Where I live in Manhattan and where I work at ABC, people say conservative the way people say child molester.

Patrick Henry did not say, 'Give me absolutely safety or give me death.' America is supposed to be about freedom.

If government were less important in our lives, politicians would have fewer goodies to trade. In return, we'd have more money and more freedom.

We have all kinds of government compensation systems that are much more efficient than the lawyers.

We like to think we're superior to the people who, centuries ago, burned 'witches' for no better reason than a neighbor's belief that his crop failure or impotence was caused by that woman's action. But reporters are still prone to the same mental errors that caused these killings: seeing patterns where there are none, finding causes where there is only coincidence, ignoring our sources' political agendas and turning scanty evidence into panic.

What private property does is connect effort to reward, creating an incentive for people to produce for more. Then, if there's a free market, people will trade their surpluses to others for the things they lack. Mutual exchange for mutual benefit makes the community richer.

A system that rewards politicians skilled at campaigning - which is the art of creating an illusion - and that puts hundreds of billions of coerced taxpayer dollars at the disposal of the winners will tend to attract men and women with a comparative advantage in manipulation.