As an amateur student of economics, I had expected to see some interesting new insights from a New York Times article entitled "In Economics Departments, a Growing Will to Debate Fundamental Assumptions." Shame on me! I was disbused of that notion by the very first paragraph.

For many economists, questioning free-market orthodoxy is akin to expressing a belief in intelligent design at a Darwin convention: Those who doubt the naturally beneficial workings of the market are considered either deluded or crazy.

Of course, being the Times, the entire article is devoted to those economists, almost universally from either absolute backwaters (University of Missouri, Kansas City) or the height of the ivory tower (Princeton, Harvard) who “question the orthodoxy” of free markets by promoting socialism and greater government control instead. This would be like a physicist claiming that “Aristotle needs another chance” even after Newtonian physics had been discovered. I didn’t realize that clinging to the economic ideas of Marx and Keynes was the kind of tilting at windmills the academic debate on economics needs, but the implication from NYT reporter Patricia Cohen is that these guys deserve a chance – well patty, they already had their chance, and we ended up with the Soviet Union, price controls, and the economy of the 1970’s.

The most interesting part of the article though is within this whole list of respected academic economists who "doubt the naturally beneficial workings of the market" and "question the profession’s most cherished ideas about not interfering in the economy." There is one name that is conspicuously absent. I wonder if that was a mere oversight, or a tacit acknowledgement by the Times that Krugman has crossed the line from academic to partisan hack?

This week in Telluride, Colo., hundreds of people will gather for the Ayn Rand Institute's annual conference. The event will include a field trip to the mountain town of Ouray, which is believed to have been the inspiration for Galt's Gulch, the hidden enclave for free-market advocates in Rand's quasi-apocalyptic 1957 novel, Atlas Shrugged.

One evening in Telluride, a panel of university-affiliated scholars will discuss their academic experiences as objectivists, as Rand's philosophical disciples are known. They can take a fair amount of satisfaction in their progress. Objectivists are now teaching in highly ranked philosophy programs and publishing in prestigious venues. And they draw on a steady crop of interested undergraduates: Twenty-five years after her death, Rand's novels still sell at the rate of hundreds of thousands of copies per year.

It's perfectly reasonable to have a debate about health care and to discuss the pro's and con's of health care provided by the public sector (government) and the private sector (insurance companies/HMO's). However, your recent column does neither. First, you grossly mischaracterized the discussion on Neil Cavuto's show ("discussed how health care promotes terrorism"), which was about the necessary importing of foreign doctors due to the lack of native ones (mainly due to the effects of socialized medicine). Second, you claim that the medical-industrial complex and their allies have " used scare tactics to prevent America from following its conscience". Fair enough. But isn't this the exact same technique used by liberals to protest numerous policies from Supreme Court nominations "Robert Bork's America would be marked by back alley abortions" to welfare reform "children begging for money, children begging for food, eight- and nine-year-old prostitutes" and "legislative child abuse" to global warming "This is treason. And we need to start treating them as traitors." and "Let's just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers," Hmm, I have yet to see you call out any of those people for their "scare tactics". In any case, it's quite disturbing to see that you resort to the same techniques I mentioned above by questioning the values and morals of anyone who doesn't believe in universal health care. Also, you cite an example from Sicko "a child who dies because an emergency room that isn’t a participant in her mother’s health plan won’t treat her" but you don't give any of the background info regarding it. The child in question, Mychelle Williams, did not receive the proper tests for Sepsis at the 1st hospital she was taken to, Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center, and this was the eventual cause of death (not being treated quickly enough). The hospital, which is government run--coincidentally (actually not coincidentally), was found at fault along with the 2nd hospital the child was eventually transported to. The insurance company was not involved in denying treatment or care for the child at any point. The fact that the doctor at the hospital did NOT perform necessary and immediate tests to fully determine the child's condition (despite words from a doctor at a Kaiser hospital advising to wait on the tests) was the negligent act. Also, note that the 2 hospitals were found liable in the suit; nowhere was the Kaiser insurance plan found negligent. I figured someone of your standing would have properly researched the examples Moore provides in the film before throwing them in your column. Of course, seeing as how you have done this exact same thing in previous columns (including citing a 98% voter turnout rate for one county in Ohio from a clearly flawed Congressional report when the actual number - 72% - was easily available online at the county's website) I guess I shouldn't be suprised. Later you say "Medicare — which did enormous good, without leading to a dictatorship". Surely Medicare has helped out older individuals, but I guess you missed the current Comptroller of the US on 60 minutes Sunday "By that I mean that the Medicare problem is five times greater than the Social Security problem." and "With one stroke of the pen, Walker says, the federal government increased existing Medicare obligations nearly 40 percent over the next 75 years." Then you go on to claim that "Meanwhile, every available indicator says that in terms of quality, access to needed care and health outcomes, the U.S. health care system does worse, not better, than other advanced countries". Again, this simply isn't true. Cuba was ranked 39th in the 2000 WHO survey. Yet, Moore gleefully takes people there to get treatement even though Cuba is ranked behind the US (37th). Also, the Commonwealth Fund did a study which found that the US ranked ahead of Canada in several measures including % of patients who waited 4+ hours to be seen in an emergency room (24%-Canada, 12%-US); % who waited 4 weeks or longer to see a specialist (57%-Canada, 23%-US). While the emergency room times with Britain were comparable with those of the US, the % who had to wait 4+ weeks for a specialist were much higher (60%) in Britain than in the US (23%). So your claim that the US does worse in "every available indicator" than other countries, simply isn't true. Finally, your claim that "..the French manage to provide arguably the best health care in the world," is where you lose all credibility. Did you not see/hear/read about the Heat Wave which killed nearly 15,000 people in France, during the same time (coincidentally- -well, not really) when many doctors, nurses, and other health personnel were on their mandated vacations. Please explain how the "..best health care in the world" lets nearly 15,000 of its citizens die due to a completeyl normal occurence (as compared to a disease or viriological outbreak). Lastly, your reasoning that it is purely fear and scare tactics which are arguing against socialized medicine is disingenuous and pretty much a common tactic on the left. Again, you (just as many other liberals do), have managed to use purely emotion (while citing very minimal statistical or factual or numerical evidence) to declare, ipso facto, that socialized medicine is the answer and those who are opposed to it are mean, immoral, and scaring people. Hmmm, where have I heard this recently. Oh yes, the immigration debate.

The unemployment rate is a low 4.5% overall. And the Associated Press reported on Friday that it's only 2% for college-educated people. My DC-insider friend "Mick Danger" asks,

What if the unemployment rate wre only 2% overall? Would Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi be happy with the economy then?

(No, Democrats are thrive on unhappiness. The new Amity Shlaes book on the Great Depession and the New Deal, The Forgotten Man, establishes that FDR pitted Americans into camps of the favored and unfavored, using the growth of government to grow his party.

Why don't the Republicans do more to connect with those who benefit from low taxes, free trade and expanding markets? What if they laid claim to having lowered the unemployment rate to 2% for those who do something for themselves, such as graduate from college? (Which when you think about it is a low hurdle rate...graduating from college doesn't require much in the ways of new skills or actual knowledge.) At least it would spark a more productive debate about which party creates opportunity and which one seeks merely to divide up the spoils.

[Quoting Hoyt:] Why Bush and the military are emphasizing Al Qaeda to the virtual exclusion of other sources of violence in Iraq is an important story.

Got that? The administration is blaming al Qaeda for violence in Iraq, to the "virtual exclusion of other sources;" al Qaeda is the "single villain." Hoyt doesn't seem to have done any research to bolster this claim. Instead, he cites an Associated Press story from exactly one month ago that, according to Hoyt, found "that although some 30 groups have claimed credit for attacks on United States and Iraqi government targets, press releases from the American military focus overwhelmingly on Al Qaeda."

I decided to test that claim by reviewing the press releases that the Multi-National Force has put out so far in July. There are a total of 87 press releases, which I thought would be a representative sample, as well as, obviously, an up to date one.

I found that only 29 of those 87 press releases mentioned al Qaeda at all; 58, or two-thirds, made no reference to that organization. Further, of those that attributed violent acts to some enemy of the U.S. and the Iraqi government, 37 mentioned persons other than al Qaeda; e.g., "insurgents," an "extremist group," an "IED cell," etc. So, far from focusing on al Qaeda to the "virtual exclusion" of other groups, 55% of the time, the military does not mention al Qaeda at all.

Muslim suicide bombing has nothing to do with Islam or the Quran (except for two lines). It has a lot to do with sex, or, in this case, the absence of sex.

What distinguishes Islam from other major religions is that it tolerates polygyny. By allowing some men to monopolize all women and altogether excluding many men from reproductive opportunities, polygyny creates shortages of available women. If 50 percent of men have two wives each, then the other 50 percent don't get any wives at all.

So polygyny increases competitive pressure on men, especially young men of low status. It therefore increases the likelihood that young men resort to violent means to gain access to mates. By doing so, they have little to lose and much to gain compared with men who already have wives...

The other key ingredient is the promise of 72 virgins waiting in heaven for any martyr in Islam. The prospect of exclusive access to virgins may not be so appealing to anyone who has even one mate on earth, which strict monogamy virtually guarantees. However, the prospect is quite appealing to anyone who faces the bleak reality on earth of being a complete reproductive loser.

Update... Reader Adam Allouba says,

You're mistaken in assuming that suicide bombers are always Muslims. The number one perpetrator of suicide bombings is the Tamil Tigers, who are radical Sri Lankan Marxist-Leninists.

Robert Pape's research backs this up. Here's the link.