In this column I pose questions and raise issues. I don't always agree with the conclusion, implied or stated. The purpose is to put a slightly different spin on each item and to promote discussion.

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• America's addiction to foreign oil gives more support to terrorists than anything else we do.
• Too much complaining kills kindness.
• Alvin Toffler is to the 20th Century what Herbert Spencer was to the 19th Century. Whether by accident or design, they each provided the arguments of their day for concentrating wealth and power.
• The Right has done a magnificent job of persuading Americans that corporate interests are private, but individual interests are not.
• The purchasing power of American and Canadian wages has decreased relative to other currencies.
• Bigotry feeds on bigotry.
• Pundits attribute the threat of a deflationary contraction in the U.S. to Fed monetary policy. While Fed policy is a part of the problem, this narrow view ignores the effects of wage deflation and the exportation of manufacturing jobs.
• Most men prefer aspie chicks.
• Aspies, like Al Gore, are "wooden," while first- and second-generation Asian Americans are "inscrutable."
• When confronted with some case of antimale discrimination, feminists will almost always fall back on statistics, frequently false, which support their contention that while instances of discrimination against men exist, they don't matter because not enough men are victimized to count.
• Sexism is a vicious circle.
• Equalitarians acknowledge and oppose all instances of oppression, unlike extremists, who require that only particular classes of oppression may be acknowledged and opposed.
• Recently a deeply religious person told me, "You don't need reality if you've got faith."
• Most women's magazines are about sex.
• Nearly 7 percent of American adults are ex-cons. That's enough to stage a revolution. Given the degree to which they are disenfranchised from mainstream society, they have motive. So maybe it's in our best interests to find a way to absorb these women and men back into society.
• Any fool with a vehicle and more gasoline than sense can go fast in a straight line.
• According to Table No. 1097 of the 2001 Statistical Abstract of the United States, speeding accounted for only 26.4% of traffic fatalities. Most crashes are caused by aggressive driving and inattention, both of which frequently include tailgating, misjudgment and alcohol abuse. Yet traffic safety efforts largely ignore tailgating.
• For too many people, it's more important to look smart than to be smart.
• If citizens are not invested in their nation, then they have little motivation beyond safety and comfort to serve the interests of the wealthy few.
• How much philanthropy will it take for Bill Gates to make up for the millions of man-hours his Windows products have wasted, the thousands of businesses his monopolistic practices destroyed and the hundreds of thousands of American lives he ruined?
• When a woman gets pregnant "accidentally," men are legally required to do the right thing, while women are encouraged to do their own thing.
• Maybe it's time to require multinational corporations to pledge allegiance.
• The endless dispute over the validity of feminist statistics notwithstanding, 30 years ago American men thought it was their duty to defend women. Since then, feminists have stridently alleged that by nature men are rapacious predators. The result: not only are boys not being taught that they have a duty to defend women, but, with games like Grand Theft Auto III, they are encouraged to view women as prey.
• Patriarchy put women on a pedestal, feminism put men in the gutter.
• While I appreciate the sentiment motivating the folks at Parents. The Anti-Drug., I have to wonder how they figure buying pot grown in America supports terrorists.