonians defended the idea of a strong federal government, while Jefferson’s supporters argued for limited and mainly local government. The debate has never ended, although Hamiltonians triumphed when it comes to how America evolved. In our day there is little mainstream opposition to the Hamiltonian big g...
When looters took advantage in the wake of Hurricane Katrina — or any other disaster, for that matter — everyone seemed to have in mind only the people ransacking stores and robbing them in plain sight. These were the looters who were widely condemned, against whom the police and military took direct action, and who, if caught, will probably pay for their deeds. Yet in some ways these looters were at least honest and up front. There are many other looters who go about it in more circumspect fashion. They do not admit out...
Over the past several years the idea of including private accounts within the Social Security system has gained some ground in the political arena. Not that it’s been a piece of cake. For one, most people are as used to this government confiscatory program as they are to government schooling or the minimum-wage law. The governmental habit is rife throughout the world, including in America. There is also the way promoters of the government’s confiscatory Social Security program distort what privatization comes to. Even thi...
Maybe I am seeing things, but my impression from going through hundreds of airports since Sept. 11, 2001, is that too many Transportation Security Administration (TSA) screeners are plainly gung-ho. Yes, they perform their jobs eagerly, often seeming to relish that bit of power it gives them to order people around. I am not one of the most cooperative folks at these security checks, mainly because I believe most of it fits the expression, “Closing the barn doors after the horses have fled.” All this might have made sense bef...
LONDON — The little hotel, Sanctuary House, where I stayed this time was located, unbeknownst to me, just the other side of the New Scotland Yard. So when I arrived Thursday after my flight from New York, I felt some relief. Terrorists probably will not do their vicious deeds in the back yard of the cops. I was invited to speak on “The free market and its moral foundation” at a small classical liberal-conservative institute, Civitas, by my friend and fellow philosopher David Conway. It was ironic — the very day I was laying...
LONDON — The little hotel, Sanctuary House, where I stayed this time was located, unbeknownst to me, just the other side of the New Scotland Yard. So when I arrived Thursday after my flight from New York, I felt some relief. Terrorists probably will not do their vicious deeds in the back yard of the cops. I was invited to speak on “The free market and its moral foundation” at a small classical liberal-conservative institute, Civitas, by my friend and fellow philosopher David Conway. It was ironic — the very day I was laying...
Over the years I’ve paid attention to what the Supreme Court does, not as an expert but as a reasonably well educated lay person. One observation I’ve come away with is that if a case comes its way, the court either returns it to a lower court or offers a rather narrow ruling, although often with broad implications. In turn, critics of the Supreme Court — often including those on it who issue a minority comment — refer to provisions of the Constitution and/or precedents with which the rulings being offered seem to conflic...
Most of the time people try to justify coercing others to do things on the grounds that they know what’s right and those others do not or will not comply. Even the recent 5-to-4 eminent-domain ruling by the Supreme Court can be viewed along such lines: The city officials believed they knew what the private-property owners ought to do, and so they may make them do it. In that particular case, economic development is supposed to be right and good, so let’s make those property owners bend to the will of those who understand thi...
Before making observations connected to Michael Jackson’s courtroom triumph, let me remind everyone that in Spain, today, in the 21st century, if a 19-year-old guy has sex with a consenting 13-year-old girl, it’s all legal. Is Spain some Neanderthal country? What’s going on here? Many kids who commit crimes in the United States — 12-year-olds, 14-year-olds — are prosecuted as adults. What is that all about? They cannot vote, sign contracts, get married without parental permission, but when they do the crime, they must do t...
During the Q&A after a recent presentation I made to a Rotary club about the meaning of the Declaration of Independence, I was asked whether I believe what the Pledge of Allegiance states about “under God.” I do not usually answer this question because I share the view that when it comes to religion, it’s just too personal to bandy about in public, especially when the topic of my presentation didn’t have much to do with it. But there is an aspect of this issue worth reflecting about. Of course, a voluntary organiz...
