Posts By Author » Walter Williams

Hating America
15 May 2013 12:04 am

Brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who are accused of setting the bombs that exploded at the Boston Marathon, attended the University of Massachusetts. Maybe they hated our nation before college, but if you want lessons on hating America, college attendance might be a good start. Let’s look at it.

“We need to think very, very clearly about who the enemy is. The enemy is the United States of America and everyone who supports it.” That’s taught to University of Hawaii students by Professor Haunani-Kay Trask. Richard Falk, professor emeritus at Princeton …

Honest Examination of Race
8 May 2013 12:04 am

One definition given for insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results; it might also be a definition of stupidity. Let’s look at some cities where large percentages of black Americans live under poor conditions.

Experiencing a violent crime rate of 2,137 per 100,000 of the population, Detroit is the nation’s most dangerous city. Rounding out Forbes magazine’s 2012 list of the 10 most dangerous cities are St Louis; Oakland, Calif.; Memphis, Tenn.; Birmingham, Ala.; Atlanta; Baltimore; Stockton, Calif.; Cleveland; and Buffalo, N.Y. The most …

Liberal Suffering and Confusion
1 May 2013 12:04 am

The liberal world vision and reality are often at variance, for example, with equal pay for equal work. I’ve often watched “Lockup,” a show that features California supermax prisons, including Pelican Bay and Corcoran. Often, a recalcitrant prisoner must be extracted from his cell through brute force. I’ve never seen female guards remove a prisoner. If they are part of the process at all, it’s to videotape the extraction for legal purposes. It’s my bet that female guards receive the same salaries as male guards while not having to risk …

Black Unemployment
10 Apr 2013 12:04 am

A couple of weeks ago, Black Entertainment Television founder Bob Johnson, speaking at The National Press Club, said the nation “would never tolerate white unemployment at 14 and 15 percent.” Black unemployment has been double that of white Americans for more than 50 years. The black youth unemployment rate is more than 40 percent nationally. In some cities, unemployment for black working-age males is more than 50 percent. Let’s look at this, but first let’s look at some history.
From 1900 to 1954, blacks were more active than whites in the …

Minority Student Needs
3 Apr 2013 12:17 am

Professor Craig Frisby is on the faculty of University of Missouri’s Department of Educational, School and Counseling Psychology. His most recent book is “Meeting the Psychoeducational Needs of Minority Students.” It’s a 662-page textbook covering a range of topics from multiculturalism and home and family influences to student testing and school discipline. There’s no way full justice can be given to this excellent work in the space of this column, so I’ll highlight a few valuable insights he makes that would help educators do a better job with minority students.
Quack …

Are We Equal?
27 Mar 2013 12:08 am

Are women equal to men? Are Jews equal to gentiles? Are blacks equal to Italians, Irish, Polish and other white people? The answer is probably a big fat no, and the pretense or assumption that we are equal — or should be equal — is foolhardy and creates mischief. Let’s look at it.
Male geniuses outnumber female geniuses 7-to-1. Female intelligence is packed much closer to the middle of the bell curve, whereas men’s intelligence has far greater variability. That means that though there are many more male geniuses, there are …

Intellectuals and Race
20 Mar 2013 12:04 am

After reading Dr. Thomas Sowell’s latest book, “Intellectuals and Race,” one cannot emerge with much respect for the reasoning powers of intellectuals, particularly academics, on matters of race. There’s so much faulty logic and downright dishonesty.
Many intellectuals attribute the behavior patterns of blacks to “a legacy of slavery” or contemporary racial discrimination. But when one observes similar behavior patterns among Britain’s lower-class whites, which can’t be attributed to “a legacy of slavery” or discrimination, it calls into question the explanations for black behavior.
It’s lamented that blacks are “the last hired” …

Educational Rot
12 Mar 2013 12:04 am

American education is in a sorry state of affairs, and there’s enough blame for all participants to have their fair share. They include students who are hostile and alien to the education process, uninterested parents, teachers and administrators who either are incompetent or have been beaten down by the system, and politicians who’ve become handmaidens for teachers unions. There’s another education issue that’s neither flattering nor comfortable to confront and talk about. That’s the low academic preparation of many teachers. That’s an issue that must be confronted and dealt with …

Mandated Wages and Discrimination
6 Mar 2013 12:04 am

Let’s work through an example. Suppose 100 yards of fence could be built using one of two techniques. You could hire three low-skilled workers for $15 each, or you could hire one high-skilled worker for $40. Either way, you get the same 100 yards of fence built. If you sought maximum profits, which production technique would you employ? I’m guessing that you’d hire one high-skilled worker and pay him $40 rather than hire three low-skilled workers for $15 each. Your labor costs would be $40 rather than $45.
Suppose the high-skilled …

Higher Minimum Wages
27 Feb 2013 12:02 am

In his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama proposed raising the minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $9 an hour. That would be almost a 25 percent increase. Let’s look at the president’s proposal, but before doing so, let’s ask some other economic questions.
Are people responsive to changes in price? For example, if the price of cars rose by 25 percent, would people purchase as many cars? Supposing housing prices rose by 25 percent, what would happen to sales? Those are big-ticket items, but what about smaller-priced …

Abraham Lincoln
20 Feb 2013 12:04 am

Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln” has been a box-office hit and nominated for 12 Academy Awards, including best picture, best director and best actor for Daniel Day-Lewis, who portrayed our 16th president. I haven’t seen the movie; therefore, this column is not about the movie but about a man deified by many. My colleague Thomas DiLorenzo, economics professor at Loyola University Maryland, exposed some of the Lincoln myth in his 2006 book, “Lincoln Unmasked.” Now comes Joseph Fallon, cultural intelligence analyst and former U.S. Army Intelligence Center instructor, with his new e-book, …

Cultural Deviancy, Not Guns
13 Feb 2013 12:14 am

There’s a story told about a Paris chief of police who was called to a department store to stop a burglary in progress. Upon his arrival, he reconnoitered the situation and ordered his men to surround the entrances of the building next door. When questioned about his actions, he replied that he didn’t have enough men to cover the department store’s many entrances but he did have enough for the building next door. Let’s see whether there are similarities between his strategy and today’s gun control strategy.
Last year, Chicago had …

Official Lies
30 Jan 2013 12:04 am

Let’s expose presidential prevarication. Earlier this year, President Barack Obama warned that Social Security checks will be delayed if Congress fails to increase the government’s borrowing authority by raising the debt ceiling. However, there’s an issue with this warning. According to the 2012 Social Security trustees report, assets in Social Security’s trust funds totaled $2.7 trillion, and Social Security expenditures totaled $773 billion. Therefore, regardless of what Congress does about the debt limit, Social Security recipients are guaranteed their checks. Just take the money from the $2.7 trillion assets held …

Experts Aren’t Deities
23 Jan 2013 12:04 am

Let’s look at experts. Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) was a mathematician and scientist. Newton has to be the greatest and most influential scientist who has ever lived. He laid the foundation for classical mechanics, and his genius transformed our understanding of science, particularly in the areas of physics, mathematics and astronomy. What’s not widely known is that Newton spent most of his waking hours on alchemy; his experiments included trying to turn lead into gold. Though he wrote volumes on alchemy, after his death Britain’s Royal Society deemed that they …

Are Guns the Problem?
16 Jan 2013 12:04 am

When I attended primary and secondary school — during the 1940s and ’50s — one didn’t hear of the kind of shooting mayhem that’s become routine today. Why? It surely wasn’t because of strict firearm laws. My replica of the 1902 Sears mail-order catalog shows 35 pages of firearm advertisements. People just sent in their money, and a firearm was shipped.
Dr. John Lott, author of “More Guns, Less Crime,” reports that until the 1960s, some New York City public high schools had shooting clubs where students competed in citywide shooting …

Dishonest Educators
9 Jan 2013 12:04 am

Nearly two years ago, U.S. News & World Report came out with a story titled “Educators Implicated in Atlanta Cheating Scandal.” It reported that “for 10 years, hundreds of Atlanta public school teachers and principals changed answers on state tests in one of the largest cheating scandals in U.S. history.” More than three-quarters of the 56 Atlanta schools investigated had cheated on the National Assessment of Educational Progress test, sometimes called the national report card. Cheating orders came from school administrators and included brazen acts such as teachers reading answers …

Why the 2nd Amendment
2 Jan 2013 12:03 am

Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., shootings, said: “The British are not coming. … We don’t need all these guns to kill people.” Lewis’ vision, shared by many, represents a gross ignorance of why the framers of the Constitution gave us the Second Amendment. How about a few quotes from the period and you decide whether our Founding Fathers harbored a fear of foreign tyrants.
Alexander Hamilton: “The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed,” adding later, …

Middle East Democracy
26 Dec 2012 12:03 am

Here’s the first paragraph of my last year’s column “Democracy Is Impossible”:
“After Moammar Gadhafi’s downfall as Libya’s tyrannical ruler, politicians and ‘experts’ in the U.S. and elsewhere, including French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe, are saying that his death marked the end of 42 years of tyranny and the beginning of democracy in Libya. Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., said Gadhafi’s death represented an opportunity for Libya to make a peaceful and responsible transition to democracy. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said, ‘Now it is time for Libya’s Transitional National Council to …

A Hundred Percent of Nothing
19 Dec 2012 12:03 am

JoAnn Watson, Detroit city council member, said, “Our people in an overwhelming way supported the re-election of this president, and there ought to be a quid pro quo.” In other words, President Obama should send the nearly bankrupted city of Detroit millions in taxpayer bailout money. But there’s a painful lesson to be learned from decades of political hustling and counsel by intellectuals and urban experts.
In 1960, Detroit’s population was 1.6 million. Blacks were 29 percent, and whites were 70 percent. Today, Detroit’s population has fallen precipitously to 707,000, of …

Our Government-Created Financial Crisis
12 Dec 2012 12:08 am

Suppose you saw a building on fire. Would you seek counsel from the arsonist who set it ablaze for advice on how to put it out? You say, “Williams, you’d have to be a lunatic to do that!” But that’s precisely what we’ve done: turned to the people who created our fiscal crisis to fix it. I have never read a better account of our doing just that than in John A. Allison’s new book, “The Financial Crisis and the Free Market Cure.”
Allison is the former CEO of Branch Banking …

Rep. Kelly OWNS Fired IRS Commish–Gets Rousing Ovation

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