Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Thursday, May 14, 2015
The Challenge: The Ascension
This Thursday, May 14, is Ascension Day. It's a little known and little celebrated holy day that marks Jesus' exit from this world. The basic story is simple: forty days after his resurrection, Jesus rose up into heaven as he blessed his followers who looked on. But the significance of Jesus' ascension is crucial for Christians. Those followers who stood bewildered, gazing up at the clouds, had been through a lot. They left all they had to follow the man Jesus, thinking he would be their savior. They respected him, trusted him, and loved him, but struggled to understand the things he told them. They watched him die at the hands of their fellow Jews, and all their hopes were crushed as he breathed his last upon that cross. They hid in fear from the Jewish leaders as they grieved. Then they encountered Jesus as a risen man — and now he was leaving them again.
Illinois State Senator Barack Obama's 'Urban Agenda'
After the recent Baltimore riots, left-wing critics accused President Barack Obama of lacking an "urban agenda." Critics like PBS's hard lefty Tavis Smiley said: "What do we see in Baltimore and Ferguson and beyond? Racism, poverty and militarism. And so poverty is clearly connected to this. My sense is that this is going to become the new normal. These kinds of uprisings and riots are going to happen a lot more if we can't get serious about jobs, jobs, jobs with a living wage for all fellow citizens. ... "My problem with the President so far, respectfully, is that he has had a sort of 'hands off' approach to a 'hands up' crisis, and I don't think that's the answer to the prayer, either. ... When you have police killings that are on the rise ... for me, that's a problem; that's a pandemic. I think that our leaders ought to call a state of emergency ... from the President on down. We can then, I think, get a real conversation about police accountability, about civilian oversight and, again, about jobs for fellow citizens."
Bernie Sanders' Historic Role
In this land of capitalist chaos, there is something quaint about Bernard Sanders, the senator from Vermont, running for the Democratic presidential nomination as a Socialist. He is not running as a liberal or a progressive, or even a vegetarian, but as a Socialist! Apparently, he envisages the federal government as being populated by a very professional bureaucracy, utterly removed from politics, its members all waiting orders from the incoming government, whether their president be an out-and-out capitalist or even a very abstemious Socialist. There the federal bureaucracy stands, waiting to do its president's bidding! Of course, recently we have learned from the scandals at the IRS and the Department of Veterans Affairs that Washington's bureaucracy is more likely composed of venal money-grubbers and Democratic Party hacks, but Senator Sanders can view them as a saintly corps if he wants. That does not mean that he will be playing a minor role in this election cycle. He will. His role is just not going to be that of the Democratic presidential nominee.
Contest: What Will the GOP Cave on Next?
Bloomberg News ran a happy news story this week about the "surprising" development of Republicans joining Democrats in their effort to end our "incarceration generation" by the simple expedient of putting fewer criminals in prison. (Lots of good ideas involve ham-fisted, Johnnie Cochran-style rhymes.) And Bloomberg wasn't just talking about the media's usual lickspittle, Sen. Rand Paul. Former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former Texas governor Rick Perry have all called for "new" approaches to allegedly "non-violent" drug crimes — i.e., any approach other than prison. Perry says: "You want to talk about real conservative governance? Shut prisons down. Save that money."
Baltimore's Problems Not Rooted in Racist Police
Attorney General Loretta Lynch has announced a Justice Department investigation to determine whether the Baltimore Police Departmentâs practices are unconstitutional and violate civil rights; in short, whether or not the police force there is racist. It will come as no surprise if the investigation concludes that it is, because accusing the department of racism diverts attention from the city's real problem: Baltimore, a laboratory for liberal policies, is a failed city that has shortchanged the poor for decades. Baltimore has received over $1.8 billion in stimulus money from the Obama administration, including $467.1 million to invest in education and $26.5 million for crime prevention. Still, parts of the city remain mired in poverty and despair. There are 16,000 vacant buildings in Baltimore and an unknown number of "vacant" fathers. Between 2000 and 2010, Baltimore lost 5 percent of its population. The liberal solution of raising taxes hasn't worked. Many of those who could escape the city have.
The Forgotten Realities of World War II
May 8 marked the end of World War II in Europe 70 years ago — a horrific conflict that is still fought over by historians. More than 60 million people perished — some 50 million of them in Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union and China. The prewar Soviet state in the 1920s and 1930s had killed perhaps 20 million of its own citizens in purges, exiles, collectivizations, forced famines and show trials. Then it lost an estimated 25 million soldiers and civilians to the German army on the Eastern Front. Hitler's Germany by late 1942 had occupied almost 1 million square miles of Soviet ground. The Soviet Red Army would eventually be responsible for three quarters of Germany's WWII casualties, but at a cost of approximately 9 million dead of its own combatants. Nevertheless, the Allied defeat of the Axis powers is more complicated than just the monumental and heroic sacrifice of the Soviet soldier.
In Childhood, Risk Is Inherent
Controversies about "free-range parenting" illuminate today's scarred cultural landscape. Neighbors summon police in response to parenting choices the neighbors disapprove. Government extends its incompetence with an ever-broader mission of "child protection." And these phenomena are related to campus hysteria about protecting infantilized undergraduates from various menaces, including uncongenial ideas. The Meitivs live in suburban Montgomery County, Maryland, which is a bedroom for many Washington bureaucrats who make their living minding other people's business. The Meitivs, to encourage independence and self-reliance, let their 10- and 6-year-old children walk home alone from a park about a mile from their home. For a second time, their children were picked up by police, this time three blocks from home. After confinement in a squad car for almost three hours, during which the police never called or allowed the children to call the Meitivs, the children were given to social workers who finally allowed the parents to reclaim their children at about 11 p.m. on a school night. The Meitivs' Kafkaesque experiences concluded with them accused of "unsubstantiated" neglect.
Wednesday, May 13, 2015
Arab Leaders Revolt Against Iran Nuke Deal
The Obama narrative that Israel poses the only opposition goes up in smoke.
Einstein Memorial Refutes White House Environmentalist
It is an obvious truth we too often forget. At the Albert Einstein Memorial, on the grounds of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., an explanatory sign states a simple fact that refutes the argument President Barack Obama's science adviser once made for redistributing wealth and limiting human population so as to save the human race from a poverty he claimed must inevitably intensify as our numbers increase. "At Einstein's feet lies a circular sky map representing the planets, sun, moon, and stars, positioned as observed by astronomers from the U.S. Naval Observatory at noon on the day that the memorial was unveiled and dedicated," says the website of the National Academy of Sciences.
Iran Prisoners Strike It Risch
Saeed Abedini was born in the middle of the Iranian hostage crisis — but no one dreamed that 35 years later, he would become a hostage himself. The son of Tehran, who fled his country because of his faith, is now an American citizen — though that fact has done him little good in Evin prison, where Pastor Saeed has been tortured for his conversion to Christianity for two and a half years. Captured during a visit to family, Abedini was charged with apostasy and sentenced to almost a decade in what many call "hell on earth." "Every day," survivor Marina Nemat remembered, "felt like 3,000 years." "Beatings, torture, mock executions, and brutal interrogations are the norm ... where for four decades the anguished cries of prisoners have been swallowed up by the drab walls of the low-slung lockup in northwestern Tehran." Like Pastor Saeed, she speaks of lashings, beatings, and blindfolded horrors.
Eating Crow After the British Elections
The media elite have a preeminent place in our politics, allegedly with the knowledge to declare what is politically feasible and what is not, including which candidates have a chance at winning and which do not. Before we head into a presidential primary season, it's time to insist that these "experts" don't know any better than the rest of us. And sometimes their biases so heavily shade their predictions as to keep themselves in the dark about reality. Take the elections in Israel in March. The manufactured conventional wisdom and polling predicted a tight race and rough sledding for conservative Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. When instead the conservative won easily, our media exploded in the usual sore-loser outbursts about how Mideast peace was dead. An Obama campaign stalwart (2012 field organizer Jeremy Bird) enriched himself but ended up on the losing side. This wasn't depicted as a bad sign for President Obama or his political team.
The Return of Obama's Hoax-Spreading Bitter Half
She's baaaaaaaack. And she's maaaaaad. First lady Michelle Obama delivered the commencement address at Tuskegee University last weekend. She'll do it again at Ohio's Oberlin College — the UC Berkeley of the Midwest, Ground Zero for racial grievance-mongering and fake hate crimes — next week. Commencement FLOTUS is not the same first lady who shows up on "Ellen" or "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon" wearing her pastel cardigan, Chuck Taylors and a megawatt grin. No, this frowny-faced Michelle Obama talks and squawks like Al Sharpton in Jimmy Choo kitten heels. At Tuskegee, FLOTUS traded her affable TV persona for the divisive social justice complainer we all came to know and loathe during her husband's first presidential campaign.
Warrantless Snooping Goes Far Beyond NSA's Phone-Record Dragnet
Two Cases Highlight the Precariousness of Privacy When Your Records Are Not Yours
Shut Pam Geller Up, or We Will All Die
Last week, Fox News' Bill O'Reilly announced that Pamela Geller, the woman who sponsored a draw Muhammad event in Texas, threatened America's national security. Geller, said O'Reilly, "spurred a violent attack." He continued, "Insulting the entire Muslim world is stupid. ... It does not advance the cause of liberty or get us any closer to defeating the savage jihad." On the same network, Juan Williams stated that Geller "engaged in gratuitous offensive behavior that led to the deaths of two people." The New York Times editorialized that Geller "achieved her provocative goal" with her "exercise in bigotry and hatred posing as a blow for freedom." Geller, the narrative goes, should never have encouraged people to draw Muhammad because it was "provocative." To which the answer should be: So what? Women attending school in Afghanistan "provokes" radical Muslims into throwing acid on their faces, but that does not mean that women should not go to school in Afghanistan or be condemned for doing so.
Mark Halperin's Biased Grilling of Ted Cruz
Imagine it's 2007 and a prominent journalist is interviewing then-Sen. Barack Obama. "Senator, people are really interested in you and your identity. I just wanted to ask you as a historical matter, when you filled out your application to Columbia, to Harvard Law School, did you list yourself as an African-American?" Imagine he pressed further. Do you have a favorite traditional black food? Who's your favorite African-American performer? It's a safe bet that journalist would be lucky to have a job today as a greeter at Wal-Mart. Mark Halperin isn't in danger of losing his job — nor should he be — even though he did pretty much question Texas Sen. Ted Cruz that way last week.
Disobey!
Charles Murray, already controversial for writing books on how welfare hurts the poor, on ethnic differences in IQ and on (less controversial, but my favorite) happiness and good government, has written a new book that argues that it's time for civil disobedience. Government has become so oppressive, constantly restricting us with new regulations, that our only hope is for some of us to refuse to cooperate. Murray's suggestion — laid out in "By the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission" — will make some people nervous. He argues that citizens and companies should start openly defying all but the most useful regulations, essentially ones that forbid assault, theft and fraud. He writes, "America is no longer the land of the free. We are still free in the sense that Norwegians, Germans and Italians are free. But that's not what Americans used to mean by freedom."
Cronyism in the 'Short Sale' Market
In the classic 1976 movie "Network," there is a famous scene where a character played by the late Peter Finch shouts, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore!" I feel that same sentiment is growing throughout America, as the cost of our debt and regulatory state has exploded. In the era of Obama, we are now pushing our way far beyond the current 101% debt-to-GDP ratio, which is a dangerous and job-destroying level of borrowing on behalf of the welfare state. As the Federal leviathan in Washington, D.C. continues to grow, power is shifted into the hand of bureaucrats at regulatory agencies who invent new ways to regulate American businesses.
Some Odds and Ends
Occasionally, I wonder whether I'm alone in some of my wonderings. Look at the claim that conservatives or Republicans have launched a war on women as a part of their overall mean-spirited agenda. In the case of mistreatment of women — or of anyone else — assault, rape and murder are about as horrible as it gets. But I would be willing to bet a lot of money that most of the assaults, rapes and murders of women are done by people who identify as liberals or Democrats, particularly in the cases of murderers. Most crime, except perhaps white-collar crime, is committed by people who vote Democratic. Therefore, it's not surprising that former Attorney General Eric Holder, President Barack Obama and their liberal Democratic partners want to end laws that prevent felons and ex-felons from voting. Felons and ex-felons are seen as an important part of their party's constituency.
Tuesday, May 12, 2015
Waiting for ISIS to Strike
On Sunday, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson confirmed what many Americans have long suspected: the Obama administration's response to ISIS will be reactive rather than proactive. In other words, it is quite likely American lives will be sacrificed on the altar of political correctness before anything is done to seriously counteract the growing threat posed by these bloodthirsty savages. "We're definitely in a new phase in the global terrorist threat where the so-called lone wolf could strike at any moment," Johnson told ABC's Martha Raddatz. "It is a new environment, but we are not discouraging Americans from doing the things they do on a daily basis."
