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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• The "liberal press" certainly clamped a lid on all the talk and speculation about Attorney General Ashcroft.
• Pundits like Rush Limbaugh have lamented the lack of respect in society, yet demonstrate daily vitriolic disrespect for those with whom they disagree.
• To what extent is the feminist opposition to female plaintiffs being required to face male defendants in court motivated by the desire to shield women from guilt in false accusation cases?
• There's nothing racist about the Confederate flag. In historical fact, Lincoln made slavery the battle cry against the Confederacy, while in the south the galvanizing issue was states' rights.
• Many Republicans have joined the Anti-Defamation League in accusing Pat Buchanan of anti-Semitism. But a review of the evidence against him proves only that he has criticized the Israeli government and U.S. policy toward Israel. Moreover, a review of Buchanan's remarks demonstrates only respect for the Jewish people. So why would Republicans resort to such mud-slinging? Because being right-wing liberals they oppose all true conservatives.
• George W. Bush lacks the vision and drive to be a dictator.
• The answer to any possible nuclear threat from any regime is simply to let everybody know that if their government fires so much as a single missile at American soil, we will annihilate them utterly and without compromise. Backed by the gumption to do it, this will provide all the motivation necessary to compel people everywhere to police their own government.
• Just as the cold war sustained the Soviet Union, so the American embargo on Cuba sustains Castro's regime.
• It has been noted many times that a bright high school physics student could, with the right materials available, construct a rudimentary nuclear device. Given the widespread availability of radioactive waste in the world, if anything we should assume a "dirty bomb" is within reach of just about everybody.
• It's easy to follow the herd, go along with the crowd and uncritically embrace popular sentiment, no matter how irrational it may be. But intelligence, integrity and individuality are among the most enduring albeit least popular of American virtues.
• Strictly speaking, Christianity is a form of eudemonism.
• Reproductive roles aside, the power of women is to exclude, and of men, to include.
• In the 1970s, Gloria Steinem said that feminism was for the liberation of both women and men. In the 1990s, Patricia Ireland said feminism was for the liberation of women, only. Now, in the 2000s, as the backlash buries the feminists and equalitarians step forward with an agenda that truly serves both women and men, feminists protest that's what they've been about all along.
• Saudi Arabians organized, financed and executed 9-11. But they're our good friends, so we will retaliate against Iraq, Syria and Iran, instead.
• During the past few decades rank-and-file Americans have lost so much power that the politically active few on both sides of the fence express their deep sense of powerlessness through ideological association with powerful people, and fulfill the need for self-respect through deprecating the opposition.
• In government employment, obedience is valued more than excellence.
• When American corporations began exporting manufacturing jobs, many Americans ignored it because they assumed their "information economy" jobs were safe. But then American employers began exporting everything from customer service jobs to Canada and computer programming jobs to India, and now the strategic dislocation of the American worker is hitting home.
• As feminists once more turn America's city streets and college campuses into anti-male terror cells (where they use lurid propaganda to promote terror of men), we should perhaps take a moment to ask ourselves why the net result of the Take Back the Night rallies seems to be more hatred and less love, more misogyny and less self-respect?
• During the past 300 years if western men had even been in the same galaxy of badness as modern feminists claim, there would never have been a feminist movement.
• Intuition is a subjective process.
• The women's liberation movement started out with a really good equalitarian idea, but then it was hijacked by self-serving hate-filled dogmatists, who corrupted the original idea of equality into a predacious crusade driven by faith rather than reason to destroy all nonbelievers.
• African-Americans: the other "white meat"?