Columnist.
In the wake of the San Bernardino attack, liberals are in a total panic over guns. The New York Times broke a 95-year precedent to editorialize about gun control on its front page. But the Times seems restrained compared with the full-on meltdown at the New York Daily News, which has taken to calling the head of the NRA a "terrorist."
There's a tendency in politics to mistake personal animosity for ideological animosity. Consider Bill Clinton. His staggering dishonesty, tackiness and scorn for the rule of law aroused a lot of anger from the right. But he wasn't really that left-wing. Oh, he was certainly more liberal in his heart than he let on, but he also worked from the assumption that this was a center-right country, and that limited what he could get away with.
For a moment at least, the biggest political beneficiary of the shootings in San Bernardino wasn't a presidential candidate or terrorist group. It was Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. The killing spree in Southern California distracted the national press at precisely the moment it was about to go into a feeding frenzy over a scandal consuming his mayoralty. If such political scorekeeping seems gauche, it's a fitting tribute to Emanuel, who may have participated in a political cover-up.
Dear New York Daily News, You're doing it wrong. Long before the blood was mopped up, before police issued the all-clear, before the motives of the shooters were known and the names of the dead were released, before you had any idea how the murderers in San Bernardino obtained their guns — or their bombs — you knew exactly what this story had to be about: gun control.
In the wake of the Colorado Springs shooting, I read a great deal about so-called Christian terrorism from liberals. I don't think they've thought this through. We've spent years hearing how associating Islam with terrorism is outrageous and bigoted. President Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry and Hillary Clinton have all made the case that Islamic terrorism has "nothing whatsoever" — Clinton's words — to do with Islam. President Obama insists the Islamic State "is not Islamic."
"No more baby parts." As of this writing, that statement by Robert Lewis Dear is the only evidence that the "Planned Parenthood shooter" in Colorado Springs, Colo., was motivated by anti-abortion rhetoric. Dear's comment came amid a rambling interview that left law enforcement officials unsure what his motivations were.
"From whence shall we expect the approach of danger? Shall some trans-Atlantic military giant step the earth and crush us at a blow? Never. All the armies of Europe and Asia ... could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. No, if destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men we will live forever or die by suicide." —Abraham Lincoln
A little over a year ago, when Ben Carson was gearing up to run for president, I questioned in this space whether he was ready for what lay ahead. We now have our answer: No. Carson had a great number of things going for him: his amazing life story, charm, professional accomplishments, eloquence and courage. I had only one major concern: "While he speaks eloquently and passionately about the importance of doing homework in his own life and for children everywhere, it's not obvious he's taken those lessons to heart when it comes to politics."
"You're all suckers." That has to be what Barack Obama is thinking as the country falls for his head-fake. Let's recap. George W. Bush's surge reduced the Islamic State's precursor, al-Qaida in Iraq, to a paltry 700 members, according to CIA Director John Brennan. Its membership has grown by something close to 4,000 percent. As it metastasized, Obama yawned, calling it the "JV team." When Syrian President Bashar al-Assad violated Obama's "red line," Obama yawned again, and the refugee crisis was born.
According to legend, if not actual historians, Harold Macmillan was once asked what he most feared could derail his agenda. The British prime minister allegedly said, "Events, my dear boy, events." Macmillan may never have actually said it, but the quote endures because it gets at a fundamental truth of politics (and life). Facts on the ground can deliver a fatal blow to one's most cherished plans.
My old boss, William F. Buckley, often said liberals don't care what you do so long as it's compulsory (though he probably borrowed the line from his friend M. Stanton Evans). There's probably no better illustration of this illiberal streak in liberalism than the idea of "compulsory voting." The argument usually goes like this: Voter turnout in America is low. Low voter turnout is bad. Therefore, we should make voting mandatory. (This argument is most popular after an election like last week's when things don't go so well for Democrats.)
Americans could learn a thing or two from Bibi Netanyahu. The Israeli prime minister was in Washington this week to receive the American Enterprise Institute's Irving Kristol Award. He made some controversial remarks — at least controversial at AEI, where I am a fellow, and where the freedom agenda is alive and well — about the need to be realistic about what's going on in the Middle East. Sometimes, he said, brutal dictators are better than the real-world alternatives: even more brutal Islamist movements hell-bent (or, if you prefer, paradise-bent) to conquer the world.
It seems like every week there's a new horror story of political correctness run amok at some college campus. A warning not to wear culturally insensitive Halloween costumes sparked an imbroglio at Yale, which went viral over the weekend. A lecturer asked in an email, "Is there no room anymore for a child to be a little bit obnoxious ... a little bit inappropriate or provocative or, yes, offensive?"
What if the polls just stopped working? Admittedly, this needs work as a plot device for a Stephen King novel. But for politics, it might be pretty awesome. This week, businessman Matt Bevin won a stunning upset in the Kentucky governor's race. It was only the second time in more than four decades that a Republican took the governor's mansion in the Bluegrass State. Bevin's margin of victory: nine percentage points.
Politics is a breeding ground for martial metaphors, starting with the word "campaign" itself. Politicians "under fire" "take flak" as their consultants sit in "war rooms" and launch ad "blitzes" in "targeted districts" and "battleground states" to put their clients "over the top" -- with the help of their "troops" in the field. When that doesn't work, the generals sometimes resort to some dreaded "nuclear option." Even if it succeeds, the pundits often declare it a "Pyrrhic victory."
Here's something you may not know: Dr. Ben Carson is black. Of course, I'm being a little cute here. The only way you wouldn't know he's black is if you were blind and only listened to the news. For instance, Tuesday on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" — a program that often serves as a kind of artisanal boutique of inside-the-Beltway conventional wisdom — host Joe Scarborough expressed his consternation over Carson's popularity. "I just don't get it," Scarborough said more than once.
It's been a good month for champions of the traditional family, but don't expect the family wars to be ending any time soon. In recent weeks, a barrage of new evidence has come to light demonstrating what was once common sense. "Family structure matters" (in the words of my American Enterprise Institute colleague Brad Wilcox, who is also the director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia).
His candidacy should have imploded as a joke a long time ago. It didn't.
Most of the politically savvy people I know are still confident that Donald Trump will not be the Republican nominee for president.
It's an ancient story: An innocent idealist sets out to change the world and in the process becomes what he hates most. "He who fights monsters should see to it that he himself does not become a monster," Friedrich Nietzsche advised. That's probably the best spin one can put on Sidney Blumenthal, the longtime Hillary Rodham Clinton aide and confidant.
