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For all we know, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is a fine ophthalmologist with a sympathetic bedside manner.

By all accounts, though, he is not a very nice person. Indeed, he would seem to meet the commonplace definition of "ruthless Middle Eastern despot."

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"The ultimate weakness of violence," said Martin Luther King, "is that it is a descending spiral begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth." 

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A lot of economists look down on government job creation programs as ineffective bureaucratic excess. But there's one industry where make-work projects are currently paying big dividends: the military.