hugo

It's getting to the point where 90% of male children are classified as having some mental problem.

Hitler wasn't politically correct.

Why America's Debt Burden Is Declining by Brian M. Riedl In bold is our only real problem. The national debt is quite manageable.

If you are a responsible individual (one who pays his bills) you can still get an FHA loan for most housing. You can still get conventional 5% loans. If you are an irresponsible individual, with no money, you can no longer move into a home of your own for less than an apartment deposit.

I think having to sleep with that wife of his should absolve him of any sins.

Misery index 1976-01 14.62 1976-02 13.99 1976-03 13.67 1976-04 13.75 1976-05 13.60 1976-06 13.57 1976-07 13.15 1976-08 13.51 1976-09 13.09 1976-10 13.16 1976-11 12.68 1976-12 12.66 1977-01 12.72 Carter 1977-02 13.51 1977-03 13.84 1977-04 14.15 1977-05 13.73 1977-06 14.07 1977-07 13.73 1977-08 13.62 1977-09 13.40 1977-10 13.19 1977-11 13.52 1977-12 13.10 2006-01 8.69 2006-02 8.40 2006-03 8.06 2006-04 8.25 2006-05 8.77 2006-06 8.92 2006-07 8.95 2006-08 8.52 2006-09 6.66 2006-10 5.71 2006-11 6.47 2006-12 7.04 2007-01 6.68 2007-02 6.92 2007-03 7.18 2007-04 7.07 2007-05 7.19 2007-06 7.19 2007-07 6.96 2007-08 6.57 2007-09 7.46 30 years ago really sucked. More good news. Millions of American homebuyers are going to find purchasing a home cheaper this year.

The Truth on Trade by Daniel T. Griswold PRINT PAGE E-MAIL PAGE TEXT SIZE President Bush urged Congress yesterday to pass four pending trade agreements, telling a White House audience that open markets boost economic growth, raise standards of living by creating higher-paying jobs and deliver more choice and better prices for consumers. Despite claims to the contrary by populist opponents of trade expansion, the president has the facts and decades of experience on his side. Critics of trade counter that real wages have stagnated while the middle class has been squeezed by a loss of jobs to low-wage competitors such as China and Mexico. Democrats in Congress point to those anxieties to justify their opposition to any meaningful trade-expanding legislation ? including pending free trade accords with South Korea and Colombia and renewal of presidential trade-promotion authority. Like so many assumptions about trade, the belief that more global competition has somehow lowered the living standards of the average American worker and family is just a myth. Daniel Griswold directs the Cato Institute's Center for Trade Policy Studies and authored the new study, "Trading Up: How Expanding Trade Has Delivered Better Jobs and Higher Living Standards for American Workers," available at freetrade.org. More by Daniel T. GriswoldThe critics have it all wrong: The middle class isn't disappearing ? it's moving up. The Census reports that the share of U.S. households earning $35,000 to $75,000 a year (in '06 dollars) ? roughly, the middle class ? has indeed shrunk slightly over the last decade, from 34 percent to 33 percent. But so, too, has the share earning less than $35,000 ? from 40 percent to 37 percent. It's the share of households earning more than $75,000 that's jumped ? from 26 percent to 30 percent. Trade has helped America transform itself into a middle-class service economy. Yes, the country's lost a net 3.3 million manufacturing jobs in the past decade ? but it's added a net 11.6 million jobs in service and other sectors where average wages are higher than in manufacturing. Most of these new jobs are in better-paying categories, like professional and business services, finance and education and health services. Trade and globalization have also helped bolster the balance sheets of American households by delivering higher incomes, lower interest rates and wider investment opportunities. From 1995 to 2004, the real median net worth of U.S. households jumped by 31 percent, boosted by rising home values and stock prices. (Even with the recent housing slump, average home values remain more than 2.5 times what they were a decade ago, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller index.) Despite frequently heard worries, American families are not "drowning in debt." Yes, total household debt has risen in the past decade ? but total assets have risen in value even faster. On average, U.S. households spent 14.4 percent of their income on debt payments in 2004, not much different from the 14.1 percent they spent in 1995. The bulk of what we've borrowed hasn't paid for groceries or big-screen TVs but for housing ? which, again, has appreciated strongly in the last decade. Like so many assumptions floating around about trade, the belief that more global competition has somehow lowered the living standards of the average worker and family is just a myth. In fact, trade has delivered lower prices, higher worker compensation and an upwardly mobile middle class. The critics have it all wrong: The middle class isn't disappearing ? it's moving up. Critics of trade repeat as a mantra that real wages have been stagnant since the 1970s. But the data on real wages exclude benefits ? which have been rising as a share of worker compensation. Those data also rely on a cost-of-living index that has systematically overstated inflation and thus understated real income gains. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the average real hourly compensation earned by Americans has actually grown by 22 percent during the past decade ? even as trade and other measures of globalization have grown rapidly. Trade has brought us lower prices on a broad range of goods ? from fruits and vegetables to consumer electronics and automobiles ? stretching the paychecks of U.S. workers. Household incomes have also been rising. When they point to a small decline in median household income compared to 2000, opponents of trade are cherry-picking their numbers. That year was the frothy peak of a decade-long expansion. Use 1996 ? the comparable point in the previous business cycle ? as the baseline, and you see a 6 percent rise in median income. Convincing Americans that we are worse off than we were in years past has become a popular line of attack against globalization and trade expansion. But trade has played an important part in the positive story of long-term gains in hourly compensation, household income and net wealth. To promote further progress for U.S. workers and their families, Congress and the administration should work together to pursue policies that expand the freedom of Americans to participate in global markets.

I am already a slave from Jan 1 to May every year. Y'all keep bitching about every little problem I am sure our politicians in Washington will be glad to extend my yearly period of slavery.

Slaves and children need work too. If you are so unskilled you can be replaced by a child you deserve what you get. http://www.miseryindex.us/indexbymonth.asp

Slaves and children need work too. If you are so unskilled you can be replaced by a child you deserve what you get. http://www.miseryindex.us/indexbymonth.asp

Special needs kids tend to be annoying.

Maybe those lazy young s should work and go to school both.

Yep, I sure would. Economic booms (thanks to downsizing the role of government)_ in India and China have created wealth in many more hands and given the American consumer lower prices. The Truth About the Top 1% by Alan Reynolds PRINT PAGE E-MAIL PAGE TEXT SIZE Key legislators and presidential hopefuls in the Democratic Party have proposed raising the top two tax rates. They're also suggesting extra surtaxes for war, for alleviating the Alternative Minimum Tax, for Social Security, and for subsidizing compulsory health insurance. Barack Obama and John Edwards advocate taxing capital gains at 28%; Hillary Clinton favors taxing dividends at the surtaxed income-tax rates. The argument for these proposals has nothing to do with the impact of higher tax rates on incentives and the economy. It is all about "fairness" -- defined as reducing the top 1%'s share of income. This political exercise invariably begins by citing dubious statistics about pretax incomes among the top 1% (1.3 million tax returns) as an excuse for raising tax rates on the top 5%, among others. Echoing speeches from Sen. Clinton, Business Week recently exclaimed, "According to new Internal Revenue Service data announced last week, income inequality in the U.S. is at its worst since the 1920s (before the Great Depression). The top percentile of wealthy Americans earned 21.2% of all income in 2005, up from 19% in 2004." Alan Reynolds is a senior fellow and author of Income and Wealth (Greenwood Press 2006). More by Alan ReynoldsThese statistics are extremely misleading. First of all, the figures do not describe the top percentile's share of "all income," but that group's share of "adjusted" gross income (AGI) reported on individual tax returns. For one thing, thousands of professionals and business owners who used to report most of their income under the corporate tax responded to lower individual income-tax rates after 1986 and 2003 by reporting more income under the individual tax as partnerships, LLCs and Sub-S corporations. Peter Merrill of PricewaterhouseCoopers found that "since the Tax Reform Act of 1986 . . . the share of business income earned through pass-through entities has increased by 75% from 29% in 1987 to 52% in 2004." Business profits accounted for just 11.1% of the income reported by the top 1% in 1986, according to economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, but that business share leaped to 21.2% by 1988 and to 29.1% in 2005. It is this bookkeeping shift, moving business income from the corporate to the individual tax, not CEO pay, which raised the top 1%'s share on individual tax returns. Income reported on W2 forms -- salaries, bonuses and exercised stock options -- accounted for only 57.2% of total income among the top 1% in 2005, down from 63% in 2000 and 65.7% in 1986. Real compensation among the top 1% actually fell 7% from 2000 to 2005. Turning to the denominator of this ratio ("all income"), a huge portion of middle and lower income is no longer reported on tax returns. A larger and larger share of middle-class investment income is now accumulating outside of AGI because it is inside IRA, 401(k) and 529 savings plans. The CBO reckons the top 1% accounted for more than 59% of all capital gains, interest, dividends and rent reported on individual tax returns by 2004. Yet estimates of the share of national wealth of the top 1% range from 21%-33%. If the top 1% own 21%-33% of all capital, how could they be collecting 59% of the income from capital? They can't and they aren't. The top 1% is simply reporting a rising share of capital income because those with more modest incomes are keeping a rising share of their capital income unreported -- in IRA, 401(k) and 529 accounts. Millions also shrink their "adjusted" incomes by subtracting contributions to IRAs unavailable to the rich. Another huge swath of middle and lower income is excluded because AGI includes only the taxable portion of Social Security benefits and totally misses most other transfer payments such as Medicaid, food stamps and the Earned Income Credit. The Canberra Group, an international group of experts on income statistics brought together from 1996-2000 by the OECD, World Bank, U.N. and others, insisted household income must include everything that "increases the recipients' potential to consume or save." Government transfers amounted to $1.5 trillion in 2005 -- more than the total income of the top 1% in the basic Piketty and Saez estimates ($1.2 trillion). As a result of such huge omissions, and tax avoidance, the AGI of $7.5 trillion in 2005 was $3.7 trillion smaller than pretax personal income (personal income was $10.3 trillion in 2005, after subtracting $875 billion of payroll taxes). Anyone suggesting AGI is a more accurate measure than personal income is obliged to argue that GDP in 2005 was exaggerated by 29.4%. Estimated income shares from the IRS or Messrs. Piketty and Saez are not about income per household, but income per tax return. That matters because the top fifth of households average two salaries per tax return. The Census Bureau reports that the top fifth accounted for 26.8% of all full-time works last year while the bottom fifth accounted for just 5.7%. In fact, 64.5% of the households in the bottom fifth had nobody working, not even part time for a few weeks. When labor economists discuss income inequality, they habitually switch to speculating about skill-based differences in hourly wages, totally ignoring differences in hours worked. Third, the latest IRS figures are not comparable with those of 1986, much less with 1929, because the definition of AGI changes with changes in tax law. Such estimates differ greatly, with the IRS saying the top 1% received only 11.3% of income in 1986 (because AGI then excluded 60% of capital gains) while Messrs. Piketty and Saez put that year's figure at 13.1% and the CBO says it was 14%. The IRS figures only go back to 1986, so the Business Week comparison with the 1920s is invalid. The new figure is from the IRS but the old one is from Messrs. Piketty and Saez. Their recent estimates are also not comparable to their prewar estimates. Before 1944, their figures were obtained by dividing top income shares by 80% of personal income. Their estimates for 2005 were obtained by dividing top incomes by the $6.8 trillion left on tax returns after excluding even taxable transfer payments. If total income for 2005 was defined as it was for 1928, then the share of the top 1% would have dropped to 13.3% in 2005, compared with 19.8% in 1928. Besides, as Messrs. Piketty and Saez explained, "our long-run series are generally confined to top income and wealth shares and contain little information about bottom segments of the distribution." A fundamental problem with all tax-based income data involves "taxable income elasticity." Numerous studies, some by Mr. Saez, show that the amount of top income reported on individual tax returns is highly sensitive to changes in marginal tax rates on individual income, corporate income and capital gains. After the tax on dividends was reduced in 2003, for example, top-bracket investors held more dividend-paying stocks in taxable accounts (rather than in nontaxable accounts) and fewer tax-exempt bonds. When the top tax on capital gains was cut in 1997 and 2003, investors reacted by trading stocks more frequently and realizing more capital gains in taxable accounts. In the Piketty-Saez data, capital gains accounted for only 10.8% of the top 1%'s income from 1987 to 1996, when the capital gains tax was 28%. By contrast, capital gains accounted for 16.9% of the top 1%'s reported income from 1997 through 2002, when the tax was down to 20%. Even if estimates of the top 1%'s income share were not so sensitive to changes in tax rates, they would still tell us nothing about what happened to incomes among the other 99%. The top 1%'s share always falls in recessions, even aside from capital gains. But that certainly doesn't mean recessions raise everyone else's income. "It is a disputed question," wrote Messrs. Piketty and Saez, "whether the surge in reported top incomes has been caused by the reduction in taxation at the top through behavioral responses." In fact, their data clearly suggest that higher tax rates on top incomes, dividends and capital gains would sharply reduce top incomes, dividends and capital gains reported on individual tax returns. Such behavioral responses would have little impact on actual income or wealth at the top, while nonetheless leaving middle-income taxpayers stuck with a much larger share of the tax burden.

Gasoline Prices in Perspective by Jerry Taylor and Peter Van Doren Jerry Taylor and Peter Van Doren are senior fellows. Peter Van Doren is also editor of Regulation magazine. PRINT PAGE E-MAIL PAGE TEXT SIZE America appears to be in a state of wild-eyed panic about the rising price of gasoline. Talk radio hosts and T.V. populists apparently think that mass riots are imminent and that whole cities will burn unless politicians do something to save America from the long, dark economic night that is descending upon us. In truth, gasoline prices today are taking less of a bite from our pocketbooks than has been the norm since World War II. For instance, let's look at 1955, a year most of us associate with big cars, big engines, and cheap fuel ? automotive glory days, as it were. Gasoline sold for 29 cents per gallon. But one dollar in 1955 was worth more than one dollar today. If we were using today's dollars, gasoline would have cost $1.76 per gallon in 1955. Gasoline now costs around $3.00, so we are worse off than in 1955, right? No. Because we were poorer in 1955 than we are today, $1.76 then had a bigger impact on the pocketbook (that is, it represented a larger fraction of income) than $1.76 today. If we adjust gasoline prices not only for inflation but also changes in disposable per capita income (defined as income minus taxes), gasoline today would have to cost $5.17 per gallon to have the same impact as 29 cents in 1955. Let's pick another year we associate with low gasoline prices ? 1972, the year before the Arab oil embargo. Gasoline was selling at 36 cents per gallon. Adjusted for inflation, however, the price was actually $1.36 in today's currency. Adjust again for changes in disposable per capita income and the price would have to be $2.66 per gallon to have equivalent impact today. Were we better off then when we rolled into the filling station in 1972 than we are today? No, because our cars get 60 to 70 percent better mileage today than in 1972 (22.4 miles per gallon versus 13.5 miles per gallon). That more than offsets the 10.5 percent increase in gas prices adjusted for change in inflation and income from then to now. Now let's look at 1981, the year Ronald Reagan took office. Gasoline sold for $1.38 that year, the equivalent of $2.74 in today's currency. Adjusting for the change in disposable per capita income, prices would have to be $4.30 today to have an equivalent impact. There are probably three reasons that gasoline prices appear so high to us today. First, many don't fully appreciate the long run effect that inflation has on prices. Second, many don't appreciate how much our incomes have increased relative to prices. Finally, we still remember 1998 very well, the year in which we encountered the lowest gasoline prices since 1949. Gasoline in 1998 sold for $1.03 per gallon, the equivalent of $1.21 in today's currency. Adjusting for growth in per capita income yields a price of $1.35 per gallon in today's terms. Today's price is more than double that and people resent the increase over the last several years, in part, because they think that 1998 prices were normal. But they were not. Now let's put the recent price increase in terms of real outlays. The average household is spending $136 more on gasoline every month than it was in 1998 and $114 per month more than it were spending in 2002. But, believe it or not, real (inflation-adjusted) disposable income per household has increased even faster than have pump prices; by $800 a month since 1998 and $279 a month since 2002. Accordingly, Americans are still, on average, economically ahead of the game. No one likes high gasoline prices. But they are not as bad as most people think. Keep that in mind the next time some politician or media populist starts handing out the pitchforks.

In an 1875 Scientific America it was predicted that major US cities would be knee deep in horse manure by 1950 unless something drastic was done. In the mid 70's both Time and Newsweek printed articles concerning the threat of a new ice age. Pardon me if I ignore the chicken littles of today.

It is because any idiot can get a college degree nowadays.

The inflation adjusted price for oil is quite close to the 1980 price. I wish healthcare costs were the same. Our only impending crisis is the government created 70 trillion dollar unfunded medicaind obligations. The Europeans , Chinks and Japs are in a similar boat.

Strppers don't tend to be real bright.

http://worldroots.com/brigitte/royal/gifs/margdenmark.jpg

Bush 41: "

Sometimes you suffer consequences even when you do the right thing. I have no real problems with defending Kuwait, or our invasion of Afghanistan. If we had not diverted our energies to Iran the Taliban could have been demolished in Afghanistan and a puppet dictator installed. Once again, that is not the neocon (Wilsonian) way. What the Wilsonites do not understand is that liberating some people is akin to liberating a pet rabbit that was born and raised in captivity.

Nope, 9/11 was in the planning stage before GW was in office. Most of the hijackers were Saudis. The foreign policy of GW Bush is quite similar to the foreign policy of Clinton. They are both Wilsonites who fail to understand some people just ain't ready for democracy. George H. W. Bush had a much saner foreign policy. GHWB understood balance of power politics. Hussein was actually a bulwark against Islamic fundamentalism. His suppression of the Kurds also helped keep Turkey stable. If we were going to remove Saddam we should have done what Ike would have done. Replace him with another brutal dictator..It worked in Iran for a quarter of a century before another Wilsonite, Jimmy Carter, screwed it up. Human rights be damned, outside US borders, we should always act in a way to advance our national interests. Our removal of Saddam strengthened Iran. Made no damn sense.

There is nothing conservative about neoconservatism. It is simply Wilsonianism at the point of a gun. True conservatives, from Washington to Ike, warned us of entangling alliances (Israel) and meddling in foreign affairs. The price of interventionism is high. Sept 11 was just a small downpayment..

Excerpts from A Republic, Not an Empire by Patrick J. Buchanan March 25, 2000 What is best for America and the world, they tell us, is that the United States should remain a superpower sheriff, the Wyatt Earp of the West, possessed of the sole right to deputize posses, or go it alone if necessary, to discipline evil-doers, wherever our "values" are threatened. I submit that this foreign policy poses a great and growing danger to the peace and security of the United States. Meanwhile, a decade after the Gulf War, American soldiers and airmen stand ready to die to defend Saudi Arabia and Kuwait from Iran and Iraq - as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait conspire with Iran and Iraq to keep oil prices over $30 a barrel -- to loot America and gouge U.S. consumers. For ten years, the U.S. has played the dominant role in maintaining rigid sanctions on Iraq. By one UN estimate, these sanctions have resulted in the premature deaths of 500,000 children. Will the parents of those children ever forgive us? Even our European Allies recoil. By keeping these sanctions fastened on Iraq, we flout every tenet of Christianity's Just War doctrine, and build up deposits of hatred across the Arab world that will take decades to draw down. One day our children shall pay the price of our callous indifference to what is happening to the children of Iraq. I speak as a proud Cold Warrior who supported every great anti-Communist initiative from JFK to Reagan. And I support a U.S. defense that is second to none and a foreign policy whereby America responds resolutely to any attack on American citizens, honor, or vital interests. But what purpose is served by our shortening the lives of Iraqi people who have done us no harm? If Desert Storm could not remove Saddam Hussein, how are the women, children and elderly of Iraq, the victims of our sanctions, supposed to overthrow him? We are in an election season, and the two major parties have made their predictable selections. Their debate over foreign policy -- it is no news to anyone sitting here - was devoid of any fresh thinking. Both parties are frozen in the mindset of a Cold War that ended ten years ago. During one debate, John McCain singled out Iraq, Libya and North Korea as "rogue states" and advocated the armed overthrow of all three by U.S.-trained and equipped armies. Pressed on what he would do if his armies were being annihilated, the Senator did not respond. But he did not reject the notion that Iran, a nation of 70 million, should also be designated a rogue state to be targeted for overthrow. Friends, this is hubris; this is triumphalism; this is the arrogance of power; this is America's Brezhnev doctrine. I single McCain out not because he in particular is misguided, but because such ideas are commonplace among the global gamesmen in Washington. Governor Bush cried out in anguish when he was compared by Senator McCain to Bill Clinton, but he did not utter a skeptical word about McCain's plans for rogue regimes. Indeed, the Governor has exhibited neither absorbing interest nor extraordinary aptitude for foreign policy -- to put it generously. His call last year for the war on Serbia to be waged "more ferociously" was his one memorable foreign policy utterance. But in the cluster of foreign policy aides, the self-styled "Vulcans," now home-schooling the Governor, notions of "rogue state rollback" are music to the ear. Among the more prominent of the Vulcans is Paul Wolfowitz. A Pentagon aide to Bush the Elder, Wolfowitz produced in 1992 a blueprint for war against Russia that would utilize six carrier battle groups and 24 NATO divisions to rescue Lithuania, should Moscow recolonize that tiny republic. Richard Perle, another of the "On-to-Baghdad" brigade, is perhaps Washington's premier enthusiast of using U.S. power to topple rogue regimes. Another tutor to Governor Bush is his father's former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft. A few months ago, General Scowcroft advocated putting a division of U.S. troops on the Golan Heights, to police peace between Syria and Israel, thereby insuring there would be dead Americans in any future Syrian-Israeli clash. Not one of the "Vulcans" embraces the new thinking on foreign policy that has taken root in Congress and the country in the aftermath of the Cold War. This new thinking alarms both Clintonites who call it "isolationist," but even more the neo-conservatives who believe America should convert her hour of power into a "benevolent global hegemony." Indeed, during Clinton's war on Serbia, one neoconservative strategist was so disheartened by the lack of war spirit among the Republican rank-and file, he mused about giving up and leaving the GOP altogether. But while many Democrats and some on the Left are eager to challenge the Bush-Clinton New World Order, Vice President Gore is not among them. Mr. Gore is a Wilsonian in full. He exhibits a New Republic-style lust for cruise missile strikes on "rogue nations." He was all for the war on Serbia. Nor did he allow a ray of daylight to open up between himself and Mr. Clinton on sanctions against Iraq or the strikes against that poison gas factory in Sudan, that turned out to be a pharmaceutical plant. Mr. Gore is also an acolyte of the New World Order, ever ready to cede American sovereignty, and an architect of Clinton's Kyoto Treaty, under which global bureaucrats would dictate America's use of fossil fuels. When young Americans perished in a tragic accident over Iraq, Gore reflexively offered his condolences to the families of those who, quote, "had died in the service of the United Nations." Quo Vadis? Where are you going, America Because of our sanctions on scores of nations, cruise missile strikes upon others, and intervention in the internal affairs of still others in the wake of the Cold War, a seething resentment of America is brewing all over the world. And the haughty attitude of our foreign policy elite only nurses the hatred. Hearken, if you will, to the voice of our own Xenia, Madeline Albright, announcing new air strikes on Iraq: "If we have to use force, it is because we are America. We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall. We see farther into the future." Now I count myself an American patriot. But if this Beltway braggadocio about being the world's "indispensable nation" has begun to grate on me, how must it grate upon the Europeans, Russians, and peoples subject to our sanctions because they have failed, by our lights, to live up to our standards? And how can all our meddling not fail to spark some horrible retribution? Recall: it was in retaliation for the bombing of Libya that Khadafi's agents blew up Pan Am 103. And it is said to have been in retaliation for the Vincennes' accidental shoot-down of that Iranian airliner that Teheran collaborated with terrorists to blow up the Khobar towers. From Pan Am 103, to the World Trade Center, to the embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar - have we not suffered enough not to know that interventionism is the incubator of terrorism? Or will it take some cataclysmic atrocity on U.S. soil to awaken our global gamesmen to the asking price of empire? America today faces a choice of destinies. We can be the peacemaker of the world - or its policeman who goes about night-sticking troublemakers until we, too, find ourselves in some bloody brawl we cannot handle. Let us use this transitory moment of American power and preeminence to encourage and assist old friends and allies to stand on their own feet and provide and pay for their own defense. Let me state my present intent: If elected, I will have all U.S. troops out of the Balkan quagmire by year's end, and all American troops home from Europe by the end of my first term. Forty years ago, President Eisenhower pleaded with JFK to bring all U.S. troops home from Europe. Certainly, sixty years after the end of World War II, and fifteen years after the Berlin Wall fell, is not too soon to get all U.S. troops out of Europe and let Europeans provide and pay the cost of their own defense. If not now, when? And let us quickly adopt a measure of humility about how much we know about what is best for other peoples and cultures. In the words of the great scholar Russell Kirk: "There exists no single best form of government for the happiness of all mankind. The most suitable form of government depends on the historic experience, the customs, the beliefs, the state of culture...and all these things vary from land to land and age to age." We are entering a fertile and exciting time in our politics. Our ossified two-party system, that has managed to stifle serious foreign policy debate for a decade, is cracking up. Pressure is growing from dissidents within, and this year, there will be a mighty challenge from without. As Joe Namath said, I guarantee it. Our Reform Party will be on the ballot in 50 states, and, if I have anything to say about it -- and I expect to -- it will become a non-interventionist party, a peace party, that will reach out to Americans of Right and Left who reject the Third Way imperialism being forced upon us by the elites of both Beltway parties. In this new era, many of us are rediscovering the old distrust of crusading that was at the center of the world view of the old American Right. We are conscious of our love for this country. We do not wish to isolate America from the world, only to isolate America from wars -- the religious, ethnic, and territorial wars of less fortunate lands. We know there is a powerful body of American thought -- from Washington to John Quincy Adams to William Jennings Bryan and Robert Taft -- as well as all the near forgotten figures written about by Justin Raimondo and others -- to help guide us. And their message is one I intend to stamp upon our banners in the campaign of 2000: A Republic, Not an Empire! America First!

A fool and her money is soon parted.