Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
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The most prestigious of contemporary moral philosophers favor the morality of fairness and impartiality. By this they tend to mean we all ought to think first of everyone’s welfare across the globe as we decide how we are going to conduct ourselves. Although they often implore us to fashion public policies by this standard, in fact they intend this to be something we ought to do in our most private decisions as well. In his book “Living High and Letting Die: Our Illusion of Innocence,” New York University philosophy professor...
In his provocative if sadly narrow-minded book, “What’s the Matter With Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America,” Thomas Frank reveals just how even people with good insights can turn a blind eye to the broader implications of what they partly understand. The book is about why middle America is so ready to yield to fear mongering by Right Wing politicians and their cohorts. One of the best portions of the work includes a quote from Herman Goering, given by the Nazi ideologue in an interview while he was being...
“Those who complain that (Linda) Ronstadt should just sing, rather than express her opinions, forget that all art has a responsibility to inspire and provoke, not just soothe and entertain.” Those are the words of George Varga, the pop music critic for the San Diego Union-Tribune newspaper, in the wake of Ronstadt’s controversial endorsement of “Fahrenheit 9/11” filmmaker Michael Moore during a recent concert in Las Vegas. However, when performers like Ronstadt address their paying audience with propaganda unrelated to what t...
Those who love liberty lost one of their premier leaders when Ronald Reagan died Saturday. One need not consider all of Reagan’s policies excellent to realize he was the only president in the 20th century who understood what America meant to all the world, why it was dubbed “the leader of the free world,” despite many of its contradictions and problems. Ronald Reagan was always dismissed by the academic left and its legion of pundits and public mouthpieces because they deemed him simple, ideological, not sufficiently in tune...
Tibor Machan: Syndicated Columnist After recently landing at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, I took a cab to my hotel in the Chicago Loop. I was in town to attend the American Philosophical Association Central Division meetings, where I had the honor of having one of my books critiqued in a session of the American Society of Value Inquiry. OK, to the point: My cabby into the city hailed originally from Pakistan, and he and I got into a conversation about current affairs. We both came from abroad, we both have lived here for a cou...
Tibor Machan: Syndicated columnist Many now realize that when public property is used by all, the resources it contains will soon be depleted. Only private property serves as a promising means for conserving and cultivating such resources. Individuals who own something are more likely to take good care of it than if they use something owned in common. This has been known for a very long time. For instance, Thucydides, in his 431 B.C. book, “The History of the Peloponnesian War,” wrote about people owning things col...
In my region of the world, a controversy has occupied the attention of a few people regarding Ambassador George Argyros’ defense of the Bush doctrine vis-à-vis Iraq and terrorism in general. Argyros represents the U.S. government in Spain, and he has, as would be expected, given various talks in which he defended the policies of the Bush administration. Of course, it would be nice if ambassadors were non-partisan and told it like it is. But that is a ridiculous expectation. Most people, in most circumstances, don’t even know...
The Laffer curve is about how much imposition or other types of trouble people are willing to tolerate from their fellows. Arthur Laffer, a professor at the University of Southern California, is supposed to have drawn a bell-shaped graph on a napkin once to show that up to the peak point of it people are likely to put up with the burden of taxation. The peak isn’t the same for everyone, but everyone does have such a peak. In particular, then, the Laffer curve concerns taxation, a form of extortion, which government uses to ob...
If we had a country governed by the rule of law, where legislatures respected individual rights and did not pass edicts and regulations that violate our unalienable rights to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, then all the bellyaching about “judge-made laws” would make sense. Sadly, however, it is too late to complain about that. Republicans and Democrats are well past the point of being able to consistently and reasonably demand that the country be governed according to the process whereby legislatures make good, sound,...
The figure of 40 million people lacking health insurance in the United States is bandied about so much it deserves to be discussed a bit, even by a non-expert such as myself. What exactly does it mean? The implication for most who mention this figure is the federal government must do something to insure these 40 million people. That is, of course, a blatant non-sequitur. Given that health insurance costs money — money that enables people to pay for doctor visits, hospital stays, lab tests, etc. — the government would hav...
What was the biggest story of 2003? The U.S. government’s decision to go to war with Iraq, that’s what. Why? Because, all in all, despite the desirable result of bringing down a vicious dictatorship, it was an unjustified military action taken by our government. What justifies going to war? When a country is attacked; or when another country with which a sound, just treaty has been established is attacked; or when it is imminent, as demonstrated by solid intelligence information, that a country or an ally will be att...
When one has contrarian views, it is not always easy to enjoy oneself. I often sit through movies with much to offer, only to find that characters unhesitatingly denounce something I value, such as capitalism, business, or some great feature of American culture. The same fate faces me when I pick up a best-selling novel. Most recently I have been reading the works of Donna Leon, who is an English professor at a university near Venice, Italy, and who churns out some pretty decently plotted stories with an Italian police...
What is one to make of Al Gore’s brazen act of endorsing Howard Dean for the presidency? Certainly it is a slap in the face of Sen. Joe Lieberman, Gore’s 2000 running mate. But what is its substance? Is Gore really someone who considers Howard Dean’s opposition to the war with Iraq so vital that this alone should qualify Dean for the presidency? Now, I am no mind reader, but we do often speculate on people’s motives and intentions. So, I am speculating that Gore did this, in part, because he wants to be the Democra...
Jim Pinkerton, who worked in the Reagan White House, now writes columns. One of his recent missives tells us that American conservatism is in almost total shambles. It lacks coherence, he says, and is pretty much unrecognizable as offering some sort of alternative to what the liberal Democrats propose, namely a rich, expanded, sluggish and unjust welfare state. Instead, we have George W. Bush’s muddled big-government “conservatism” that is driven by no more than the desire of Bush and company to remain in power. For examp...
I don’t know what goes through the mind of someone like California Senate leader John Burton when he makes the kind of charge he made the other day, namely that the effort to repeal the state law allowing undocumented immigrants to obtain drivers’ licenses was fueled by racism. “I say the issue is racism,” Burton told reporters. “Do you think if these people were white and not brown skinned we would be talking about it? I don’t. … A lot of people have different positions on different issues that are not necessarily r...
Sometimes one ought to repeat a point, even over and over, since it is important enough to call attention to it often. Given that many people, such as celebrities with lots of media exposure, manage to repeat idiotic points, I have resolved to refute them repeatedly. Emma Thompson, whom I rather enjoy as an actress, came out recently with the proclamation that “Christmas should be about love, not just what we can buy and sell.” So, the 44-year-old actress is reported, in the British magazine “The Week” (Nov. 11), to have ba...
In many years of trying to understand the free market economy I have been hampered by the fact that rarely does a true free market exist. Like ideal marriages, genuine free markets are mostly something we can conceive of and understand in theory, but rarely encounter in the actual world. Yet, just as with ideal marriages, we can ask whether free markets, if they did exist, would be better for us all than, say, some other conception of economic life, such as mercantilism, socialism, the welfare state or communism. And we can...
What does “partial birth abortion” mean, anyway? A procedure whereby a nearly born infant is killed just before it sees the light of day. The reasons for this are usually because there are concerns about the health of the mother, but without a ban that wouldn’t be necessary. What is wrong with it, if anything? As someone who is pro-choice up until weeks 24-27 of pregnancy, I would be among those who consider this procedure not only morally wrong — that could well be true with any abortions — but also one that should be legall...
Judge Robert Bork is known to many Americans. Back in the presidency of Ronald Reagan he was nominated by “the great communicator” to the Supreme Court, then rejected on controversial grounds by the Senate Judiciary Committee, which at that time was ruled by liberal Democrats. They didn’t like some of his published opinions, which isn’t supposed to be a reason for such a decision. In his recent book, “Coercing Virtue: The Worldwide Rule of Judges” (American Enterprise Institute, 2003), Bork argues there’s no support whats...
Letters to the editor So much has been said about our Clovis police force. They are underpaid, understaffed and more. Yes, they are underpaid. Otherwise we would not be understaffed. Our officers put their lives on the line every time they step out. Case in point: On Oct. 11, a pickup truck went north on Prince Street exceeding 100 mph. Who was in pursuit? Clovis police officers, Curry County sheriff deputies and New Mexico State Police officers. These folks risked their lives to stop a driver alleged to be inebriated. What...
In a free society where citizens have many different faiths – in the United States there are now about 2,500 religions – one might think no common standards of right and wrong, either in ethics or in politics, can be identified. But this is wrong. The basis of common standards of right and wrong conduct and public policy need not rest on religion. If they did, we would indeed have a very difficult time seeing eye-to-eye about morality and politics. All varieties of Christians, Hindus, Muslims, Jews and others would be at inte...
Hearing President Bush at the United Nations recently reminded me that the Florida 2000 decision probably didn’t make any difference after all. Sure, I find Bush more simpatico, just because Al Gore possesses such an unappealing personality. But that shouldn’t matter for political purposes. What ought to count is which of these individuals is likely to promote the best protection for individual liberty. And, I am afraid that George W. Bush has shown absolutely no interest in that task whatsoever. He doesn’t even prete...
We have far too many criminals, and that bodes ill for our reputation as a free society. In a free society the law protects our freedom. Otherwise it concerns various administrative matters but always related to this central purpose. For example, military justice concerns how to conduct oneself in the course of protecting our freedom from foreign aggressors, and administrative law concerns how politicians and public officials must behave as they serve us in such a protective capacity. But today we have zillions of laws that...
When social life becomes politicized, one is tempted to present one’s wishes to politicians and bureaucrats, because they have the power to fulfill them. For example, a resident wishes that a local restaurant not play music he doesn’t like. Even though the bureaucracies dealing with these matters gave permission for the restaurant to feature live music, this resident wrote to a politician, who then managed to sic the authorities on the proprietor, and the music was banned. Or, in another example, a parcel of land is being pla...
Alabama’s suspended Chief Justice Roy Moore has argued in television appearances that requiring him to remove the 5,300-pound monument of the Ten Commandments in the rotunda of the Alabama judicial building amounts to a violation of his constitutional right to declare his faith in God. There is also the fact that other government buildings around the country house displays of the Ten Commandments, although not in such prominent form as in Alabama. Even more importantly, perhaps, there is some reason to think that the d...
