Walter E. Williams, Special to Postmedia Network

LATEST STORIES BY WALTER E. WILLIAMS, SPECIAL TO POSTMEDIA NETWORK

WILLIAMS: Marijuana, mental illness and violence

Ten states and Washington, D.C., have legalized the recreational use of marijuana. Twenty-two other states, along with U.S. territories Puerto Rico and Guam, allow marijuana to be used for medical purposes.

February 11, 2019 Columnists

WILLIAMS: Is reality optional?

Suppose I declare that I am a king. Should you be required to address me as “Your Majesty”? You say, “Williams, that’s lunacy! You can’t prove such nonsense.” You’re wrong. It’s proved by my declaration. It’s no different from a person born with XY chromosomes declaring that he is a woman. The XY sex determination system is the sex determination system found in humans and most other mammals. Females typically have two of the same kind of sex chromosome (XX) and are called the homogametic sex. Males typically have two different kinds of sex chromosomes (XY) and are called the heterogametic sex.

February 5, 2019 Columnists

Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. 2017. (Creators.com)

WILLIAMS: Demonizing white men

Rush Limbaugh’s December 2018 Limbaugh Letter has an article titled “Demonizing White Men.” It highlights — with actual quotations from people in the media, academia and the political and entertainment arenas — the attack on white men as a class. You can decide whether these statements are decent, moral or even sensible. Should we support their visions?

January 28, 2019 Columnists

Chelsea Handler arrives at the Netflix Comedy Panel For Your Consideration Event at the Netflix FYSee Space in Beverly Hills, Calif., on May 23, 2017. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP, Invision - Richard Shotwell)

WILLIAMS: Who benefits from Democratic control?

In 1976, Gerald Ford won 15% of the black vote. That’s the most of any recent Republican presidential candidate.

January 21, 2019 Columnists

In this Sunday, July 6, 2014 photo, a Chicago police officer checks on evidence at the scene where a man was shot in Chicago's Uptown neighborhood. (AP Photo/Sun-Times Media, Alex Wroblewski)

WILLIAMS: The politics of immigration

Here are a couple of easy immigration questions — answerable with a simple “yes” or “no” — we might ask any American of any political stripe: Does everyone in the world have a right to live in the U.S.?

January 14, 2019 Columnists

A Honduran migrant w climbs an embankment after jumping over the U.S. border wall from Tijuana, Mexico, to San Diego, Calif., as seen from Tijuana, Mexico, Friday, Dec. 21, 2018.

WILLIAMS: Black education - a glimmer of hope

In reference to efforts to teach black children, the president of the St. Petersburg, Florida, chapter of the NAACP, Maria Scruggs, said: “The (school) district has shown they just can’t do it. … Now it’s time for the community to step in.” That’s a recognition that politicians and the education establishment, after decades of promises, cannot do much to narrow the huge educational achievement gap between Asians and whites on the one hand and blacks on the other.

January 8, 2019 Columnists

WILLIAMS: U.S. Food and Drug Administration policies kill

Among the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s responsibilities are approval and regulation of pharmaceutical drugs. In short, its responsibility is to ensure the safety and effectiveness of drugs. In the performance of this task, FDA officials can make two types of errors — statistically known as the type I error and type II error. With respect to the FDA, a type I error is the rejection or delayed approval of a drug that is safe and effective — erring on the side of over-caution — and a type II error is the approval of a drug that has unanticipated dangerous side effects, or erring on the side of under-caution.

December 17, 2018 Columnists

WILLIAMS: Acceptable racism?!

How appropriate would it be for a major publicly held American company to hire a person with a history of having publicly made the following statements and many others like them? (In the interest of brevity, I shall list only four.) “The world could get by just fine with zero black people.” “It’s kind of sick how much joy I get out of being cruel to old black men.” “Dumbass f—ing black people marking up the internet with their opinions like dogs pissing on fire hydrants.” “Are black people genetically predisposed to burn faster in the sun, thus logically only being fit to live underground like groveling bilious goblins?”

December 10, 2018 Columnists

A counter-protestor holds a sign during the Unite the Right 2 Rally in Washington, DC on August 12, 2018. Last year's protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, that left one person dead and dozens injured, saw hundreds of neo-Nazi sympathizers, accompanied by rifle-carrying men, yelling white nationalist slogans and wielding flaming torches in scenes eerily reminiscent of racist rallies held in America's South before the Civil Rights movement. (ZACH GIBSON/AFP/Getty Images)

WILLIAMS: Young people and their troubling views on socialism and communism

A recent Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation survey found that 51% of American millennials would rather live in a socialist or communist country than in a capitalist country. Only 42% prefer the latter. Twenty-five percent of millennials who know who Vladimir Lenin was view him favourably. Half of millennials have never heard of Communist Mao Zedong, who ruled China from 1949 to 1976 and was responsible for the deaths of 45 million Chinese people.

December 6, 2018 Columnists

Picture dated probably in 1930s in Moscow of Yossif Vissarionovitch Dzhugashvili known as Joseph Stalin ("man of steel", 1879-1953).

WILLIAMS: Fruits of college indoctrination

Much of today’s incivility and contempt for personal liberty has its roots on college campuses, and most of the uncivil and contemptuous are people with college backgrounds. Let’s look at a few highly publicized recent examples of incivility and attacks on free speech.

November 20, 2018 Columnists

In this April 21, 2017, file photo, students walk past Sather Gate on the University of California, Berkeley campus in Berkeley, Calif. (AP Photo/Ben Margot, File)