Columnist.
From the moment Americans learned of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre last Friday, the entire left -- editorialists, columnists, broadcasters, politicians -- used the occasion to promote one idea: gun control. For the left, the primary reason for just about all American gun murders is the availability of guns. I have no interest in debating gun control here. I only wish to ask the left one question: We have a massive system of drug control laws. Yet, the left is the first to argue that the war on drugs has been a failure. And whether or not one deems it a failure, the war on drugs surely hasn't prevented tens of millions of Americans, including teenagers, from obtaining drugs illegally. Why, then, does the left believe that a war on guns would be any more effective than the war on drugs?
If you want to understand Leftism -- and everyone needs to because it has been the most dynamic religion of the last one hundred years -- one good place to start is with San Francisco. Or perhaps more precisely -- with nudity. And even more precisely -- with public nudity. Last month, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted by the barest (pun not intended) margin -- 6 to 5 -- to ban public nudity. By public nudity, the law refers only to displaying one's genitals in public. San Francisco women are still free to walk around topless. But that is not unique to San Francisco. Years ago, the highest court in New York state ruled that since it sees no difference between a man's chest and a woman's, women should be free to walk around topless, just as men do.
If you want to understand why President Obama was re-elected despite a largely unsuccessful presidency and almost unprecedentedly high and continuous unemployment, just look at the Cuban-American vote. In fact, if you want to understand America today -- specifically, why it is in decline -- just look at the Cuban-American vote. As reported in the Wall Street Journal, "The president captured 48 percent of the Cuban-American vote in Florida -- a record high for a Democrat." Democratic presidential nominees went from 25 percent of the Cuban-American vote in 2000, to 29 percent in 2004, to 35 percent in 2008 to 48 percent on 2012.
The way in which the New York Times reports good vs. evil is one of the most important stories of our time. Take the war between Israel and Hamas that is taking place right now. This war is as morally clear as wars get. Hamas is a terrorist organization dedicated to annihilating the Jewish state. It runs a theocratic totalitarian state in Gaza, with no individual liberty and no freedom of speech or press. In a nutshell, Hamas is a violent, fascist organization. Israel, meanwhile, is one the world's most humane states, not to mention a democracy that is so tolerant that Arab members of its parliament are free to express admiration for Hamas.
The most widely offered explanation for Mitt Romney's defeat is that the Republican Party is disproportionately composed of -- aging -- white males. That is, alas, true. But the real question is what Republicans should do with this truth. There are two responses. The nearly universal response -- meaning the response offered by the liberal media and liberal academics (and some Republicans) -- is that the Republican Party needs to rethink its positions, moving away from conservatism and toward the political center.
I spent the last week of October speaking to thousands of Mitt Romney supporters in four "battleground" states: Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida and Virginia. I travelled with my Salem Radio Network colleagues Hugh Hewitt and Michael Medved, and the actor Jon Voight, one of the few Hollywood stars who is a politically outspoken conservative. During the tour, I often wished that every American Jew could have seen and heard what was said about Jews and Israel and how much time was devoted to Jews and Israel. The two non-Jews, Jon Voight and Hugh Hewitt, and whoever was the moderator (in no instance was it a Jew) emphasized support for Israel and the Jews -- in combatting Islamic anti-Semitism, in acknowledging the American and the Western world's debt to the Jews, and regarding the Jewish origins of Christianity -- as much as they did any American domestic issue, including the economy.
Next week voters in Maine, Maryland and Washington will vote on whether to redefine marriage to include same-sex couples. Given that there are good people on both sides of this issue, how are we to explain their opposing views? The primary explanation is this: Proponents and opponents ask two different questions. Proponents of same-sex marriage ask: Is keeping the definition of marriage as man-woman fair to gays? Opponents of same-sex marriage ask: Is same-sex marriage good for society?
Stephen Moore, of the Wall Street Journal's editorial board, reported Friday that the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate from Arizona, Congressman Jeff Flake, has little support among some powerful big businessmen in Arizona: "In his razor-tight race for Arizona's open Senate seat, Republican nominee Jeff Flake -- a six-term U.S. congressman -- recently met behind closed doors with about a dozen leading businessmen in the state, including two powerful and respected CEOs: real-estate developer Mike Ingram and former Phoenix Suns owner Jerry Colangelo.
In the vice presidential debate, the two candidates, both Roman Catholics, were asked about their religious beliefs, how they impact the candidates' political positions and specifically about abortion. This was the response of Vice President Joe Biden: "My religion defines who I am. And I've been a practicing Catholic my whole life. And it has particularly informed my social doctrine. Catholic social doctrine talks about taking care of those who -- who can't take care of themselves, people who need help. "With regard to abortion, I accept my church's position on abortion as a -- what we call de fide doctrine. Life begins at conception. That's the church's judgment. I accept it in my personal life.
Understanding why Mitt Romney so decisively won the first presidential debate is as important as the fact that he did. Why? Because once we know the reasons, almost everything about President Barack Obama and this election becomes clear. First, Obama lost because he, like virtually the entire left, lives in a left-wing bubble. Left-wing academics live in this bubble. There is no greater uniformity of thought than at our universities; their much-ballyhooed commitment to diversity is about race and ethnicity, not about ideas.
For at least the last hundred years, the world's most dynamic religion has been neither Christianity nor Islam. It is leftism. Most people do not recognize what is probably the single most important fact of modern life. One reason is that leftism is overwhelmingly secular (more than merely secular: it is inherently opposed to all traditional religions), and therefore people do not regard it as a religion. Another is that leftism so convincingly portrays itself as solely the product of reason, intellect, and science that it has not been seen as the dogma-based ideology that it is. Therefore, the vast majority of the people who affirm leftist beliefs think of their views as the only way to properly think about life.
Given the awful state of the American economy, featuring a four-year high unemployment rate and an increasingly crushing national debt ... Given that America is at least as hated in the Muslim world as it was when George W. Bush was president -- despite the Obama policy of obsequious rhetoric directed toward that world ... Given the virtually unprecedented tension between the United States and Israel, its closest ally in the Middle East ... Given the complete failure of sanctions to stop Iran from its pursuit of an atom bomb ...
Have you noticed that the left regularly condemns alleged conservative "hate speech" but is almost completely silent on the most pervasive hate speech in the world? Take New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, for example. On Jan 8, 2011, in Tucson, Ariz., Jared Loughner murdered six people and gravely wounded Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. That very day (published the next day), based on nothing, Paul Krugman wrote that the murders were a result of hate-filled rhetoric that saturates conservative and Republican life. "When you heard the terrible news from Arizona, were you completely surprised? Or were you, at some level, expecting something like this atrocity to happen?
The most important event at either national convention was the "vote" taken by the Democratic delegates on a last-minute resolution to reinsert the words "God" and "Jerusalem" into the Democratic Party platform. Regarding God, since Karl Marx, the aim of the left, everywhere on Earth, has been a godless society. And the Democratic Party has evolved over the last half century from a liberal party into a leftist one -- so much so that it is now indistinguishable from any of the leftist parties in Western Europe.
My fellow Americans, my fellow Republicans: The 2012 election is not an election between two men but between two entirely different visions of America. President Obama and I are simply the standard bearers of opposing, and may I add, irreconcilable visions of what America is and should be. The Republican Party and I represent American values as they have been understood since the founding of our country. The Democratic Party and President Obama represent different values. This does not make any Democrat, let alone President Obama, less American or less patriotic than anyone of us here. But millions of Americans who love our country hold values that emanate from elsewhere.
Rep. Todd Akin has, unwittingly to be sure, harmed the pro-life movement, his senatorial race in Missouri, the Republican Party, and therefore quite possibly the nation. Every person who speaks or writes for the public will make an occasional faux pas, and sooner or later, will write or say something inappropriate. The game of "gotcha" that the media play -- especially with regard to Republicans and conservatives -- is what makes so many politicians sound robotic when they speak. But Congressman Akin said something that cries out for condemnation and retraction -- and necessitates an explanation.
Democrats believe that if Americans perceive that their entitlements may be affected -- even if only beginning a decade from now, and even if the American debt is thereby cut by one third, and even if they, as well as the country, will ultimately benefit -- so many Americans have become so used to government benefits, the Republicans stand little chance of winning the upcoming elections.
The Democratic mayors of Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. gave Mitt Romney and the Republican Party the greatest gift possible. They provided the American people with as clear an example of the unbridgeable differences between left and right, between Democrat and Republican, as could be hoped for. And it was largely wasted. The Democratic mayors of Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. announced that Chick-fil-A is not welcome in their cities because the owner/founder of Chick-fil-A supports preserving the man-woman definition of marriage. Aside from free speech issues, the mayors did something dangerously un-American: they declared their cities open only to businesses whose ownership holds political positions they approve of.
One of the NCAA's punishments of Penn State was the vacating of all its football team's wins from 1998 through 2011. It was in 1998 that Penn State coach Joe Paterno and university officials became aware of the accusation that assistant coach Jerry Sandusky had showered with a young boy. As a result, Penn State's 112 wins are no longer wins, and Joe Paterno is no longer the coach with the most wins in college football history. Instead of 409 victories, his record shows 298. Before explaining why this decision is morally wrong, I should note that I consider what Jerry Sandusky did to be an indescribable evil. I recognize that Joe Paterno and the university officials enabled this evil to continue. And I do not take issue with the other NCAA punishments of Penn State.
James Holmes is a human earthquake. We are as ill-equipped to predict the eruptions of such human beings as we are to predict the eruptions of the earth. But that doesn't mean that nothing meaningful came out of the Aurora tragedy. Something quite important did, though few Americans are aware of it because it has already entered the mainstream media's memory hole.
