Steve H. Hanke is a professor of Applied Economics at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C., and writes frequently for Globe Asia and Forbes magazine. Professor Hanke starts off his “Hu versus Sarkozy” article (Globe Asia, November 2009) with a warning.

According to Alfred Nobel’s will, the Peace Prize should be awarded to the person who: “during the preceding year, shall have done ... the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”

Americans are harder workers, more philanthropic, individualistic, self-reliant, anti-government than people in most other countries. We’ve turned what was an 18th-century Third World nation into the freest and most prosperous nation in mankind’s entire history. Throughout our history, United States has been a magnet for immigrants around the world. What accounts for what some have called American exceptionalism?

College education is a costly proposition with tuition, room and board at some colleges topping $50,000 a year. Is it worth it?

Rep. Diane Watson said, in praising Cuba’s health care system, “You can think whatever you want to about Fidel Castro, but he was one of the brightest leaders I have ever met.”

Former president Jimmy Carter said, “I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man.”

Michael Moore’s new film, “Capitalism: A Love Story” will be released next month. I’ve neither seen nor read reviews of the film, except for a short piece in the London Telegraph (9/6/09) titled “Michael Moore film calls capitalism evil.”

With the massive increases in federal spending, inflation is one of the risks that awaits us. To protect us from the political demagoguery that will accompany that inflation, let’s now decide what is and what is not inflation.

When parents plunk down $20, $30, $40 and maybe $50 thousand this fall for a year’s worth of college room, board and tuition, it might be relevant to ask: What will their children learn in return?

President Barack Obama won an unprecedented 96 percent of the black vote. That’s not much of a news story since blacks typically give their votes to the Democratic candidate.

“No one has a right to harm another.” Just a little thought, along with a few examples, would demonstrate that blanket statement as pure nonsense.

The U.S. Naval Academy’s PowerPoint display explains diversity by saying, “Diversity is all the different characteristics and attributes of individual sailors and civilians which enhance the mission readiness of the Navy,” adding that: “Diversity is more than equal opportunity, race, gender or religion. Diversity is the understanding of how each of us brings different skills, talents and experiences to the fight — and valuing those differences. Leveraging diversity creates an environment of excellence and continuous improvement to remove artificial achievement barriers and value the contribution of all participants.”

Here’s what I wrote in last year’s column titled “Global Warming Rope-a-Dope” (12/24/2008): “Once laws are written, they are very difficult, if not impossible, to repeal. If a time would ever come when the permafrost returns to northern U.S., as far south as New Jersey as it once did, it’s not inconceivable that Congress, caught in the grip of the global warming zealots, would keep all the laws on the books they wrote in the name of fighting global warming. Personally, I would not put it past them to write more.”

Last month, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed Senate Resolution 26 “Apologizing for the enslavement and racial segregation of African-Americans.”

Why did the founders of our nation give us the Bill of Rights?

The answer is easy. They knew Congress could not be trusted with our God-given rights.

Ward Connerly, former University of California regent, has an article, “Study, Study, Study — A Bad Career Move” in the June 2, 2009 edition of “Minding the Campus” (www.mindingthecampus.com) that should raise any decent American’s level of disgust for what’s routinely practiced at most of our universities.

“Live Free or Die” is the title of author and columnist Mark Steyn’s speech at Hillsdale College, reproduced in Imprimis (April 2009), a Hillsdale publication that’s free for the asking.

Philosopher Bertrand Russell suggested that “Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.” And, it was Albert Einstein who explained, “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) is an international comparison of 15-year-olds conducted by The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) that measures applied learning and problem-solving ability. In 2006, U.S. students ranked 25th of 30 advanced nations in math and 24th in science.

Hot off the press is my colleague Dr. Thomas Sowell’s 43rd book, “The Housing Boom and Bust.” The book is an eye-opener for anyone interested in the truth about the collapse of the housing market that played a major role in our financial market crisis.

President Obama’s articulated criteria for his nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court is: “We need somebody who’s got the heart to recognize — the empathy to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom, the empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old. And that’s the criteria by which I’m going to be selecting my judges.”

What to call black people has to be confusing to white people. Having been around for 73 years, I have been through a number of names. Among the polite ones are: colored, Negro, Afro-American, black, and now African-American. Among those names, African-American is probably the most unintelligent.

Soon college students will come home and present parents with their grades. To avoid delusion, parents should do some serious discounting because of rampant grade inflation. If grade inflation continues, a college bachelor’s degree will have just as much credibility as a high school diploma.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry rattled cages when he suggested that Texans might at some point become so disgusted with Washington’s gross violation of the U.S. Constitution that they would want to secede from the union. Political hustlers, their media allies and others, who have little understanding, are calling his remarks treasonous. Let’s look at it.

Democracy and majority rule give an aura of legitimacy to acts that would otherwise be deemed tyranny.

Think about it. How many decisions in our day-to-day lives would we like to be made through majority rule or the democratic process?

Most of our nation’s great problems, including our economic problems, have as their root decaying moral values.

Whether we have the stomach to own up to it or not, we have become an immoral people left with little more than the pretense of morality.

Our Colonial ancestors petitioned and pleaded with King George III to get his boot off their necks. He ignored their pleas, and in 1776, they rightfully declared unilateral independence and went to war.

Ask the average person which is the correct answer to the following question: Which president gave the biggest tax cuts for the rich — Reagan or Bush? I would bet the rent money that you would not get the correct response, which is: Presidents have no taxing authority. Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution says: “The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises.” I know that many politicians and news media people read my column. How do we characterize them if they continue to speak of presidents cutting or raising taxes?

Government health care advocates used to sing the praises of Britain’s National Health Service (NHS). That’s until its poor delivery of health care services became known.

Attorney General Eric Holder said the United States is “a nation of cowards” when it comes to race relations.

In one sense, he is absolutely right. Many whites, from university administrators and professors, schoolteachers to employers and public officials accept behavior from black people that they wouldn’t begin to accept from whites.