Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Tuesday, June 2, 2015
The O'Malley Factor
Martin O'Malley, former Baltimore mayor and Maryland governor, announced his presidential candidacy on Saturday, and said some things that could be taken as criticism of President Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. "Today, the American dream seems for so many of us to be hanging by a thread," said OâMalley, adding "We must save our country now. ... Tell me how it is that you can get pulled over for a broken taillight in our country, but if you wreck the nation's economy, you are untouchable." Who is he blaming for "wrecking" the economy? Big banks and Wall Street, not the Obama administration, which has presided over slow economic growth, an increase in the number of Americans who want to work but can't find jobs and more than 46 million people on food stamps. Last month, the Commerce Department reported the economy contracted 0.7 percent in the first quarter of 2015.
Is It Time for Civil Disobedience of Kludgeocratic Bureaucracy?
Is there any way to reverse the trend to ever more intrusive, bossy government? Things have gotten to such a pass, argues Charles Murray, that only civil disobedience might — might — work. But the chances are good enough, he says, that he's written a book about it: "By the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission." Murray has a track record of making seemingly outlandish proposals that turn out to be widely accepted public policy. His 1984 book "Losing Ground" recommended the radical step of abolishing all welfare payments. A dozen years later, the federal welfare reform act took a long step in that direction. Murray was prompted to write "By the People," he says, when a friend who owns a small business was confronted by OSHA inspectors and had an experience similar to one recounted in Philip Howard's "The Death of Common Sense."
Monday, June 1, 2015
An Alliance Carrying the Torch of Freedom in Europe
Last weekend, I had the honor of attending a meeting of the Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists in Winchester, England. The organization consists of members of the European Parliament from 15 European Union nations and Turkey and works with several "regional partners" including Canada, Australia and the United States. The Alliance opposes the centralized bureaucracy of the European Union. As laid forth in its Reykjavik Declaration, the group favors "the exercise of power at the lowest practicable level — by the individual where possible, by local or national authorities in preference to supranational bodies." It supports individual liberty, freedom from oppressive tax and regulatory regimes, and the rights of free speech and worship. It is inspiring that there are groups of Europeans keeping the torch of freedom burning even as some of their governments act to dampen it.
It's Socialism, Not Deodorant, That Starves the Poor
What this country needs, says Bernie Sanders, is less deodorant. The 73-year-old senator from Vermont, now running for the Democratic presidential nomination, told CNBC's John Harwood in an interview on Tuesday that because American consumers can choose from so many brands of personal-care products, kids are going to bed with empty bellies. "You don't necessarily need a choice of 23 underarm spray deodorants or of 18 different pairs of sneakers when children are hungry in this country," Sanders lamented. He didn't explain exactly how the profusion of toiletries and athletic footwear leads to childhood hunger, but for the only self-described socialist in Congress, it is no doubt a matter of faith that the abundance of capitalism must generate poverty and undernourishment.
Abortion vs. Capital Punishment
When liberals set out to prove that conservatives are hypocrites, they will generally point out that many of the same people who are most opposed to abortions turn around and support capital punishment. In doing so, the liberals merely confirm they lack anything even faintly resembling a moral compass. After all, who but a leftist would ever equate the life of an innocent baby with that of a cold-blooded sadist? When comparing human lives, it helps if those on both sides are recognizably human. To suggest that some degenerate who has raped and murdered a child or eviscerated an entire family be allowed to live simply because he possesses fingerprints and human DNA seems fatuous at best, repugnant at worst. But, then, on those occasions when liberals aren't immoral, their tendency is to be amoral, seemingly unaware that there are principles and values without which we are no better than the beasts of the jungle.
Sunday, May 31, 2015
How Dishonest Is Barack Obama?
A week ago Friday was an unusual day for the editorial page of The New York Times. An unsigned editorial in the paper lashed out at the president for his public statements about reengaging in Iraq. A Paul Krugman column attacked the administration's defense of the new trade agreement. Both pieces said the administration was being … (how shall we say it?) … *dishonest*. Granted, this was nothing like the language Krugman and the Times typically use to describe Republicans. A few days earlier, Krugman accused Jeb Bush of "cowardice and vileness" with respect to his statements about Iraq. In a column on Jeb's brother and the original invasion of Iraq, Krugman wrote "We were lied into war." "It was worse than a mistake," he added, "it was a crime." Still, Krugman and the Times are normally the most visible and reliable apologists for the Obama administration.
The Challenge: House or Home?
How do you turn a house into a home? We're not talking interior design, crafting parties or cooking lessons. We're talking about the essential differences between a space where people live and a space where people find life. A house has walls, floors, and rooms. It is a physical structure of function and utility. It is cement and pipes and wood and wiring, all void of understanding and emotion. But the word "home," on the other hand, connotes a place of belonging, acceptance, and comfort. A home is a place where family members and friends can make mistakes, be challenged by truth, and experience the warmth that comes with grace, forgiveness, and redemption.
A Summer Break From Campus Muzzling
Commencement season brings a respite from the sinister childishness rampant on campuses. Attacks on freedom of speech come from the professoriate, that herd of independent minds, and from the ever-thickening layer of university administrators who keep busy constricting freedom in order to fine-tune campus atmospherics. The attacks are childish because they infantilize students who flinch from the intellectual free-for-all of adult society. When Brown University's tranquility of conformity was threatened by a woman speaker skeptical about the "rape culture" on campuses, students planned a "safe space" for those who would be traumatized by exposure to skepticism. Judith Shulevitz, writing in The New York Times, reported that the space had "cookies, coloring books, bubbles, Play-Doh, calming music, pillows, blankets and a video of frolicking puppies."
Saturday, May 30, 2015
The GOP Needs a 5 Percent Growth Target
First-quarter real GDP actually declined by 0.7 percent, according to revisions out this week, creating much new talk about recession. But there is no recession. Trouble is, there continues to be virtually no recovery. The economy has expanded about 1.5 percent over the past two quarters, 2.4 percent at an annual rate over the past two years and about 2.3 percent during this six-year, so-called recovery. That's the real problem. Not a one-quarter snowstorm or inaccurate seasonal adjustments. Following the deepest recession since World War II, a normal recovery should have featured an outsized rebound. The Reagan years exemplified that model. But it hasn't happened. Why?
Ann Coulter Takes on Pro-Amnesty Media
Ann Coulter has another best-selling book coming out, provocatively titled "Adios, America: The Left's Plan to Turn Our Country Into a Third World Hellhole." One major target of Coutler's barbs is our "objective" media. Lord knows Coulter understands they deserve the hectoring. News reports are slavishly sensitive to the Latino Left's political correctness. Start with the terminology. The factual term "illegal immigrants" is somehow an extremely mean-spirited description, even though it's 100 percent accurate. They claim to prefer less loaded lingo. Like "Dreamers." Coulter took exception to a New York Times story from last November reporting that a Mexican-themed restaurant in Fort Collins, Colorado called "Illegal Pete's" was hounded by leftists to change the name, even though it was named for the Anglo business owner's father.
Martial Law Shall Not Prevail
Because we are quickly approaching January 20, 2017, although not quickly enough to suit some of us, the usual paranoia has risen to the surface. I am receiving the very same sort of email I was receiving when the administrations of both Clinton and Bush were winding down. People are once again alerting me to the news that the next election will not take place because the man in the White House will cobble up a national emergency that requires him to call out the federal troops and deny the American people the opportunity to evict him from the Oval Office. While I agree that Obama is far more likely to behave that way than either of his predecessors, I really don't think that Michelle, Valerie Jarrett, Juan Williams, Josh Earnest, Loretta Lynch and the Congressional Black Caucus, are up to the task.
Friday, May 29, 2015
Good News Is Bad for Motivating Voters
I know it will come as a shock to most conservatives, but far fewer people are sneaking into the country across our southern border than at any time in recent memory. At the height of the illegal immigration crisis in 2000, 1.6 million illegal immigrants entered the U.S. Since 2012, the numbers are down to about 400,000 — and they've gone down so far this fiscal year by another 28 percent over last year. That's good news, but good news doesn't energize the base nearly as effectively as fear. Instead of embracing the facts that illegal immigration is down to a decades-long low — by one measure lower than it has been in more than 40 years — many conservatives still fret about an illegal invasion that threatens our very way of life. Measuring the flow of illegal immigrants is difficult, which is why so many people argue about the numbers incessantly. A few years ago, I'd often encounter people who claimed there were 30 million illegal immigrants in the U.S., when demographers estimated slightly more than 12 million.
Who Built the Brooklyn Bridge?
How many times have you heard President Obama and his minions pat themselves on the back for their noble "investments" in "roads and bridges"? Without government infrastructure spending, we're incessantly reminded, we wouldn't be able to conduct our daily business. "Every single great idea that has marked the 21st century, the 20th century and the 19th century has required government vision and government incentive," Vice President Joe Biden infamously asserted. "Private enterprise," he sneered, lags behind. As always, the Beltway narcissists have it backward. Without private enterprise and free-market visionaries, public infrastructure wouldn't exist. Take the iconic Brooklyn Bridge, which turned 132 years old this week. It's not a government official whose vision built that. It's a fierce capitalist who revolted against unimaginative command-and-control bureaucrats in his home country.
Obama Not Offended Enough by Anti-Semitism
What to make of President Obama's interpretation of the Iranian leadership? Challenged by The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg to account for the seeming inconsistency of relying on the rationality of a regime that holds a profoundly anti-Semitic worldview, the president denied that the "venomous anti-Semitism" (his words) of the mullahs is a barrier to rational decision making: "Well, the fact that you are anti-Semitic, or racist, doesn't preclude you from being interested in survival. It doesn't preclude you from being rational about the need to keep your economy afloat; it doesn't preclude you from making strategic decisions about how you stay in power; and so the fact that the supreme leader is anti-Semitic doesn't mean that this overrides all of his other considerations. You know, if you look at the history of anti-Semitism, Jeff, there were a whole lot of European leaders — and there were deep strains of anti-Semitism in this country."
Some Race Activists Are Harming Their Own Cause
There was a mostly minority-on-minority bloodbath in Baltimore over the Memorial Day weekend, with 26 people shot and nine dead, and the main reaction we hear from the left is "racism." How do perpetual race activists ever expect to be viewed as credible when they react to every incident, irrespective of the facts, as racially motivated? Take Ferguson, Missouri, for example. Though a grand jury refused to return a criminal indictment against police Officer Darren Wilson in connection with what authorities concluded was his legally justifiable shooting of Michael Brown, racial activists continue to cite the tragedy as if it supports their case against racially motivated police misconduct. But is it honest for these activists to chant "hands up, don't shoot" concerning this case?
Absence of a Smoking Gun Doesn't Equate to Innocence
Let's say, just for kicks, you murdered your husband (or wife). Your neighbors have been suspicious ever since your nightly arguments suddenly stopped, right around the time you put something large in your trunk and drove off in the middle of the night. Now they see you driving his car and putting his suits and golf clubs up for sale on eBay. The police find your explanations implausible and contradictory, and then you tell the cops to direct all future questions to your lawyer. The good news is that you have fans. Some neighbors think you're the cat's pajamas. They come to you and say they want to defend you against this terrible accusation. What should you tell them to say on your behalf? Frankly, I don't know what you should say, but I do have a good sense of what you shouldn't say: "Tell them there's no smoking gun."
Why Doctors Quit
About a decade ago, a doctor friend was lamenting the increasingly frustrating conditions of clinical practice. "How did you know to get out of medicine in 1978?" he asked with a smile. "I didn't," I replied. "I had no idea what was coming. I just felt I'd chosen the wrong vocation." I was reminded of this exchange upon receiving my med-school class's 40th-reunion report and reading some of the entries. In general, my classmates felt fulfilled by family, friends and the considerable achievements of their professional lives. But there was an undercurrent of deep disappointment, almost demoralization, with what medical practice had become. The complaint was not financial but vocational — an incessant interference with their work, a deep erosion of their autonomy and authority, a transformation from physician to "provider."
Colleges and Universities Have Grown Bloated and Dysfunctional
American colleges and universities, long thought to be the glory of the nation, are in more than a little trouble. I've written before of their shameful practices — the racial quotas and preferences at selective schools (Harvard is being sued by Asian-American organizations), the kangaroo courts that try students accused of rape and sexual assault without legal representation or presumption of innocence, and speech codes that make campuses the least rather than the most free venues in American society. In following these policies, the burgeoning phalanxes of university and college administrators must systematically lie, insisting against all the evidence that they are racially nondiscriminatory, devoted to due process and upholders of free speech. The resulting intellectual corruption would have been understood by George Orwell. Alas, even the great strengths of our colleges and universities are threatening to become weaknesses. Sometimes you can get too much of a good thing.
Conservative Christians Miscount
I don't care how popular the Duggar family and their TLC reality show "19 Kids & Counting" is with Christian conservatives. I don't care how many Republican presidential hopefuls Josh Duggar posed with in Iowa, or how important his celebrity was to the Family Research Council, the conservative Christian lobbying group. When the Duggar family's oldest son admitted he had molested and fondled five little girls — including some of his own sisters — when he was 14, it was time for conservative Christians to hold Josh and the Duggar family accountable for their actions. Most didn't. Also, I noticed, most of those who want to be the GOP's president in 2016 bit their tongues and pretended they hadn't heard the shocking news.