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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• Does life seem complicated? Do you have feelings of remorse when people who hate you get killed or captured before they can kill you? You may be a liberal idiot. Call the Center for Liberal Idiots right now, to take part in a study of an experimental dose of reality. In just a few days, you can be on your way to a happier, more objective life. Call today.
• If the "rich get richer," that's great, as long as it doesn't happen at the expense of the rest of us.
• The liberal attacks on Pat Tillman, the NFL star who turned his back on fame and fortune to serve his country, demonstrate the hate that energizes so many liberals and informs so much of their thought.
• If we lack the will to maintain the war on terror post‑9‑11, how can we question President Bush for not declaring war on terror pre‑9‑11?
• One ironic consequence of conservative opposition to American Indian sovereignty, limited though that sovereignty already is, is the way in which this makes the tribes vulnerable to liberal mandates. For example, tribes can teach celibacy with impunity from liberal interference. Loss of sovereignty could mean that the tribes will have to stop teaching celibacy, and start teaching homosexuality.
• One of the factors contributing to the increase of girl violence is that, while there are many influences encouraging girls to be violent, there are none of the lessons most boys get that teach them how to curb and control their violence.
• The fact that Vice President Dick Cheney has no presidential aspirations but is there solely to support his president and serve his country, may make him the most famous vice president in America's history.
• The "greatest generation" endured a depression, fought a world war, worked hard, made sacrifices, built the most powerful nation in history, and largely failed to teach their children as well as they were taught.
• Why aren't most Americans buying into the anti‑Bush messages broadcast by both mainstream and fringe leftist groups? One reason is that, unlike in previous wars, today's military personnel are able to send real‑time messages to their loved ones back home, and this grass‑roots reporting tells us the truth withheld by mainstream sources.
• For many, Starship Troopers defines today's generation of young people the way Easy Rider defined the youth of my generation. I still don't get Rider, but every time I see Troopers I want to sign up for service and be a citizen.
• In my experience, conservatives favor making carefully considered decisions about engaging in violence, and then, once committed, declare war and go all the way. Liberals, however, avoid committing to war, and instead commit random acts of personal violence.
• Conservatism encourages prudence, growth and stability, while liberalism encourages boom and bust cycles. Corporate culture is demonstrably liberal by the way in which it ties into the boom and bust mentality, always chasing trends.
• Feminist whining, widely accepted as fact, is based mostly on the experiences of only a few percent of American women.
• When a business opens a card room, casino or other business, left‑wing liberals attack its purpose of turning a profit for the owners. But when Indian tribes open businesses, the purpose for which is to fund essential services, such as health and elder care, education and training, housing and employment, the right‑wing liberals attack the tribal enterprises as "unfair."
• American governments generally rely on 18th century solutions for 21st century traffic problems. One reason is that spending money on 21st century solutions ‑ such as subsidizing the development of the Moller Skycar ‑ would be too much like socialism.
• The "wall" to protect America's borders could be electronic, guarded by motion detectors and surveillance cameras, and defended by subsonic emitters.
• Liberalism versus conservatism is the politics of idealism versus realism.
• Americans forgive people who admit their mistakes, unless the people are liberal and the person who made the mistake is a conservative.
• America is naturally reluctant to make war on other nations. Americans are generally benevolent and wish good will for all. This reluctance has restrained our hand abroad too much, with chaos and terrorism the result.
• A Mormon man who was teaching his daughter about polygyny was ordered to stop. Ironically, if he had taught his daughter about promiscuity, no court would have interefered.
• In several respects, what Tom Leykis teaches is socially irresponsible. But his show underscores the fact that men are often punished for being responsible citizens, but rewarded for being socially irresponsible. This has got to change.
• Right now I live in a very liberal city, and it's been very instructive how people who were civil, if not friendly toward me became hostile when I started wearing my little Bush‑Cheney '04 hat. I thought liberals celebrated diversity, but many of the liberals around here seem to hate it.
• Why did the 9‑11 Commission question Condoleeza Rice as though the attack on the USS Cole happened during the Bush Administration, rather than during the Clinton Administration?
• Generally speaking, liberals think to justify their feelings, while conservatives think to give perspective to their feelings.
• The corporate elite may very well pay a disproportionate amount of the income tax, and that's not fair, but many also receive salaries and bonuses that are disproportionate, and that's not fair, either.
• Liberals are so desperate to get more gullible voters, that they want to give 14‑year‑olds the vote.
• Many liberals take it as an article of faith that most conservatives are racist, which is why they label conservatives who are black as "Uncle Toms," Indian as "Apples," etc. But conservatism isn't about race, and those who claim otherwise are the racists.
• During the Clinton Administration, many rich people got richer by ripping off investors, driving companies into the ground, and destroying jobs. Under the Bush Administration, these acts are being exposed.
• For liberals, words talk louder than actions.
• In principle, outsourcing is a fine idea. In practice, over the short run it can ruin millions of American lives. Globalization is a good long‑term goal, but our government should set reasonable yet strict policies for implementation that assure globalization of labor is not done solely to enrich wealthy executives, but that it also benefits stockholders and customers without doing harm to American labor. Why? Because the American government and American corporations owe first allegiance to America and American citizens.
• It's easy to justify driving down the price of American labor (wages) by increasing the supply of labor through outsourcing (exporting jobs), when the big money is on your side and the big hurt is on the American workers' side.
• Economists who advocate exporting jobs sometimes refer to Comparative Advantage, which they use to argue that it's to our advantage to export jobs to other countries, where they can do those jobs cheaper than we can, so that we can focus on what we do best. The argument goes that with the money made by workers in those other countries, they will turn around and buy stuff from us, that will create more jobs here, and that will make up for the ones that were lost. But this only works if the other countries all agree to play by the same rules we do.
• Right‑wing liberals justify exporting jobs on the basis of altruism. That people in other countries need jobs, too, so that makes it okay if you lose your job. But conservatives don't believe in sacrificing our interests to other nations.
• Feminists got the Rape Shield Law to prevent defendants form demonstrating patterns of conduct in their accuser that may mitigate the case. What's next, a "liberal politician voting shield law," to prevent conservatives from exposing how liberal politicians vote?
• Anybody who has never wished they could be like everybody else, probably already is.
• Many Americans have become like clueless cattle, herded by their appetites toward a preferably distant and unknown fate.
• Former Republican General Wesley Clark ran for the Democratic Presidential nomination. His candidacy was a joke and he made his Democratic supporters look like idiots. Former security advisor Richard Clarke, who worked for Presidents Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton and Bush Jr., before leaving in a huff to write an anti‑Bush book, was exposed as a complete fraud, eroding the Democratic attack machine's credibility. Now, the press is speculating whether Republican Senator John McCain might become John Kerry's vice presidential running mate. If he does, will his candidacy turn into another joke? I sometimes wonder if these are all Republican maneuvers to cripple the anti‑Bush campaign.
• International financier George Soros is desperate to defeat George W. Bush. One possible motive is that his business depends on the opportunities afforded by unstable international markets. By making war on international terrorism, the Bush administration has begun a process which will bring stability, if not peace, to most of the world.
• The internet bubble burst when it should have slowly deflated. The primary reason was regulations under the Clinton administration that made broadband unprofitable. Telephone companies were forced to subsidize their smaller competitors by allowing them to buy bandwidth at below‑cost prices. While a small deflation would have sufficed to correct for the irrational excesses, the industry all but collapsed under these irrational regulations.
• Besides their poverty, examples of poor people who get poor justice have one other characteristic in common: most of them are men.
• In The Work of Nations, President Bill Clinton's former Secretary of Labor, Robert B. Reich, explains why what everybody now calls "outsourcing" ‑‑ exporting jobs to other countries ‑‑ isn't really outsourcing, but it is inevitable, and that "made in America" is irrelevant. That was in 1991. Now, he's siding with Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry, who calls corporations which outsource "Benedict Arnold companies."