Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Wednesday, July 20, 2016
When Do Values Trump Democracy?
Last Friday, a splinter of the powerful Turkish military attempted a coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, an Islamist with a taste for the authoritarian. Erdogan has spent the past decade purging the military of secularists and integrating his own brand of radical Islam into government; in the process, he’s also accrued a $182 million fortune and three palaces, including a $650 million Saddam-esque monstrosity. He’s cracked down on journalists, gone soft on the Islamic State group and threatened to get rid of the constitutional court. He is, in short, an aspiring dictator.
The New Christian Black Leadership
All eyes should be on Florida to see the seeds of change in black America. The issue is school choice and the nation’s largest private school choice scholarship program, the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship, enacted in Florida in 2001 under Gov. Jeb Bush. Students receive scholarships to attend the school of their choice from Scholarship Funding Organizations. The FSOs are funded through donations from businesses that receive tax credits on corporate taxes and insurance premium taxes.
Challenges for Black People: Part II
The prospects for a better future are nearly hopeless for roughly 20 percent of black people — those who reside in big-city crime-infested and dysfunctional neighborhoods. There is virtually nothing that can be done about it without a major rebuilding of the black community from within. Let’s examine some of the aspects of the problem and the dismal prognosis, given the status quo.
Tuesday, July 19, 2016
Few in the West Are Serious About Islamic Terror
It appears that no matter how many men, women and children Islamists slaughter or maim, few in the West take Islamic terror seriously. This may sound odd, given how much talk there is about terror, but a compelling case can be made for this assertion.
Tragedy in Baton Rouge
The nation was shaken yet again [Sunday] morning by another act of pure, unadulterated evil. The tranquility of a Sunday morning in Baton Rouge was shattered as three men dressed in black and clad in body armor ambushed city police officers and sheriff’s deputies. The news of this tragic event reached me as I was preparing to open the morning worship service at my home church in Baton Rouge. The news was especially unsettling to our congregation because it is the church home to a number of law enforcement officers.
Encouraged by the Pence Pick
I believe that Donald Trump was smart to pick Indiana Gov. Mike Pence to be his running mate. All things considered, it’s an encouraging development, whether Trump picked him because he truly wanted him or he did so at the strong urging of his advisers. If he was Trump’s first choice among finalists, it’s encouraging because it shows he is comfortable with a traditional conservative who strongly self-identifies as and behaves like a devout Christian. It indicates he understands the value to the ticket in picking someone who seems to be the Antitrump in terms of personality and style — and to some extent on policy issues, as well.
Will Trump’s ‘Other People’s Money’ Campaign Prevail Over Clinton’s Standard Tactics?
Donald Trump postponed the announcement of his vice presidential candidate, Mike Pence, because of the terrorist attack in Nice, which was in line with the modus operandi of his campaign. He didn’t want to preempt news media coverage of another radical Islamist terrorist attack. Disarray and disorder work against the party in power, especially if the president and his presidential candidate refuse to identify radical Islamists as the threat facing civilized societies. The rollout of the mild-mannered Pence could wait until a slow-news Saturday. The Trump campaign, pundits tell us, is violating all the old rules. The candidate has mostly eschewed “paid media” — television and radio advertising — in favor of low-cost tweets and the inevitable intensive free media coverage generated by a celebrity candidate.
Forcing Congress to Keep Its Spending Promises
The worst-kept secret in Washington, D.C., is that Congress will once again fail to do its most basic constitutional job and pass legislation to fund the federal government beyond the end of the current fiscal year on Sept. 30. Although both party’s leaders are slow to admit it, the annual fight over $4 trillion of federal funding is heading down a now-familiar path. Lawmakers will lurch toward a government shutdown, pass a temporary continuing resolution to keep federal doors open, and eventually agree to a last-minute omnibus funding bill — a massive trillion-dollar-plus package riddled with waste and cobbled together without public scrutiny or congressional debate.
The Dumbest Idea
If there were a contest for the most stupid idea in politics, my choice would be the assumption that people would be evenly or randomly distributed in incomes, institutions, occupations or awards, in the absence of somebody doing somebody wrong. Political crusades, bureaucratic empires and lucrative personal careers as grievance mongers have been built on the foundation of that assumption, which is almost never tested against any facts. A recent article in the New York Times saw as a problem the fact that females are greatly under-represented among the highest rated chess players. Innumerable articles, TV stories and political outcries have been based on an “under-representation” of women in Silicon Valley, seen as a problem that needs to be solved.
Pence Is Salt to Trump’s Pepper
The announcement by Donald Trump of Indiana Governor Mike Pence as his running mate had not yet been made official last Thursday, but that didn’t stop the hard left from hauling out its familiar and overused rhetoric. Ilya Sheyman, executive director of MoveOn.org Political Action, released a statement which said, “If Trump picks extreme right-wing Governor Mike Pence as his running mate, he will be doubling down on his divisive and hate-filled approach to politics.” Funny how turning people against each other is, for the left, a one-way street. When the left wants to obliterate history, tradition, biblical teachings and even common sense it never sees itself as divisive. Conservatives are supposed to accept their agenda without complaint.
Monday, July 18, 2016
Real Debates Illuminate Issues. Presidential ‘Debates’ Debase Them.
One of the country’s most experienced political commentators, a senior columnist at The New York Times, bemoans the disgraceful spectacles that presidential debates have turned into. “These high-stakes showdowns,” he writes, “are gushing fountains of misinformation, disinformation, posturing, prevarication, and puerility.” The nation’s foremost TV news anchor agrees. “The debates are a part of the unconscionable fraud that our political campaigns have become,” he tells an audience at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. He lambasts cynical candidates — abetted by ratings-uber-alles networks — who agree to debate “only with the guarantee of a format that defies meaningful discourse.” The crowd applauds when he adds: “They should be charged with sabotaging the electoral process.”
What’s Black and White?
If you were only to listen to those involved in the Black Lives Matter movement, you would think that America’s cops are not dedicated to serve and protect, but, rather, to bully and brutalize honest, hard-working, black citizens. That is certainly the message that’s been parroted by Barack Obama, Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch. It certainly explains why Obama’s only two attorney generals have both been black, and why the Justice Department has grabbed every opportunity to place our nation’s police departments under its extremely heavy thumb.
Sunday, July 17, 2016
Why Race Relations Have Gotten Worse Under Barack Obama
There are three things you need to know about modern American politics: (1) the black vote is hugely important to the Democratic Party, but (2) less than half of black voters actually agree with the Democratic Party’s view of government, and among those who do agree a great many are routinely mistreated by the very politicians they vote for; therefore (3) the only practical way to ensure that the vast majority of black voters reliably and enthusiastically turn out for the Democrats is to avoid debating real issues and focus instead on racial politics.
Pence Choice Offers Hope for America
I have often wondered if Donald Trump knows that in order for America to be great again she must first be good again. His choice of Mike Pence to serve as his vice president reveals to me that Mr. Trump might be beginning to understand the importance of moral character — both for individuals and for a nation. I do not know the current heart of Donald Trump. I don’t know if he regrets the way he has talked about women. I don’t know if he regrets his infidelity, or his harsh language, or the many other things I decry about his past. But I do know that he has chosen a committed conservative champion to be his running mate. And that is enough to cause me to support a Trump-Pence presidency.
GOP Minds Are at Sea — but Not the Right One
Neither the unanimous decision by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, nor China’s rejection of it, was surprising. The timing of it was, however, as serendipitous as China’s rejection is ominous. Coming as Republican delegates convene on Lake Erie’s shore, the tribunal’s opinion about the South China Sea underscores the current frivolousness of American politics, which is fixated on a fictitious wall that will never exist but silent about realities on and above the waters that now are the world’s most dangerous cockpit of national rivalries.
Saturday, July 16, 2016
Clinton Email Testimony Update
U.S. District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan announced that he will hear arguments on Monday, July 18, 2016, in our request to take testimony from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. [Thursday], we submitted reply briefs ... to the court in response to the State Department’s and Secretary Clinton’s oppositions to our request for permission to depose former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the Director of Office of Correspondence and Records of the Executive Secretariat (“S/ES-CRM”) Clarence Finney; and the former Director of Information Resource Management of the Executive Secretariat (“S/ES-IRM”) John Bentel.
Comey Came a Cropper
For those unfamiliar with the term, it means that someone has fallen on his heinie. And you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who has ever taken a more embarrassing pratfall than the FBI’s top dog when he delivered what surely sounded like an indictment of Hillary Clinton before letting us know that he was just kidding. Then, lest we attributed it to temporary insanity, he went before a congressional committee and doubled-down. Having heard from various usually reliable sources that Mr. Comey was one of Washington’s few square shooters, I was particularly disheartened. The fact is, if they ever decided to remake “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” they could do a lot worse than cast him in the leading role. He certainly looks and sounds as idealistic as young Jimmy Stewart and, at 6’8” is even taller. But having met and spoken with Jimmy Stewart, I can’t picture him reading off that bill of particulars and then letting Hillary Clinton scoot.
France’s New Reign of Terror Puts U.S. Readiness in Focus
Evil has erupted again, this time in the French Riviera. As the Bastille Day celebrations came to a close in the Mediterranean city of Nice, festivity turned to fear when a terrorist in a truck killed 84 people. Neither young nor old were spared, as men, women, children, and even babies were murdered before police killed the Tunisian-born terrorist. The face of evil in our world takes as its victims real faces of real people.
‘God’s Not Dead 2’ Ad Rejected at Cleveland Convention
Democrats are not all that fond of the Almighty. In fact, you might remember back in 2012, when they booed God during their political convention in Charlotte. I can’t recall if that was before or after they tried to remove Him from the party platform. Republicans, on the other hand, believe we are one nation under God — and the Almighty is always welcome at their political conventions.
Terror in Nice
France has once again been struck by radical Islamic supremacists. A jihadist drove a semi through a crowd in Nice, in southern France, during Bastille Day fireworks celebrations. At least 84 people were killed, including 10 children. More than 50 children were hurt and are being treated in hospitals. Many are in critical condition. The driver, Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, reportedly fired on fleeing pedestrians and shot at police from the cab of his truck. He was eventually shot and killed. I wonder how many people have been murdered this year by thugs whose first names were Mohamed.