Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Wednesday, October 7, 2015
Escaping Tyranny
North Korea is called the "worst place on earth" for good reason. Thousands of people are tortured. Some North Koreans eat rodents to try to survive, and many starve anyway. In winter, they freeze. No one but the dictator has any true freedom, and no one is allowed to leave. One person who understands that is Yeonmi Park. Now she's 22. But for 16 years, she did amazing things "In Order to Live." That is the title of her new book.
Charlatans and Sheep: Part II
One of the secrets of successful magicians on stage is directing the audience's attention to something that is attractive or distracting, but irrelevant to what is actually being done. That is also the secret of successful political charlatans. Consider the message directed at business owners by Senator Elizabeth Warren and President Barack Obama — "You didn't build that!"
Why Obama Prefers Politicizing to Actual Politics
President Obama was right. He was right when, just a few hours after the horrible shooting in Oregon, he decried the fact that such slaughters have become "routine." He was even right, in a sense, when he defended politicizing the tragedy. "Of course," Obama said Thursday night, "what's also routine is that somebody, somewhere, will comment and say, 'Obama politicized this issue.' Well, this is something we should politicize. It is relevant to our common life together, to the body politic."
Suppressing Free Speech
I receive loads of mail in response to my weekly nationally syndicated column. Some recent mail has been quite disturbing. Here's a sample: "Given your support of freedom on a great many issues, I wish to bring to your attention the following George Mason University staff who have formally called on the President to use RICO statutes to punish organizations and individuals who dispute the 'consensus' of the" Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The writer goes on to say, "I am appalled that anyone associated with George Mason would so misuse the power of the Federal government." The writer names 20 signatories, six of whom are GMU faculty members.
Pope Francis vs. the 'Demon' of Gender Theory
Pope Francis has returned to Rome after a historic trip to the United States. It was a fascinating endeavor. There have been many papal visits to America in my lifetime — in fact, nearly all have been in my lifetime, the first occurring in 1965, the year before I was born. None of these, however, were so heavily marked by political-ideological battle lines among liberals and conservatives. Really, those lines have been drawn boldly on the left, with liberals eagerly claiming this pope as one of them, and many conservatives granting that concession.
Hillary Clinton's Simple-Minded Gun Control Ideas
After a gunman murdered nine people at a community college in Oregon last week, President Obama said the solution to such violence is obvious. "It cannot be this easy for somebody who wants to inflict harm on other people to get his or her hands on a gun," he declared. The problem is that we generally do not know a gun buyer "wants to inflict harm on other people" until he does it. That reality shows the folly of relying on background checks or psychiatric intervention to prevent mass shootings.
Tuesday, October 6, 2015
School Cancels 'America Day'
Patriotic teenagers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, showed up to class Wednesday waving American flags in defiance of educators who canceled "America Day" over fears it might upset students who don't consider themselves to be American. Administrators at Jackson Hole High School pulled the plug on "America Day," citing concerns that celebrating the USA would alienate some of their young people, the Jackson Hole Daily reported.
Cutting Off Funding to Planned Parenthood Doesn't Violate the Constitution
Some critics of the attempt to stop federal funding for Planned Parenthood, the nation's number one abortion provider, are now making the erroneous claim that to do so would be unconstitutional. However, that claim, as expressed by Drexel law professor David S. Cohen, who says that cutting off federal funding would be an unconstitutional bill of attainder (a legislative act punishing someone without a trial), is nonsense.
Hillary's Gun-Control Non Sequiturs
Hillary Clinton has a new gun agenda that is the same as the old gun agenda. We all are appalled and heartsick over the country's mass shootings, which aren't any less shocking for their routine occurrence. But that doesn't mean we know how to stop them. The Pavlovian Democratic reaction is to offer a raft of familiar gun-control proposals, whether or not they have any bearing on mass shootings.
A Pope-pourri of Distortion
In the largest security detail in American history, there's no such thing as a "chance" meeting. But that's exactly what the media is claiming took place between Pope Francis and Kentucky's Kim Davis. Frustrated by the pope's obvious support for the jailed clerk, the press is stirring up speculation about whether the conversation even took place.
The Right Does Have Answers on Guns, Mr. President
On the assumption that there are good and bad people on both the right and the left and that everyone is horrified by mass shootings, how is one to explain the great divide between right and left on the gun issue as it relates to these mass murders? Why does the left focus on more gun control laws, and why doesn't the right?
Tweeting Our Irrelevance to the World
Last Friday, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power compressed seven-plus years of the Obama administration's staggering stupidity, clueless arrogance and frightening adolescence into a single tweet. "We call on #Russia to immediately cease attacks on Syrian oppo & civilians & to focus on ISIL," it stated. Does anything epitomize this administration better than a clueless tweet from a clueless twit? Most of the reaction to it is best described as astonished bemusement.
Facts Don't Work on Gun Control, So Obama Uses Emotion
In his speech on the Umpqua Community College shooting in Oregon last week, President Obama sounded more upset about America's gun laws than about the horrific massacre. We barely had the preliminary facts about the shooting, the shooter and the victims, and he was already lecturing the nation again on gun control. Instead of calling the nation to prayer, he said we would learn about the victims in the coming days and then "wrap everyone who's grieving with our prayers and our love."
Obama/Putin: No Contest!
The buzz around Washington, D.C., is that we are entering a new cold war with Russia. My response: Don't worry! Be happy! There is no new cold war. To have a cold war, two sides must realize they have conflicting interests and each must want their interests to prevail and be willing to compete. As of now, Russia, under President Vladimir Putin, understands that. But he has no opposition in an America under our lame President Barack Obama. A cold war would actually be an improvement over what we have now, which is a global American retreat in the face of Russian and Iranian aggression.
Charlatans and Sheep
One of the many painful signs of the mindlessness of our times was a recent section of the Wall Street Journal, built around the theme "What's Holding Women Back in the Workplace?" Whenever some group is not equally represented in some institution or activity, the automatic response in some quarters is to assume that someone has prevented equality of outcomes.
Tea Party Wave Left a Ripple Effect Still Felt in Budget
Remember the much-maligned Tea Party movement? These were the patriotic Americans — millions of them — who took to the streets and the town halls across America and revolted against Bush's corporate bailouts, Obama's stimulus spending blowout and Obamacare, and the Fed's policy of tossing trillions of dollars out of helicopter windows (figuratively). Good news: They helped change and maybe even slightly fix America. The latest budget deficit numbers — for the fiscal year that just ended — find that the deficit has fallen by $1 trillion since Obama's tragic first term. The deficit is still near half a trillion, but the hole is a lot smaller than it was before the Tea Party's spontaneous combustion happened back in 2009.
Joaquin and Obama: Two Forces of Nature
Hurricane Joaquin dumped large amounts of rain on the East Coast, but another "force of nature" flooded the country with so much rhetoric it was difficult for most people to keep up. Before barely any facts were known, there was President Obama on camera (when isn't he?) making a 12-minute address — a relatively short time for him — about the school shootings in Roseburg, Oregon. The president referred to himself 28 times, according to Grabien.com, again proving that whatever happens in this country, or the world, it really is all about him.
Policy Reform That Comes From Outside (and in Spite of) Washington
Not all important public policy reforms come from Washington. Really lasting reforms can percolate from the bottom up, brewed by citizens with a grievance pushing state and local governments to act. Consider the case of Right to Try legislation. These are state laws that allow doctors to prescribe investigational medicines being safely used in clinical trials for patients diagnosed as terminally ill. You may not have heard about these laws. But you may have heard a lot if a loved one or Facebook friend is facing advanced cancer or ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease) and cannot obtain medicine that might alleviate symptoms or extend life because it has not gained final approval from the Food and Drug Administration.
Monday, October 5, 2015
The U.S. Postal Service Continues to Burn Money
Most people are going to tell you that they can't stand seeing good money go to waste. When it comes to the U.S. government, however, wasteful spending continues to be the name of the game. A repeat culprit of government waste — the United States Postal Service (USPS), which recorded a revenue loss of $5.5 billion dollars in 2014 alone — is considering a $6.3 billion purchase of mail delivery vehicles using an unnecessarily expensive, out-of-date approach it employed nearly 30 years ago. Of course, maintaining one of the world's largest civilian vehicle fleets comes with its costs, but it appears the service has done little to minimize those.
Free Your Eyes From the Shackles of the Shutter
Massachusetts native Paul Theroux has roamed the world for decades, visiting countless countries and drawing on his experiences in dozens of published novels, short stories, and volumes of travel writing. He has been everywhere, or as close to everywhere as one man can manage in a peripatetic career. What Theroux doesn't know about how to travel probably isn't worth knowing. Here's one lesson he has gleaned from a lifetime of roving: The best traveling is done without a camera.