Politics & Rights

Thomas Bowden has an excellent op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal calling for the recognition of property rights with regard to the ocean floor. Here are the first few paragraphs: The Law of the Sea Treaty, which awaits a ratification vote in the U.S. Senate, declares most of the earth's…

Identifies the ideology of sacrifice behind the Japanese aggression that culminated in World War II; documents America’s recognition of this ideology as the fundamental cause of the Japanese assault on the West; explains how America targeted, dismantled, and discredited this ideology, replacing it with the ideas, values, and institutions necessary for the establishment of a free society; and defends America’s use of the atomic bomb as a profoundly moral way to end the war.

Illustrates the utter insanity of today’s liability law, recounts the roots and original purpose of the law of torts, surveys the missing links and corrupt ideas that led to its destruction, and sheds light on the path to identifying a sound body of principles that will ground this field in the ultimate purpose of objective law: the protection of individual rights.

In case the relativist “principle” guiding Lee Bollinger’s choice to invite Ahmadinejad to speak at Columbia was not clear enough in his earlier statement, here is a brief video of him making it even clearer. The “principle” is that anyone willing to “debate”—regardless of his complicity in the torture and…

That the Bush administration is permitting Ahmadinejad to enter America for any reason other than to kill him on sight is a moral travesty. But, then, given that Bush and company’s philosophy counsels us to “resist not evil” and “turn the other cheek” and “judge not that ye be not…

Dear Craig, Thank you for this article on your blog, which I very much enjoyed, especially your "Mafia hitmen" analogy. In your article, you state "The way to accomplish [Iran's defeat] is by waging a massive bombing campaign from high altitude and long distance—and by sustaining this campaign until the…

The Bush administration’s plan to declare Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization is worse than a waste of time: It is an outright evasion of the Iranian assault on America. There is a good reason why the New York City Police Department does not make official pronouncements to the…

Jack Shafer of Slate has written a superb article on the notion of “loophole” titled “Shut Your Loophole.”(Thanks to Brad Malestein for bringing this piece to my attention.) Here’s an excerpt: Upon entering the English language in the late 16th century, the word loophole defined the narrow opening in a…

I am proud to note that my article, "No Substitute for Victory: The Defeat of Islamic Totalitarianism," has been transmitted into Hebrew. It appears in Nativ: A Journal of Politics and the Arts, vol. 20, n. 3.116 (May - June 2007). Nativ is published by the Ariel Center for Policy…

"Cut off the head of Salman Rushdie!" chanted a crowd of Islamists in Pakistan yesterday as calls to murder the “blasphemer” were renewed following his knighthood in Britain. Such barbarism is to be expected from religionists—not just from Muslims, but from any religionists who are neither restrained by a rights-respecting…