Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Thursday, May 26, 2016
A Better Way to Run for President
The frustration of many voters over the way presidential candidates are selected has come to a head with Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, the presumptive nominees of their respective parties. If this is the best we can do, maybe we should consider a better way.
Weld for VP? He’d Get My Vote
William Weld ran for governor of Massachusetts in 1990 on a platform of unabashed libertarian conservatism, and for one brief shining moment after taking office in January 1991, he actually seemed to mean it. In his inaugural address, he declared that the people of Massachusetts had “voted to disenthrall themselves from the failed dogmas of big government.” He committed himself to making state government better by making it smaller, cheaper, and more humble: “Sometimes the most helpful thing to do,” Weld said, “is to get out of the way.”
The Lessons of Pearl Harbor 75 Years Later
This year marks the 75th anniversary of the December 7, 1941, Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor that killed more than 2,400 Americans. President Obama is visiting Hiroshima this week, the site of the August 6, 1945, dropping of the atomic bomb that helped end World War II in the Pacific Theater. But strangely, he has so far announced no plans to visit Pearl Harbor on the anniversary of the attack. The president, who spent much of his childhood in Hawaii, should — given that many Americans have forgotten why the Japanese attacked the United States and why they falsely assumed that they could defeat the world’s largest economic power.
Anti-Trump Thugs Shout ‘Viva Mexico’ While Burning Trump Banner
An angry mob caused mayhem outside a Donald Trump rally Tuesday night in Albuquerque, New Mexico, turning the city into a *de facto* Third World country. The rampaging gang was made up of anti-Trump goons waving the Mexican flag and burning a Trump banner. “Viva Mexico,” protesters shouted, according to the Albuquerque Journal.
Britain at the Crossroads
Sixty-five years ago, what has become the European Union was an embryo conceived in fear. It has been stealthily advanced from an economic to a political project, and it remains enveloped in a watery utopianism even as it becomes more dystopian. The EU’s economic stagnation — in some of the 28 member nations, youth unemployment approaches 50 percent — is exacerbated by its regulatory itch and the self-inflicted wound of the euro, a common currency for radically dissimilar nations. The EU is floundering amid mass migration, the greatest threat to Europe’s domestic tranquility since 1945.
Wednesday, May 25, 2016
The Default Candidate
Hillary Clinton may be the weakest prohibitive favorite ever to run for the presidency. She is generally given strong odds of beating Donald Trump in the fall, yet she is tied with him in the early going as she struggles to shake a 74-year-old socialist who persists in notching victories in the Democratic primary contest. Armed with an impeccable resume and pedigree, and an impressive campaign and fundraising apparatus, Hillary has it all — except a rationale for her campaign and the ability to excite voters.
Is America Becoming More — or Less — Free?
Speaking this week in Ho Chi Minh City in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam — at what the White House billed as a “business and entrepreneurship event” — President Barack Obama complained about the lack of cooperation he gets from the U.S. Congress. The president was responding to a question posed by a Microsoft Vietnam executive who wanted to know what Obama would do to get the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal — which Microsoft endorses — approved in the United States.
VA Hospitals & the Dumbo Ride
That’s a headline you don’t see very often and with good reason. No one would confuse the two — except a high-ranking bureaucrat.
Four-Way Race for President Not Out of the Question
Could Bernie Sanders put Mitt Romney in the White House? I haven’t gotten my 2012 and 2016 wires crossed; I have a theory that’s slightly more realistic than a Donald Trump presidency seemed a year ago. As it stands now, it seems almost inconceivable that Sanders could become the Democratic nominee — unless the FBI indicts Hillary Clinton before the convention, or she reveals herself to be some sort of animatronic device sent from the future to bore us to death (which would make her ineligible under the “natural born” clause of the Constitution). The former seems about as plausible as the latter, given that Trump’s nomination makes it even less likely the Feds will risk interfering with the election.
You Are What You Say You Are
Last year, I declared myself a springbok trapped in a human body. A springbok is a highly agile individual who is among the “least concern” species and resides in the southeastern part of the African continent. With such a declaration, some people will suggest that I am suffering from a condition known as species dysphoria, in which one thinks he is a wild animal trapped in a human body. Species dysphoria is similar to gender dysphoria, a condition in which a person believes he is a woman trapped in a male body or a man trapped in a female body.
Private Is Better
Our next president will almost certainly be Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. But I take heart knowing that America’s founders imposed checks and balances, so there will be limits on what bad things the next president can do. Most of what government does is expensive and useless, no matter who is president. Or governor. Or mayor. Politicians say there are so many things only government should do — explore outer space, provide airport security, supply utilities, etc. But even those things work better when the private sector does them.
German Coffee Company Crushes American Family’s Dream
When folks around Beulah, Michigan get a hankering to eat breakfast for dinner, they’ll more often than not head over to the Blue Caribou Café and order a Hypocrite Omelet. (That’s a vegetarian omelet with your choice of meat.) Ever since it opened nearly two years ago, the Blue Caribou Café has become a gathering place for locals and tourists in this resort town on the shores of Northern Michigan’s Crystal Lake.
To Judge or Not to Judge?
In this day in time, there’s hardly a week that passes where some major moral issue isn’t being debated in the court of public opinion. Whether it’s via the courts, primetime TV or social media, it seems more and more of the values that many of us and our parents and grandparents grew up with are now on trial and under full attack. From marriage and abortion, to homosexuality and transgender facilities, the standards that have been in place for generations are now being undermined in an ever more intense manner.
These Boots Are Made for... Fighting?
After the last seven and a half years, it’s safe to say that the greatest threat to our military is the administration in charge of it. The legacy of the Obama administration will not be advancing the war against global jihad, but rather advancing the culture war — which started with the toppling of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and continued on to the latest phase of the military’s sexual revolution: open transgenderism and opening the draft to women. In this administration, gender isn’t just being redefined in bathrooms, but on battlefields, where this president seems all too content to assign America’s wives and daughters to the most dangerous ground combat units in the world.
Enough With Hollywood’s Pendulous Boobery
From runways to red carpets to Instagram and Snapchat, celebrity overexposure is inescapable. We’re drowning in underboob. Bombarded with sideboob. Nip slips. Crotch slips. Bare-bottom flashes. All of the above, all at once. The problem, my fellow Americans, is not that we live in an age of wardrobe malfunctions. It’s that we live in an age of dignity malfunctions.
Religious Freedom in an Age of Secularism
The late Claremont Institute scholar, Harry V. Jaffa, opened an essay he wrote called “The American Founding as the Best Regime,” discussing the meaning of the words of the preamble to our Constitution. Included in those words, laying out the purpose of the Constitution is the phrase, to “secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.” Jaffa says that “No words of the Constitution reveal the intention of the Constitution,” more than these. “What is a blessing?” asks Jaffa. It is “what is good in the eyes of God,” he answers.
Is Hillary Clinton the Only Innocent Person in a 10-Mile Radius?
Hillary Clinton is as pure as the driven snow, at least according to Hillary Clinton. Clinton will tell you how honest and transparent she is, right after cackling hysterically to stall for time. She will tell you that she always cooperates with law enforcement, that she has attempted to turn over all materials to relevant authorities, that it’s just one giant coincidence her friends and family are constantly being swept up in prosecutorial dragnets.
Tuesday, May 24, 2016
3 Ways Conservative Lawmakers Should Fight Obama’s Bathroom Directive
On May 13th, the Obama administration issued “guidance” to school districts across the nation purporting to require them to allow biological boys unfettered access to girls’ lockers, showers, and bathrooms or risk losing federal education funds.
Commencement Season
This is the season of college Commencement speeches — an art form that has seldom been memorable, but has increasingly become toxic in recent times. Two themes seem to dominate Commencement speeches. One is shameless self-advertising by people in government, or in related organizations supported by the taxpayers or donors, saying how nobler it is to be in “public service” than working in business or other “selfish” activities.
Trump and the Supreme Court
In releasing his list of potential Supreme Court nominees, Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has begun to solidify his support among conservatives as perhaps no other announcement could do. The record of any of the 11 judges currently serving on federal or state benches may calm the fears of those who are not committed “NeverTrump-ers.”