Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Friday, December 9, 2016
Lies, Liars and the Press
On September 11, 2016, Hillary Clinton left a 9/11 memorial service early. Her campaign vigorously denied republican claims Clinton was ill. The press ridiculed republicans for suggesting it, calling them conspiracy theorists.
School Orders Staffer to Remove ‘Charlie Brown’ Christmas Poster
One of the most poignant scenes in “A Charlie Brown Christmas” is when Linus stands on a stage and recites a passage from the Holy Bible describing the Christmas story.
Thursday, December 8, 2016
The National Debt: How America’s Festering Cancer Will Affect You
With the election of Donald Trump, roughly half of Americans are hopeful, while the other half are dejected, if not alarmed and angry. While that may be a slight overgeneralization, we can probably all agree that the campaign leading up to the presidential election was one of the nastiest in recent history, characterized by intense personal attacks with little attention given to the many challenges our nation is facing. One such challenge is our exploding national debt and its dire implications for you and me.
A Few Ways the Trump Administration Could Help Minorities
Republicans running for president haven’t done very well with minority voters, and although President-elect Donald Trump fared slightly better this year than Mitt Romney did in 2012, the numbers still show that the GOP has a long way to go to make inroads with black and Hispanic voters. According to the Pew Research Center, Trump received only 8 percent of the black vote and 28 percent of the Hispanic vote. With demographic trends projecting that the share of non-Hispanic whites will continue to drop, it would be wise for the incoming Trump administration to pursue sound policies that have the additional benefit of helping minorities.
A Christmas Agenda Yule Love
Next week, Congress will have just settled down for a long winter’s nap. And based on the headlines, they’ll need it. The first order of business for the new Congress is a doozy: repealing Obamacare. With just days before the Hill recesses for Christmas, the GOP is making plans to advance President-elect Trump’s top agenda items right out of the gate in January. For leaders like Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), it’s a repeal seven years in the making. And despite what Democrats throw at them, the GOP is more than ready to tackle the biggest failure of President Obama’s two terms.
Remembering Pearl Harbor
Today marks the 75th anniversary of the Japanese attack on the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor. Sadly, many children today do not have a clue about the significance of Pearl Harbor Day. This is a great time to speak to your children and grandchildren about the Greatest Generation and what it took to win World War II.
Stopping America’s Drug Epidemic
This 2016 presidential race was a hard fought campaign. President-elect Donald J. Trump campaigned on a bold and conservative platform of making our cities safe again. After decades of neglect, urban communities across America are in desperate need of repair.
Democrats: From Temper Tantrum to Self-Delusion
Hard to believe, but Hillary Clinton’s campaign team thinks they lost because Donald Trump ignited America’s inner bigot, which caused the KKK and Aryan Brotherhood members and sympathizers to show up in droves and vote Trump.
Bob Dylan Cops a Nobel
When I heard that Bob Dylan had received the Nobel Prize for literature, I was mildly surprised. He writes music — popular music. As did George Gershwin and Irving Berlin, both of whom almost certainly wrote better music. I have nothing against Dylan’s music, except that it was written by a scruffy young man who has remained a scruffy young man all his life. At least that is an achievement. As the years accumulate around him, Dylan is still a scruffy young man, even when he recently bewildered the Nobel committee, whose members did not know what he was going to do about their award. Was he yucking it up with his pals while the committee awaited his decision?
Trump’s Carrier Ploy Was a Repudiation of Conservatism
So, *this* is the new conservatism’s recipe for restored greatness: Political coercion shall supplant economic calculation in shaping decisions by companies in what is called, with diminishing accuracy, the private sector. This will be done partly as conservatism’s challenge to liberalism’s supremacy in the victimhood sweepstakes, telling aggrieved groups that they are helpless victims of vast, impersonal forces, against which they can be protected only by government interventions.
Assessing the Obama Legacy — Against His Own Mileposts
In his 2016 State of the Union address, President Obama summarized his achievements. That same night, the White House issued a press release touting Obama’s accomplishments. Now that he will be leaving, how well did these initiatives listed in the press release actually work out?
U.S.-Israel Relations Set to Improve
The consensus in Israel is that the relationship between the Jewish state and the United States is going to improve in a Trump administration, says former Israeli ambassador to the U.S., Zalman Shoval.
Wednesday, December 7, 2016
One China, One Taiwan
As a candidate and a president-elect, Donald Trump has compiled a long list of follies, gaffes, and outrages. His phone conversation with Taiwan’s president isn’t among them.
Can We Really Take Trump Seriously, Not Literally?
It would make a perfect clickbait ad “Learn this one simple trick to stop worrying about Donald Trump and Make America Great Again.” What’s the trick? All you have to do is take Trump seriously, but not literally. The formulation is credited to reporter Salena Zito, who, in an article for the Atlantic last September, noted that the news media take Trump’s more outlandish statements literally but not seriously, while his supporters do the inverse.
When Democracy Fails
One of the great lies of the 21st century is that republicanism and freedom are inevitable. Actually, representative government and individual liberty are the exception, not the rule, and individual liberty often dissipates in the name of the collective, along with truly representative government. And yet, it’s that feeling of inevitability that allows us to attack the basic values that undergird republicanism and freedom. Because we never think that those institutions are under assault, we’re unafraid of chipping away at their foundations in the name of partisan politics.
A Strong Leader
President-elect Donald Trump’s first decisions were exciting. His new team seems to include good people like Betsy DeVos, Andy Puzder and Paul Atkins. It’s refreshing to watch Trump mock the media and political correctness. How dreary the world would be today if we faced four more years of condescension from Hillary Clinton and her apparatchiks. But I worry.
Preparing HUD for Surgery
With the selection by President-elect Donald Trump of Dr. Ben Carson to be secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, we have a brilliant man of principle cast to step in to lead a $50 billion federal department with nationwide impact.
Ready for War?
As we have been warning, every day of the Trump transition and the early days of the Trump-Pence administration will be political warfare with the left. By the way, it was political war during the early Reagan days too. When the first bulletins went out that President Reagan had been shot, and had possibly died, there were reports of students cheering the news.
Facebook and the ‘Fake News’ Crackdown
Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg is under enormous pressure from the left to crack down on the “fake news” circulating on the social-media giant. He is well-advised to run as far as he can from the News Police.