Mr. Arafat "is Palestinian and I am Palestinian," said Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader of Hamas. "We have the same problem now. Israel is our enemy."

Is it possible that the American public makes wiser decisions in these matters than the magnificios who monitor our lives?

Is it possible that people purchase SUV's because they are functional, not because the buyers are witless status slaves?

Is it possible that women purchase then in inordinate quantities because they added height of the vehicles enhances visibility and a sensation of security?

Is it possible that men purchase them because they offer extra cargo space plus a wide range of utility and flexibility and the power to tow trailers of all descriptions?

Is it possible that consumers of all stripes are prepared to sacrifice a few miles per gallon and a few extra bucks for the added benefits of an SUV? (Driving 10,000 miles a year and averaging 20 mpg, vs. 35 mpg from a compact car at $1.50 a gallon, will cost $322 extra. That's not a staggering amount to pay for added benefits.)

The way I read it, Lomborg is not disputing environmental biology or ecological modeling. He differs from ecologists primarily in the treatment of the economic aspects of the environment. Although he is not a professional economist, Lomborg uses mainstream analysis rather than the peculiar models of ecologists. (His analysis of global warming owes much to the work of Yale economist William Nordhaus.) If anything, his work rests on a better overall scientific foundation than that of his critics.

I believe that the economist and the environmentalist can be friends. But it would help if environmentalists would, like Lomborg, try to understand important principles of economics, including substitutability, finite cost, and discounting. When environmentalists simply denounce economics, without making a convincing alternative case using analysis and data, they fail to advance our understanding.

"I join [with others] in branding as cowardly the idea that the human mind is incapable of further advance. This is precisely the doctrine which the present despots of the earth are inculcating and their friends here re-echoing and applying especially to religion and politics: 'that it is not probable that anything better will be discovered than what was known to our fathers.' We are to look backwards, then, and not forwards for the improvement of science and to find it amidst feudal barbarisms and the fires of Spital-fields. But thank heaven the American mind is already too much opened to listen to these impostures; and while the art of printing is left to us, science can never be retrograde. What is once acquired of real knowledge can never be lost." --Thomas Jefferson to William Green Munford, 1799.

"The unquestionable republicanism of the American mind will break through the mist under which it has been clouded, and will oblige its agents to reform the principles and practices of their administration." --Thomas Jefferson to Elbridge Gerry, 1799. ME 10:83

Mr. President, it can no longer be the policy of the United States to urge, much less to pressure, Israel to continue negotiating with Arafat, any more than we would be willing to be pressured to negotiate with Osama Bin Laden or Mullah Omar. Nor should the United States provide financial support to a Palestinian Authority that acts as a cog in the machine of Middle East terrorism, any more than we would approve of others providing assistance to Al Qaeda.

Instead, the United States should lend its full support to Israel as it seeks to root out the terrorist network that daily threatens the lives of Israeli citizens. Like our own efforts in Afghanistan and elsewhere, Israel's task will not be easy. It will not be accomplished quickly, or painlessly. But with fortitude, on our part as well on the part of the Israeli people, it can succeed in significantly reducing the risk of future terrorist attacks against Israel and against us. And, in so doing, we will give the Palestinian people a chance they have so far not had under Arafat's rule--an opportunity to construct a political culture and government that do not marry their national and religious aspirations with suicide bombers.

INTERVIEWER: Some of those debates became very, very heated. I think [Ludwig] von Mises once stormed out.

MILTON FRIEDMAN: Oh, yes, he did. Yes, in the middle of a debate on the subject of distribution of income, in which you had people who you would hardly call socialist or egalitarian -- people like Lionel Robbins, like George Stigler, like Frank Knight, like myself -- Mises got up and said, "You're all a bunch of socialists," and walked right out of the room. (laughs) But Mises was a person of very strong views and rather intolerant about any differences of opinion.

INTERVIEWER: What was Hayek's personal style? What was he like personally?

MILTON FRIEDMAN Oh, personally Hayek was a lovely man, a pure intellectual. He was seriously interested in the truth and in understanding. He differed very much in this way from Mises. There was none of that same kind of manner. He accepted disagreement and wanted to argue, wanted to reason about it and discuss it. He was a very cultured and delightful companion on any occasion. ... I must say, he undoubtedly was the dominant figure in all of the Mont Pelerin meetings for many, many years.

Tall. Black and handsome, he ruled the heavyweight and super heavy divisions in both the Pan-American and Olympic Games. He had three Olympic titles and was a national hero in Cuba. Many times he was offered millions of dollars to turn pro but each time the answer was no.

Stevenson was a supporter of the Cuban people and their revolution and would not sell out. Whites longed to see the Cuban rumble Muhammad Ali, but the answer was always no. He was not interested in prize fighting like a slave, he was a firm supporter of amateur sports and was not attracted to sports for profit, gamblers and exploitation of man by man.

In an era when young Cuban athletes defect to Amerikkka for profit, the lesson of Stevenson is clear "forward with the revolution." Now known as one of the greatest athletes the world has ever seen he has always been fiercely loyal to his people. Recently, while leaving Miami he was harassed by some Uncle Tom Cubans at the airport. After one shouted some negative remarks at him about Cuba, its people and their leader Fidel Castro, Stevenson was accused of assaulting what turned out to be an airport official.

Though detained, he was released and allowed to go home. He said he would allow no one to disrespect his country, his people, his leader. He is talking about the Cuba that exports doctors and dentists to poor country to care for the sick. The Cuba that has given asylum to political prisoners like Assata Shakur, queen of the Black Liberation Army. The Cuba that help defeat the South Afrikan Military in Angola which led to the liberation of Namibia, an embarrassing retreat by the South Afrikan Apartheid Army and the dismantling of Apartheid leading to the release of Nelson Mandela.

In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations.