Hi Buddy, While Paul Gleiser makes some good points from your Oct. 6 weekly newsletter, I believe your additional comments about Iran and radical Islam are exactly correct. They obviously have the US and Israel as targets and would destroy both if they had the means, which they obviously don’t anymore. World domination through violence is Iran’s obvious and stated goal. Thank God for President Donald Trump. Take care. –Tim F.
Hi Tim, yes, world domination through violence has always been Islam’s goal and modus operandi. In the Middle Ages the sword of Islam spread east as far as India. In the West, it metastasized as far as Spain before being thrown back by Christian Crusaders. The Crusades represented pushback against Islam, an effort to recover holy land previously conquered by Muslim armies.
Very sad that so many Americans know so little history. But we who do know our history and have a concurrent love of all the things that define our nation’s greatness, we have to stay positive and do what we can, to not just hold the line but to advance our long-standing traditional American values. My purpose in writing Buddy’s Straight Talk is to do my part in this hearts and minds battle. –Buddy
Hi Buddy, Thanks for the nice and thoughtful reply. Apparently, April is a great month for birthdays. I will turn 69 next April – a bit younger than you.
I actually almost always stay positive because of my faith. Your Buddy’s Straight Talk is one of the important bright lights for probably more people than you realize and there definitely is a spiritual battle going on. You bring basic and documented facts to your arguments – which the left rarely does as they rely almost exclusively on emotions and their feelings (My Truth).
Please keep doing what you are doing. You may be changing more minds than you might think.
Take care and all the best, –Tim F.
Hi Tim, you have no idea how much I appreciate feedback such as yours. In the beginning, I received a fair number of expletive-driven emails, especially from one college professor, but those negatives have become very few and far between. Currently, most of the emails I receive are positive but the total number received is limited. So, getting an email such as yours is always tremendously welcomed.I keep in mind that when people read something on the Internet, they rarely get around to commenting, given how hurried the world is today.
But like you, I do think that what I write is read by thoughtful people open to ideas which they may never have considered.
When I speak out, I do so with two goals in mind: 1) I hope to change minds; and 2) I wish to remind friends that we who love God and country far outnumber those who do not, and that in the end truth, justice and the American way will always prevail. –Buddy
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Another excellent column from my friend Paul Gleiser, KTBB 97.5 FM, Tyler, Texas
Dr. Milton Friedman won the 1976 Nobel Prize for economics. Friedman, who advocated an unfettered free market, died on Nov. 16, 2006. He was 94.
Milton Friedman’s simple truths about government spending.
by Paul Gleiser, Published October 8, 2026 – Updated October 9, 2026
An article by Jim Cardoza at American Thinker reminded me of something I read by economist Milton Friedman. Friedman had an uncanny way of making economics easy to understand. By extension, he makes the divide between conservatives and liberals – and thus this looming midterm election – easy to understand.
Taxation, as Friedman explained, is in its essence the taking of your money to spend on someone else. He then explained the four basic ways that money gets spent.
• The first is you spending your money on yourself. When you spend your money on yourself, you are naturally sensitive to both price and the suitability of what you’re spending it on.
• The second way is your money that you spend on someone else. In that case, you’re sensitive to price but you’re a poor judge as to whether the beneficiary of that spending will find what you’re spending it on suitable.
• The third way is you spending someone else’s money on yourself. In that case you’re very sensitive as to suitability but not so sensitive as to price.
• And fourth is when you spend someone else’s money on someone else. In that case, you’re sensitive to neither price nor suitability.
That last way of spending money is how most taxpayer money gets spent.
Democrats fervently believe in spending your money on someone else. This stands at the core of what separates big government liberals from small government conservatives.
Democrats look at the wealth of the most successful in society (read: “the rich” in Democrat-speak) and see a pile of money that they believe should be presumptively taken and put to use making life better by providing such things as “free” health care, “free” college, “free” or subsidized housing, “free” or low-cost food and all the rest of the liberal smorgasbord of government spending driven by lofty intentions but never held to account for actual results. (Please note the air quotes around the word, “free.” Nothing is free. Someone has to pay.)
Experience tells us that spending someone else’s money on someone else (the very definition of most government social spending) removes both the incentive and the marketplace signals that are prerequisites to spending money wisely.
That’s how you get zillions spent on poverty programs that perversely further entrench poverty, zillions spent on education that results in ever-worsening educational outcomes, zillions spent on housing projects that quickly turn to slums; and so forth and so on all down the depressing list of government social spending programs that have been long on noble intentions but short on good results.
For us conservatives it’s very simple. We believe that experience shows that confiscating the fruits of success from the successful (read: taxation) quickly forecloses the possibility of future success. Taken to its logical conclusion, the ‘money well’ dries up and there’s no longer a “someone else” to pay for the spending.
The economy collapses. Social misery rises. And you wind up with the epic failures of a Soviet Russia, Cuba, or Venezuela.
And that’s what’s really on the ballot November 3.
Buddy’s comment on Paul’s column…
I read your excellent columns every week, but often my business workload precludes my commenting, but your “Milton Friedman’s simple truths about government spending” is a masterful example of what you excel at–absolute clarity combined with blessed brevity–something rarely found on the Internet where the reader slogs through thousands of words only to end up in a tangle of ambiguity.
When it comes to voting, we might want to consider an alternative to the republican/conservative or Democrat/progressive/socialist/communist metric.
Instead, I hope voters will consider casting their vote not by party but by color–red or blue.
• If you like the economic/cultural/educational/tax product found in BLUE cities and states, then vote for politicians who will deliver more of the same.
• If you like the economic/cultural/educational/tax product found in RED cities and states, then vote for politicians who will deliver more of the same.
Many are the politicians who will lie to you about where they stand. But what they delivered does not lie. The truth can’t be seen in the nation’s bright RED and BLUE petri dishes.
I for one, being both sane and of good judgment, will be voting RED all up and down the line!
Paul’s reply…
Mr. Saunders: You just made my day. (Day? You just made my month.) Thank you for your very kind words.