Right Opinion

The Federal Government Is the Problem

Ronald Reagan was right when he stated that the federal government is not the solution and again when he said that the nine scariest words in the English language are "I'm from the government and I'm here to help." Having said all that, I do not share the fears of a great many on the Right who apparently lie awake nights worrying about the NSA listening in on their phone calls. From my earlier defense of the National Security Agency, I know that a number of my readers disagree. So be it. When push comes to shove, I prefer siding with Charles Krauthammer and John Bolton to sharing Rand Paul's paranoia. For one thing, even if Obama and his stooges wanted to listen in on a few billion phone calls a day, I don't believe they are up to the task. But it does make me somewhat envious of all you folks who are having all those fascinating phone calls that you imagine others are dying to tune in on. For my part, anyone tapping my line will, ninety-nine times out of 100, hear me hanging up on a telemarketer who has just addressed me as Mr. Potsky.

Life Without Libraries Would Be Unimaginably Poorer

I was a four-year-old in kindergarten the first time I remember reading in a library. The book was *Are You My Mother?* by P.D. Eastman, and I'm not sure which I found more captivating — the adventure of the hatchling that sets off to find its mother, or my own adventure of picking out a book from what seemed an endless array of enticing titles. I was hooked early, on books and libraries both. To this day I can visualize precisely the shelves in the fiction section of my school's library, where I first discovered many of my favorite children's novels: *The Twenty-One Balloons, Harriet the Spy, A Wrinkle in Time*. But the small library in my Cleveland-area day school was merely a gateway drug to the local public library a mile from my home. I spent innumerable hours there as a boy, addicted as much to the serendipitous pleasures of searching for a good book as to the satisfying relish of losing myself in its pages once I found one. My parents, raising five kids on a meager income, had little money to spare for buying books. But my library card was free, and I made heavy use of it.

Free Trade in Name Only

When I was first elected to Congress in 1998, South Carolina's Fourth Congressional District was a reliably protectionist vote. In the words of former Senator Fritz Hollings, the entire delegation viewed free trade as "the commercial equivalent of unilateral disarmament." As a free-market conservative, free trade is in my DNA. It is a trait shared by many of my former colleagues in Congress today, and they are correct that perfection is usually unattainable in the legislative process. That is why I voted in favor of granting President Bush trade promotion authority (TPA) in 2002 even though that bill contained what we now know is an egregiously ineffective welfare program — Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA). But there are key differences between that bill and the one currently on life support in the House.

The Trans Fat Ban Is Worse Than You Think

The Food and Drug Administration issued a final decision this week, giving the food industry three years to phase out bad trans fats, still used in a wide variety of products, such as Pillsbury's Ready To Bake cookies and cake frosting. Now, if you're ingesting large quantities of either, perhaps partially hydrogenated oils aren't your biggest concern in life. But if the government's goal is to prevent cardiovascular disease and preventing cardiovascular disease is all that matters, why stop there? The FDA alleges that phasing out trans fats will prevent about 7,000 premature deaths each year. (If you believe that these things can be quantified with that sort of precision, you have far too much faith in crusading bureaucracies. Years ago, I attempted to tally up the deaths that various studies, public interest groups and government agencies had attributed to obesity, smoking, salt, trans fats, meat, etc., and came up with a number larger than the number of all Americans who'd passed away that year.) But 610,000 Americans die from cardiovascular disease each year. Will 603,000 be left for corporate America to slaughter because we won't act? The negative externalities of allowing people to eat whatever they desire are huge.

Foreign Policy Downplayed in Jeb and Hillary Announcement Speeches

American presidents have greater leeway on foreign policy than on domestic issues. Just see how President Obama is forging ahead to an agreement with Iran opposed by large majorities in Congress and among voters. A president's personal predilections and core assumptions can have much more of an effect on his foreign policy than on domestic issues. You can draw a straight line from Obama's 2008 judgment that Iraq was a "stupid" war to the decisions that have led to the mess we see there today. So it's useful for voters to get as much insight as possible during campaigns about a potential president's thinking on foreign policy. Unfortunately, they didn't get much from the "announcement" speeches this past week of two candidates with prominent political pedigrees, Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton.

A New Strategy for Iraq and Syria

It's time for a new strategy in Iraq and Syria. It begins by admitting that the old borders are gone, that a unified Syria or Iraq will never be reconstituted, that the Sykes-Picot map is defunct. We may not want to enunciate that policy officially. After all, it does contradict the principle that colonial borders be maintained no matter how insanely drawn, the alternative being almost universally worse. Nonetheless, in Mesopotamia, balkanization is the only way to go. Because it has already happened and will not be reversed. In Iraq, for example, we are reaping one disaster after another by pretending that the Baghdad government — deeply sectarian, divisive and beholden to Iran — should be the center of our policy and the conduit for all military aid.

Nietzsche's 'Ressentiment' Alive and Well Today

"God," Friedrich Nietzsche famously declared, "is dead." God, it has been noted, made a similar yet more lasting pronouncement about Nietzsche. But before the German philosopher departed this mortal coil, he had some interesting things to say. Nietzsche argued that one of the most powerful forces in society was "ressentiment." Similar to the everyday word "resentment," ressentiment lay at the heart of new kinds of morality. In ancient times, nobility was associated with power. The downtrodden, the poor, the weak, the enslaved were ignoble. The masses of have-nots, to use a more modern language, resented their plight for understandable reasons. But they were too weak to launch a real, armed revolution. Instead, the powerless resorted to a moral revolution, assaulting the concepts of nobility, goodness and morality and rendering them evil in the popular imagination.

Hands Off Hamilton

They're coming for our money. OK, that's nothing new, but this time, the Obama administration is coming for our $10 bills -- the notes graced by the image of Alexander Hamilton. True to the identity politics of the Democratic Party, the Obama Treasury Department has announced that some worthy female will replace Hamilton on the currency. The sheer arrogance, ignorance and stupidity of this move are difficult to capture in one column. Let's start with stupidity. If there's one figure whose face arguably does not deserve to adorn the currency, it's the man on the $20 bill, not the $10. That is Andrew Jackson, seventh president of the United States, adamant opponent of paper currency (!), friend of slave power and scourge of Native Americans. Who can forget that when the Cherokee appealed their treatment by the state of Georgia to the Supreme Court and won, Jackson refused to enforce the law? Jackson pushed for and signed the Indian Removal Act, which led directly to the forced deportation of nearly 17,000 Choctaw, Creek, Cherokee and others — known as the Trail of Tears. He was fiercely opposed in this by his predecessor, John Quincy Adams, who took the view (in case you're tempted to argue that Jackson was only doing what was possible at the time) that Indians should be paid for their land if they wished to sell, and that they should be given the protections of the U.S. Constitution.

The Creepy Consequences of Oppression Chic

Why was America so shocked by homegirl hoaxer Rachel Dolezal? The spray-tanned con artist, who resigned this week as head of the Spokane chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of (Artificially) Colored People, is the inevitable outcome of academia's cult of manufactured victimhood. College campuses have been grooming a cadre of professional minority fakers and fraudsters for decades. The notorious pretendians Ward Churchill and Elizabeth Warren faked their Native American status to bolster their faculty credentials at the University of Colorado and Harvard, respectively. It was a mutually beneficial racket for all poseur parties involved. Churchill and Warren basked in their tenured glory. The schools racked up politically correct points for adding the right flavors to their employment rolls.

ObamaCare in Critical Condition at Court

Americans want a second opinion on the country's health care law — and the Supreme Court is giving them one. Three years after the justices upheld the President's controversial legislation, the justices are taking another crack at ObamaCare — with even more on the line. That's news to most Americans, 70 percent of whom have heard little or nothing about the case. And while they may not know about the suit, they're about to feel its effects if the justices strike down the subsidies that make the coverage possible for millions of people. The "Affordable" Care Act, which is turning out to be one of the most litigated pieces of legislation in modern history, is back under the microscope — this time to decide if the IRS acted lawlessly (The IRS? Lawless?) in doling out billions of dollars in health care aid to people not meant to receive it. Under the law passed by Congress, only states that set up their own health care exchanges were eligible for subsidies.

Donald Trump's Circus Act

Poor Jeb. He's Donald Trump's first Republican victim, but he won't be his last. On Monday Bush officially declared he was a Republican candidate for president, something everyone knew was coming. Jeb gave a serious, by-the-book announcement speech, explaining his many qualifications, making his claim that he's a true conservative and promising to make America great again. It was boringly Bush, and maybe a little too moderate for hardline conservatives. But it was mature and dignified. Presidential even.

Rachel Dolezal and Cultural Nihilism

Black activist Rachel Dolezal was pressed to resign as the leader of the Spokane, Washington, chapter of the NAACP when her parents exposed her secret. Her parents are both white. They produced winsome pictures of her with straight blonde hair, freckles and blue eyes. She is a fraud. When this story first broke on social media, conservatives were instantly amused. The irony of timing! If the liberals feel it is laudable for someone to be "brave" enough to pretend to be a gender not "assigned at birth," then why not play games with race as well? Most blacks don't find humor here. They were quickly offended that someone would be so dishonest to pretend to be their race. Some believe it was like putting on "blackface," mocking them.

The Ongoing Tragedy of Post-Apartheid South Africa

Inside a leftist death culture.

Saluting a 'Great Charter' of Liberty

First Mary Jo Kopechne, Then America

Sen. Ted Kennedy's 1965 immigration act allowed the Democrats to start winning elections the same way they win recounts: by enlarging the pool of voters. Liberals couldn't convince Americans to agree with them, but they happened to notice that the people of most other countries in the world already agreed with them. So Sen. Ted Kennedy's immigration act brought in millions of poverty-stricken foreigners to live off the American taxpayer and bloc-vote for the Democrats. The American people aren't changing their minds. Americans are becoming a minority to other, new people. Deft politicians used to know how to convince the 15 percent on the fence. But even Reagan would look at today's electorate and say: Who are you guys? We live in a different country, and I don't remember moving.

Ration Roulette: House Debates Death Panel

Now that Democrats have had five years to read the health care law, most of them agree with the GOP: we need to kill at least part of the bill — before it kills Americans! The Independent Payment Advisory Panel (or "death panel," as it's been dubbed) has been a major sticking point with both parties since ObamaCare passed. Among other things, IPAB would be responsible for keeping Medicare costs down, which sounds innocent enough. But the big controversy isn't *whether* IPAB should save money — but *how* it does. As the former chief of Medicare said, it's much cheaper for the government to let sick people die than care for them. So, the President's team invented this Board, which would be hand-picked by the White House to determine who is worthy of care and who isn't. Not only would IPAB be free of congressional oversight, but it would also operate without much input from health care providers. Instead of discussing the options with your doctor, IPAB will be sitting at the controls in Washington making health decisions for your family.

McDonald's, the 'Progressive Burger Company'

In January, McDonald's, leaning against the winds of fashion, said kale would never replace lettuce on its burgers. In May, however, it said it will test kale in a breakfast meal (breakfast is about 25 percent of McDonald's sales). Kale might or might not cause construction workers to turn at 6 a.m. into McDonald's drive-through lines, where approximately two-thirds of McDonald's customers place their orders. McDonald's also says its milk will soon be without artificial growth hormones, and chicken (McDonald's sells more of it than of beef) will be free of human antibiotics. All these might be good business decisions and as socially responsible as can be. They certainly pertain to McDonald's new mantra about being a "modern, progressive burger company," whatever that means.

Clinton's Race Warms Up

What did I tell you a couple of weeks ago? In fact, what have I been suggesting for months? Hillary Clinton is going to have a very tough time winning her party's nomination. Since we have been appraising her looming presence on the campaign trail, a growing number of scandals have been revealed. They have surprised even me — though, truth to tell, any seasoned Clinton watcher has seen their precursors reaching all the way back to her Arkansas days: lying, secreting evidence from investigators, funny money (and lots of it), campaign contributions from shady characters (some foreign, some felons), and being asleep at the switch during Benghazi. I suppose the Benghazi contretemps was an evolutionary breakthrough for her, but then she had never been secretary of state before. Now she is confronting the real tests. Since the reporting of Clinton's latest scandals, her polling figures have dropped precipitously. According to a recent CNN/ORC poll, 57 percent of those queried do not trust her. That is an increase from 49 percent just two months ago. Only 47 percent say she cares about them, down from 53 percent in March. Fifty percent say she does not inspire confidence, an increase from 42 percent in March.

Father's Day: Being Raised Without a Father Is Not a Death Sentence

I wrote my latest book, "Dear Father, Dear Son: Two Lives, Eight Hours," to personalize the biggest issue facing the country — the growing number of fatherless homes, particularly in the black community, where over 70 percent of children are born to unwed mothers. Being raised without a father is hard. One is more likely to drop out, be unemployed or end up in jail. But it's not a death sentence. The book is about what my father faced and overcame: Only child; irresponsible, illiterate mother; never met his biological father; born in Jim Crow South; kicked out of his house at age 13 — never to return — all as the Great Depression began. It doesn't get much worse than that.

The New World Map

Adolf Hitler started World War II by attacking Poland on September 1, 1939. Nazi Germany moved only after it had already remilitarized the Rhineland, absorbed Austria and dismantled Czechoslovakia. Before the outbreak of the war, Hitler's new Third Reich had created the largest German-speaking nation in European history. Well before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Imperial Japanese government had redrawn the map of Asia and the Pacific. Japan had occupied or annexed Indochina, Korea, Manchuria and Taiwan, in addition to swaths of coastal China. Attacking Hawaii, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Indonesia was merely the logical 1941 follow-up to more than a decade of Japanese aggression.