Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Tuesday, April 21, 2015
Black Murderers Matter
The "Black Lives Matter" campaign is based on as big a lie as the "campus rape culture" lie; the Rolling Stone magazine gang rape at the University of Virginia fraternity lie; the gang rape by the Duke University lacrosse team lie; the "Hands Up, Don't Shoot" Ferguson lie; and all the other lies that animate leftist hysterias. Building hysterias based on falsehoods is a primary modus operandi on the left. One can even say that without hysteria there is no left. First a lie or exaggeration is manufactured. Then it is repeated over and over by the mainstream media and myriad left-wing groups; academics hold conferences and write thoughtful-sounding op-ed pieces about the fake issue; meanwhile activists on its behalf demonstrate, taking over public buildings and highways, sometimes violently. The latest left-wing hysteria is "Black Lives Matter" — based on the lie that black lives don't matter because white police kill blacks wantonly.
ISIS Brings Waves of Terror to Christians
The beach is usually a tranquil scene, but on a distant Libyan shore, it was anything but. Men with guns slung over their shoulders led a human chain to the sand, eventually staining the surf with the blood of more than 30 Christians. It was a gruesome sequel to their last video, when Egypt's Coptic Christians, like these men, lay lifeless on the coast — the victims of savage ISIS beheadings. "To the nation of the cross," the masked killers warn, "we are now back again." Unfortunately for the Middle East, they never left. Their march through the sandy strongholds of Syria, Africa, and Iraq, only intensifies — and other nations' concern along with it. The danger to "worshippers of the cross" — from Kenyan college students to Assyrian Christians — is bringing the genocide into sharper focus for once-reluctant world leaders, who are running out of ways to condemn the acts.
Was 2007 a Flexion Point, When Everything Started Going Downhill?
"I would bet on globalization slowly being in abeyance," tech entrepreneur Peter Thiel said in a video interview with George Mason University economist Tyler Cowen. "I think with the benefit of hindsight, we will realize that 2007 was not just the peak year of the finance boom, but also the peak year of globalization, like maybe 1913." It's a tantalizing thought, and Thiel is well worth a listen. He is the co-founder of PayPal and the first outside investor in Facebook, selling his initial $500,000 investment eight years later for $1 billion. His record for spotting future trends and flexion points is impressive. His reference to 1913 was surely meant to be — and should be — chilling. That was the last full year before the outbreak of World War I, a conflict in which about 16 million people died. In its wake, Communists took over Russia and Hitler took over Germany. The war made the world safe not for democracy, as Woodrow Wilson had hoped, but for totalitarianism.
Monday, April 20, 2015
Make 2016 About America, Not Hillary
When Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were battling for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, I was interviewed on one of the cable news shows. The host asked me which Democrat I preferred — Obama or Clinton. I replied that it depended on whether you prefer a socialist who is a black male or a socialist who is a white female. The American people chose the former. Now with Mrs. Clinton's candidacy for 2016, the central question moving forward is whether the American public is happy with the socialism they've gotten thus far. If they are, most likely they will choose the white female socialist to replace the black male. Republicans will be tempted to make this campaign about Mrs. Clinton's very dubious character.
These Blue States Have Tried the Elizabeth Warren Model. Their Residents Are Fleeing.
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren recently appeared on one of the late night talk shows, beating the class warfare drum and arguing for billions of dollars in new social programs paid for with higher taxes on millionaires and billionaires. In recent years, though, blue states such as California, Illinois, Delaware, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland and Minnesota adopted this very strategy, and they raised taxes on their wealthy residents. How did it work out? Almost all of these states lag behind the national average in growth of jobs and incomes. So, if income redistribution policies are the solution to shrinking the gap between rich and poor, why do they fail so miserably in the states? The blue states that try to lift up the poor with high taxes, high welfare benefits, high minimum wages and other Robin Hood policies tend to be the places where the rich end up the richest and the poor the poorest.
A Morale Dilemma
The slogan used to be "An Army of one." And if the military isn't careful, that's exactly what they'll have. America's soldiers are more disgruntled than ever, a new report in a depressing string of outcomes shows. Of the branch's 777,000 soldiers more than half (52 percent) are unhappy — or worse, "rarely count(ing) on good things happening" to them. Almost as many — 48 percent — explain that what was once one of the most rewarding jobs on the planet is now anything but. Dissatisfied and disrespected, hundreds of thousands of soldiers say their commitment is waning. The warning signs have been there all along, but only recently have the surveys started to confirm what most long suspected: that this administration's radical policies are having a catastrophic effect on the troops. Only 28 percent of the Army and National Guard feel good about what they do — a low-water mark for one of the nation's proudest traditions: military service. Two-thirds, USA Today reports, are "borderline or worse for an area called 'catastrophic thinking'" — despite six years of an "optimism program" meant to make soldiers resilient. At $287 million, the campaign has been a dismal failure.
Does Tehran Mean What It Says? Oh, Yes
Who trusts Iran? Most Americans don't. According to two new polls, a majority of the public strongly doubts that the ruling theocrats in Tehran can be counted on to keep their end of any nuclear deal negotiated in the US-led "P5+1" talks in Lausanne, Switzerland. Asked in a Fox News poll how much of Iran's claims on nuclear matters can be trusted, 55 percent of respondents replied that the United States "can't trust anything" the regime says, while 28 percent were willing to trust only "a little." Similarly, a survey by NBC News found that 68 percent of Americans consider Iran unlikely to abide by any nuclear agreement. Nothing unusual there. Given Iran's long history of deceit, it would be strange if Americans and their allies *didn't* regard as worthless any nuclear promises the mullahs make.
Carter, Obama & Iran
Although it is commonly accepted that Obama is the worst president in American history, having wrested the title out of Jimmy Carter's clammy grasp, we shouldn't be too quick to overlook the damage Carter did. By deciding that the Shah of Iran was a bad guy who didn't deserve our support, Carter rolled out the red carpet for the Islamic revolutionaries who have spent the past few decades fomenting trouble for the world. One of the first things they did under the leadership of the Ayatollah Khomeini was to take American diplomats hostage, holding 52 of them for 444 days until the day that Ronald Reagan took office. Then, realizing that they were now facing a man with a backbone, they released the 52 on Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, 1981.
Sunday, April 19, 2015
Libertarians Outnumber Both Liberals and Conservatives
Rand Paul's entry into the presidential race raises an interesting question: Just how many people consider themselves "libertarian" and what is the potential voting strength of this segment of the population? Paul Krugman weighed in early with the brash claim that "there basically aren't any libertarians." But as David Henderson reminds us, once again Krugman's opinions are nowhere near factual reality. Gallup, which has been polling on the issue for quite some time, finds that 38 percent of the public identifies as "conservative" and 24 percent as "liberal" in the latest poll.
Don't Seize the Raisins
In oral arguments Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear the government defend its kleptocratic behavior while administering an indefensible law. The Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act of 1937 is among the measures by which New Dealers tried and failed to regulate and mandate America back to prosperity. Seventy-eight years later, it is the government's reason for stealing Marvin and Laura Horne's raisins. New Dealers had bushels of theories, including this: In a depression, prices fall, so a recovery will occur when government compels prices to stabilize above where a free market would put them. So FDR's "brains trust" produced "price stabilization" programs by which the government would fine-tune the supply of and demand for various commodities. In 1949, this regulatory itch was institutionalized in the Raisin Administrative Committee. Today it wants the Hornes to ante up about $700,000. They could instead have turned over more than 1 million pounds of raisins — at least four years of their production.
Saturday, April 18, 2015
The Armenian Genocide Was Also a Jihad
Unlike some of Pope Francis's other headline-generating pronouncements, his description of Turkey's mass murder of 1.5 million Armenians during World War I as "genocide" was anything but inadvertent. Speaking at the Vatican during a Sunday mass to mark the centenary of the slaughter, the pope said it is "widely considered the first genocide of the 20th century" — a quote from Pope John Paul II, who used nearly the same words in 2001. But Francis went further, equating the destruction of the Armenians to the Nazi Holocaust and the Soviet bloodbaths under Stalin. And he linked the genocidal Ottoman assault on Armenia, the world's oldest Christian nation, with the epidemic of violence against Christians today, especially by such radical Islamist terror groups as ISIS, Boko Haram, and al-Shabaab.
From The Comedy Store
Barack Obama met Latin American leaders at the Inter-American Conference in Panama. They love him down there. A poll in Cuba last week shows that Obama is more popular than Fidel Castro, but then so is loading your entire family on a raft in the middle of the night.
A Challenge for Hillary Clinton: Return to a JFK Growth Agenda
When John F. Kennedy was elected president he surprised both Democrats and Republicans with a bold tax-cutting plan to solve the problem of a moribund economy. He had campaigned on "getting the country moving again," and had set a 5 percent economic-growth target, but he never specified how he was going to do it. Then he opened everyone's eyes with a plan to lower marginal tax rates across-the-board. JFK's advisors proposed a traditional Democratic approach: temporary targeted tax cuts. But Kennedy insisted on lower tax rates that would create much higher rewards for work, saving, and investment. And Kennedy argued that his lower tax-rate incentives would so expand the economy that after a few years his tax cuts would pay for themselves. He was right.
Compromise Is Not an Option
I realize that there are actually some people outside John McCain's immediate family who regard him as a statesman. They've come to that silly conclusion based on the fact that he loved adding his name to legislation proposed by the abominable likes of Russ Feingold and Ted Kennedy. He referred to it as reaching across the aisle, no doubt picturing himself as God on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, reaching down from a heavenly cloud to give life to Adam. Unfortunately, as biologist Richard Dawkins has observed, "When two opposite points of view are expressed with equal intensity, the truth does not necessarily lie halfway between them. It is possible one side is simply wrong." These days, that's not just possible, it's just about guaranteed, which is why people like Mitch McConnell and John Boehner shouldn't even think about accommodating Democrats. It's a poker game with marked cards, and the Republicans will not only lose their shirts, pants and underwear, but they will be written off as traitors by those who elected them.
Friday, April 17, 2015
Why the Death Tax Is All Economic Pain, No Gain
The House voted to repeal the death tax on Thursday. There are lots of persuasive reasons to kill this odious tax. The money in a person's estate has already been taxed over the lifetime that it was earned. The tax breaks up family-owned businesses. It reduces capital investment and lifetime savings. It encourages people with wealth to avoid leaving up to half their financial legacy to the IRS (including state estate taxes) and instead die broke. All of these things make future generations of Americans worse off. But here's an argument against the tax that isn't well understood. It hardly raises any money. This tax is all economic pain, with no gain.
Hillary Clinton: Out of Sync With the Times
Presidents are inevitably shaped by the circumstances in which they campaign for — and come into — office. In 1932, Franklin Roosevelt called for "bold, persistent experimentation" and followed through once in office. Had Roosevelt run in another year, or had there been no Great Depression, he would have campaigned and governed differently. The same can be said, to varying degrees, of the presidents who won open-seat contests since, John Kennedy, Richard Nixon, the two George Bushes and Barack Obama, and of those who unseated incumbents, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. The Republicans who have announced their candidacies so far — Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Marco Rubio — have similarly framed their appeals in contemporary context. That's made easier by the fact that none was in Congress when Barack Obama was first elected in 2008. We can expect something similar from other Republicans.
Obama's Wanton Lawlessness Should Disturb All Americans
We live in a constitutional republic in which our elected officials are bound by the constraints of the Constitution, which means they don't have a license to do whatever they please, even if they think it would be best for the country. That President Barack Obama so flagrantly violates this enshrined legal principle and much of his Democratic Party supports him in doing so is why so many other people are outraged and, at times, fear for their country. Under past presidents in my lifetime (I was born after FDR), Republican and Democratic, we have not had to live in fear that the party controlling the executive branch would become a law unto itself. Mockers will cite President Richard Nixon's transgressions, but they don't register a blip on the radar compared with the colossal abuses of power this president and his party routinely engage in.
Vote for Iraq War Underscores Hillary's Greatest Weakness
So far, of the declared candidates for president, the only one who voted for the Iraq War is the Democrat. I recently made that observation on Twitter and the response was instructive. I will refrain from reprinting the more piquant language from Hillary Clinton's supporters, but one common theme was that I am a fool. Sens. Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Marco Rubio weren't in the Senate for the Iraq war vote, many shrieked. Well, exactly. In case you haven't been paying attention, you might be interested to know that the Iraq War was not popular, especially among Democrats. If you had to pick a single position that allowed Barack Obama to pull ahead in the 2008 Democratic primaries, his opposition to the war would almost certainly be it.
The Queen Travels by Van
See Hillary ride in a van! Watch her meet everyday Americans! Witness her ordering a burrito bowl at Chipotle! Which she did wearing shades, as did her chief aide Huma Abedin, yielding security-camera pictures that made them look (to borrow from Karl Rove) like fugitives on the lam, wanted in seven states for a failed foreign policy. There's something surreal about Hillary Clinton's Marie Antoinette tour, sampling cake and commoners. But what else can she do? After Barack Obama, she's the best known political figure in America. She has papal name recognition. Like Napoleon and Cher, she's universally known by her first name. As former queen consort, senator and secretary of state, she has spent a quarter-century in the national spotlight — more than any modern candidate. She doesn't just get media coverage; she gets meta-coverage. The staging is so obvious that actual events disappear. The story is their symbolism — campaign as semiotics.