Columnist.
Now for some good news, and it has nothing to do with the birth of the royal baby. According to a USA Today/Bipartisan Policy Center poll, "Americans by more than 2-1 say the best way to make positive changes in society is through volunteer organizations and charities, not by being active in government." Even better news: People under 30 are especially put off by politics and are "significantly less likely than their parents to say participating in politics is an important value in their lives."
President Obama rarely misses an opportunity to insert himself into an issue. Last Friday, he appeared in the White House pressroom to comment on the George Zimmerman verdict. The president said he could have been Trayvon Martin. Not likely, given his private schooling and the way he was fast-tracked to success. The president said the history of African-Americans partially explains the way many black people view the case. He spoke of blacks hearing car doors lock as they cross the street and of white women who clutch their purses tightly when a black person enters an elevator.
BELFAST, Northern Ireland -- While American cable TV news engaged in saturation coverage of the closing arguments and verdict in the George Zimmerman murder trial, the BBC and Sky News carried an inspiring speech by Malala Yousafzai, the 16-year-old Pakistani girl shot in the head last October by the Taliban for advocating the education of girls. On her birthday, Malala addressed in barely accented English a special youth gathering at the United Nations in New York. She wore a shawl that had belonged to the late Pakistani President Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated by Islamic extremists in 2007.
We are so programmed by our history with race in America that reaction to the acquittal of George Zimmerman on charges of murdering Trayvon Martin depends largely upon one's individual, even group experience. If you are African-American, you might react like former Washington, D.C., homicide detective Rod Wheeler. Appearing on Fox News, Wheeler said many blacks look at quarterback Michael Vick, jailed for taking part in an illegal interstate dog-fighting ring, and wonder why Zimmerman gets away with killing a young black man.
FT. WILLIAM, Scotland -- The power of television to shrink the world has always amazed me. Eating lunch on the road to Ft. William, a man at the next table recognizes me and introduces himself. Keith Farrington says he spent 15 years working as an assistant director of finance for the South East Thames Regional Health Authority, part of the National Health Service. He has strong warnings for the U.S. about Obamacare.
The military coup that ousted Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi marks another failure in U.S. foreign policy over several administrations, which have erroneously promoted the notion that American-style democracy in Islamic lands will produce a nation more like ours. The Founders wrote a Constitution. When properly read and obeyed, it guards against pure democracy and makes "we the people" subject to laws that cannot be abolished by popular vote. Benjamin Franklin properly called what the Founders wrought a "Republic." Representative government would guard against the passions of a majority. No such safeguards apply in Egypt, or for that matter throughout most of the Islamic world.
"Posterity! You will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it." -- John Quincy Adams Freedom is not the default position of humankind; otherwise more would be free. In much of the world, dictatorship, religious persecution and the suppression of women are the norm. Freedom has a price. Its currency is the blood of those who paid the bill. They can be found at Arlington, Normandy and scores of other places of rest where Americans died so that others might live in freedom.
"For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh." -- Genesis 2:24, NIV The problem for people who believe in an Authority higher even than the Constitution is that in our increasingly secular and indifferent society it has become more difficult to persuade those who do not subscribe to an immutable standard to accept that view. It is nearly impossible to restrain a people intent on throwing off any and all restraints. History is full of examples of empires that collapsed from within before they were conquered from without.
The Supreme Court's narrow 5-4 decision to strike down a central component of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, "freeing nine states, mostly in the South," writes The New York Times, "to change their election laws without advance federal approval," is a welcome recognition that times have changed and that especially Southern states must not forever bear a "mark of Cain" for past discrimination against racial minorities. Reaction from "civil rights groups" and liberal media outlets was predictable. Writing in The Washington Post, Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) accused the Court of plunging "a dagger into the heart of the Voting Rights Act." It's more like removing a dagger from the back of nine states and numerous counties, including Brooklyn, the Bronx and Manhattan.
The "Faith and Freedom" Coalition held a gathering last week in Washington, D.C. It resembled many similar conservative assemblies: mostly white male speakers, a mostly white, middle-age audience and mostly full of attacks on President Obama, liberals, Democrats and Washington. That is not a winning strategy for political victory. Neither are appeals to a bygone era that is unlikely to return. The social, financial and governmental dysfunction we are experiencing are symptoms of something far deeper. The foundations that built and have sustained America are being destroyed. Too many Republicans and conservatives mistakenly believe what's needed is a paint job, like those false storefronts painted on closed-down businesses in some Northern Ireland towns to hide its struggling economy during the G8 summit.
After 12 years of fighting, the Taliban in Afghanistan have announced they are ready to talk peace with the United States. The Taliban opened a political office in Qatar. The talks will take place there, but without the Afghan government, which is refusing to take part in the "peace" talks. President Obama says there will be "a lot of bumps in the road" during the talks. More like sinkholes. The history of talks with Middle East terrorist groups, apparently, has taught us little. It appears such groups use talks like these to mostly re-arm and/or advance their cause until they can either get back to the killing field or enforce their political and religious will on the masses.
Two recent newspaper editorials illustrate the double-mindedness some feel about President Obama's decision to provide small arms and ammunition to Syrian rebels. The Washington Post headlined an editorial: "No time for half-measures: Syria's rebels need a robust intervention from the Obama administration." The New York Times took a more realistic approach: "After Arming the Rebels, Then What? President Obama should be careful about being dragged into the brutal Syrian war." I'm on the side of the Times.
The Bradley Foundation, a private, independent grant-making organization based in Milwaukee, recently handed out its annual Bradley Prize to four men who have, in the words of the organization's mission statement, "(preserved and defended) the tradition of free representative government and private enterprise that has enabled the American nation and, in a larger sense, the entire Western world to flourish intellectually and economically." Among the winners at the Kennedy Center event in Washington, D.C., was Roger Ailes, chairman of Fox News, the bete noire to the broadcast networks and other media elites.
Ever since President Clinton "did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky," whatever remains of standards seem to have fallen even lower among people who hold offices and positions once thought to require good behavior and strong moral character. Last year, several Secret Service agents left the agency amid scandal after allegedly engaging the services of prostitutes while advancing a trip to Cartagena, Colombia, for President Obama. A side note: One of the prostitutes, Dania Londono Suarez, wrote a tell-all book about the incident titled "Room Service." According to the Huffington Post's Latinovoices, she's s also opening a nonprofit to "help hookers" and "has a modeling contract plus a deal to bring her story to television." Of course, she does.
Without the slightest hint of irony, President Obama said last week, "If people can't trust not only the executive branch but also don't trust Congress, and don't trust federal judges, to make sure that we're abiding by the Constitution with due process and rule of law, then we're going to have some problems here." Yes we are, because more and more of us don't trust government. In fact, according to the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, "trust in the federal government remains mired near a historic low, while frustration with government remains high." Furthermore, notes Pew, a "majority of the public says that the federal government threatens their personal rights and freedoms."
For years I have been writing about the failures of the UK's National Health Service (NHS) as a warning for what the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) will do to health care here in the U.S. London's Daily Mail has chronicled the growing problems with the NHS, which include declining quality of care and availability of services coupled with increased costs. This is what is in store for us, if Congress does not repeal Obamacare. According to the Daily Mail, "NHS hospitals are recruiting Spanish and Portuguese nurses in record numbers while British applicants are being refused because places on training courses have been slashed to cut costs." More than 5,000 student nurse places, it writes, "have been axed since the General Election." The reason? Foreign nurses cost less. Incredibly, they won't be checked to see if they can speak English. The potential for confusion over medication and treatment because of language differences could be significant.
The annual ritual known as the Scripps National Spelling Bee came and went last week with kids spelling words that, I suspect, many with graduate degrees couldn't spell. The winner was Arvind Mahankali, a 13-year-old eighth-grader from Bayside Hills, N.Y. Mahankali is the first boy to win the title since 2008. There is a lesson to be learned from the success of these young people, including the ones who came close to winning but didn't. It is the value of persistence. Mahankali won this year by spelling the German word "knaidel." He lost the bee three times before and was eliminated from competition in 2011 and 2012 on German-derived words. Recognizing his weakness, Mahankali repaired his deficit. And his strategy succeeded.
Who doesn't admire former Republican Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole? Wounded World War II veteran, part-time comedian (Dole once described a meeting of former presidents Carter, Ford and Nixon as "see no evil, hear no evil -- and evil"), former presidential candidate and all-around decent man, Dole was a part of government for much of his life. Therein lies the problem for some who stay in politics and government so long that it is easy to lose perspective and think cutting deals is more important than winning the argument.
Following the hacking death of a British soldier by two alleged Islamic extremists, Prime Minister David Cameron said, "There is nothing in Islam that justifies this truly dreadful act." Winston Churchill thought otherwise, but he lived in a time before political correctness ran amok and drew on his personal experiences serving in the Sudan and in the Crimean War. In his 1899 book "The River War," Churchill described what he witnessed in countries where Islam ruled: "Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyzes the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith."
