In short, welcome to my world! Whether it's by chance or by the cold operations of the planets, recent news has vividly illustrated both the fragility of social institutions and the barbarism of nature -- the central themes of my work. The privileged, professional class in the West, as I have constantly warned, is sitting on the edge of a volcano. Its humanitarian liberalism is a sentimental dogma, rejecting traditional religion but then blindly blocking out nature's cruelty and indifference.

Back in Washington, the 2-month-old administration of George W. Bush is still getting its bearings. For every advance in order and dignity (compared to the vulgar antics of the money-grubbing Clintons) there's been an unsettling false note -- like the weirdly muted handling of Vice President Richard Cheney's cardiac episodes, which certainly look like emergencies and threaten to have a destabilizing effect abroad.

Cheney's intelligence, experience and political aptitude are unquestioned. But Bush showed poor judgment and lack of independence in selecting him for vice president in the first place. Cheney should properly have been a Cabinet secretary or principal White House advisor. His weary, phlegmatic, public manner gives a dispirited aura to what should be a vigorous new administration.

As for Bush himself, I continue to lament his lack of communication skills, which has let Democratic aspersions about his intelligence and preparation gain steam. When news first came of the Seattle quake, it was embarrassing to witness Bush's stark inability to address the nation in a simple, natural way. At a podium hastily set up on the tarmac before he boarded Air Force One, Bush bowed his head like a desperate schoolboy as he read off generic expressions of sympathy and concern from a small square of white paper. "Oh, for heaven's sake, just wing it!" I sputtered at my TV set at home.

On the other hand, criticisms of Bush's "light" work schedule are misconceived. A leader should have the long view. Chief executives who drown themselves in detail (like the wonkish Bill Clinton or Al Gore) lose perspective and make dumb, insular decisions. Bush's announced plan for regular family weekends at Camp David and his Texas ranch gives one much more confidence that this guy has his head on straight. Both nature and home rhythms restore the mind.

Meanwhile, I'm baffled by the demagogic rhetoric of my own Democratic Party about Bush's proposed tax cut, which is rather minimal. It may be my libertarianism talking, but surely the people who create the income should have the benefit of the doubt when it comes to disposition of their wealth. Government has become a fat, lazy behemoth, spawning parasitic bureaucracies resistant to reform. Democrats seem addicted to the dole.

We need a more radical reduction in taxation as well as a stripping down of government agencies to essential social services. Funding is imperative for public education, public transportation, repair of roads and bridges and free medical clinics for the poor. But hundreds of millions of dollars are being wasted on boondoggle projects (like p.c. "gender equity" surveillance) and on unnecessary foreign-aid allotments that get diverted to middlemen and corrupt politicos overseas.

If the rich pay most of the taxes, isn't it logical that they would get a bigger share of any across-the-board tax cut? When more money is available to private individuals, investment increases in businesses large and small, the number of jobs multiplies, and employers must compete for workers. The wider the range of job opportunities, the greater the quantity of social happiness at every income level. When jobs are scarce, people are forced to work in companies they dislike and in locations and at times that eat up downtime and crimp and sour family life. And when there is severe competition for working-class jobs, racial and ethnic animosities dangerously flare -- a fact of history illustrated in the American South during Reconstruction after the Civil War and in inflation-ridden Germany after World War I, when Hitler rose to power.

On another matter, a good illustration of the biases of the liberal major media was the New York Times' failure to question or critique Sen. Hillary Clinton's claim in her Feb. 22 press conference that her brother, Hugh Rodham, had already paid back the money he had accepted to pitch two successful pardon applications to President Bill Clinton in his waning weeks of power.

The political reporters of the Times, whether out of amateurish naiveté or partisan guile, went right on repeating in print that the money had been fully paid back for weeks after everyone else knew from Web news sites that this was not the case. (As of this date, a month later, $100,000 of the original $400,000 paid to Rodham remains to be reimbursed.) Too much of the affluent, white, upper-middle class of the Northeast (representing finance, media, publishing and academe) still gullibly thinks of the Times as America's newspaper of record -- a reputation regrettably 20 years out of date.

Anyone who gets his or her political news primarily from the New York Times (which made the ethically challenged carpetbagger Hillary a senator) is a fool. The Web today is a vital tool for self-education. Current events need to be filtered through comparatist lenses -- yes, the New York Times but also the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post as well as anti-establishment sites like the Drudge Report and Lucianne.com, with its hot-off-the-skillet reader postings from periodicals all over the world.

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