Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Thursday, January 15, 2015
As Long as Obama Brought Up the Cost of College...
I gather from Obama's "free" community college proposal that his plan for dealing with the Republican Congress over the next two years is to throw out ridiculously expensive ideas no one has ever heard of before, and then denounce Republicans for being naysayers. Community college is already incredibly inexpensive. The only thing that will jack up the price is making it "free." How about a big federal program to provide every American with free toilet paper? Coincidentally, that's about all most college degrees are good for these days. Obama's moronic proposal has presented the GOP with a fantastic opportunity. Since he brought it up, how about Republicans get to the bottom of why college is so expensive?
Atlanta Braves Libs to Stand With Cochran
Fire Chief Kelvin Cochran spent his life answering the call, and [Tuesday], hundreds of Georgians returned the favor. The city's 34-year squad veteran was inspired by the show of support at the Atlanta Capitol [Tuesday], where people from all backgrounds, ethnicities, and political parties stood alongside Cochran in protest of his outrageous firing. Like the sportscasters, educators, athletes, small businesses, wedding vendors, firefighters, and others who dare to think outside the far-Left box, Cochran was a victim of the same intolerance his Mayor claims to oppose. The former Obama appointee, who had a long and distinguished record, finally had the opportunity to tell his side of the story at Tuesday's rally. And, like so many before him, nothing but fierce hostility toward Christianity was at its heart. To a room full of reporters, Cochran made it clear: "I was fired for having the audacity to believe that sex was created for procreation and should be in the bonds of holy matrimony between and a man and woman."
France's Other Problem -- Job-Killing Economics
Islamic terrorists slaughtered 17 innocents in Paris in an attack described as "France's 9/11." The two terrorist suspects at the satirical newspaper massacre are brothers, born and raised in France, children of parents who emigrated from Algeria. Some blame France's failure to "assimilate" Muslim youth on their attraction to violent jihad. While almost 25 percent of French youth is out of work, the number of young French Muslim people without jobs is over 40 percent. Muslims account for 10 percent of the French population but occupy 60 percent of its jails. Never mind that Osama bin Laden was wealthy. Ayman al-Zawahiri, the current head of al-Qaida, is a doctor. Several of the terrorists who crashed planes into buildings and into Pennsylvania on 911 were middle-class or better, and several were college grads.
The Challenge: Neighborhood in Absence of Brotherhood
We know the story of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose legacy we celebrate as a nation in just a few days. We know how he fought with words and love and never with his fists. We know about his dream and his martyr's death - and that he was not a perfect man. But perhaps even more important than the story is the lifeblood of his legacy -- the truth, the faith that drove him forward -- the spirit that would will for us to press on further, in spite of our own spiritual failures. In his earliest recorded sermon, Martin Luther King, Jr. noted something that nearly every person who has ever lived has felt: "There is something wrong with our world."
Why All the Love for George Clooney?
Social media is agog over George Clooney's tribute to his wife, Amal, at last weekend's Golden Globe Awards in Hollywood. Women, especially, are swooning in their tweets and Facebook postings. Said Clooney, "Listen, it's humbling to find somebody to love, especially when you've been waiting your whole life, especially when your whole life is 53 years ... Amal, whatever alchemy brought us together, I couldn't be more proud to be your husband." I admit the tribute was sweet and his wife is drop-dead gorgeous, but Clooney, twice named "The Sexiest Man Alive" by People magazine and known for his numerous relationships with women, has only been married four months. Maybe in Hollywood four months is considered a long-term relationship, but let's see if they make it to their 49th anniversary, as my wife and I did today.
The Antisemitic Derangement
Even before last week's terrorist attacks in Paris, the French prime minister was concerned about the continued viability of Jewish life in France. In an interview with The Atlantic prior to the Charlie Hebdo and kosher supermarket massacres, Manuel Valls made a grim prediction: "If 100,000 Jews leave, France will no longer be France. The French Republic will be judged a failure." His misgivings were far from groundless. An exodus of French Jews is already underway and accelerating rapidly. In 2012, there were just over 1,900 immigrants to Israel from France. The following year nearly 3,400 French Jews emigrated; in 2014 approximately 7,000 left. For the first time ever, France heads the list of countries of origin for immigrants to Israel, and the ministry of immigration absorption expects another 10,000 French Jews to arrive in 2015.
What Do ISIL and Communists Have in Common?
How should a free society react when confronted with a subversive movement that seeks to exploit our liberty to destroy it? Matthew Olsen, who was then director of the National Counterterrorism Center, gave a speech at the Brookings Institution in September that pointed to a growing threat to people in the Middle East and to the free nations of the West. Radical Muslim terrorists fighting in Iraq and Syria under the name of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant had revealed their great vision.
Offenders of the Western Faith
Western civilization's creed is free thought and expression, the lubricant of everything from democracy to human rights. Even a simpleton in the West accepts that protecting free expression is not the easy task of ensuring the right to read Homer's "Iliad" or do the New York Times crossword puzzle. It entails instead the unpleasant duty of allowing offensive expression. Westerners fight against pornography, blasphemy or hate speech in the arena of ideas by writing and speaking out against such foul expression. They are free to sue, picket, boycott, and pressure sponsors of unwelcome speech. But Westerners cannot return to the Middle Ages to murder those whose ideas they don't like.
Obama's Pointman on Race
I know that even six years into his presidency there are people who still see Obama in the exact same way he was presented to us in 2008 -- as the great uniter of blacks and whites. But, then, there are those who also approve of his foreign policy in the Middle East. Sometimes you merely have to accept innate stupidity as a part of the human condition and move on. Among the legion of disasters one can lay at Obama's feet, the racial antagonisms he has fostered might well stand out as his greatest failing. That's because it's the one he could have most easily avoided. On other issues, one could, to a greater or lesser degree, blame his partisan politics. But because he was black, when it came to the racial divide, he was in the unique position of being able to bridge it in ways that no other president could. But instead of using the bridge, he blew it to smithereens by appointing one unrepentant racist, Eric Holder, to head up the Justice Department and he made another, Al Sharpton, his consigliore on racial matters.
The Keystone Catechism
Not since the multiplication of the loaves and fishes near the Sea of Galilee has there been creativity as miraculous as that of the Keystone XL pipeline. It has not yet been built but already is perhaps the most constructive infrastructure project since the Interstate Highway System. It has accomplished an astonishing trifecta: It has made mincemeat of Barack Obama's pose of thoughtfulness. It has demonstrated that he lacks even a rudimentary understanding of the most basic economic realities. It has dramatized environmentalism's descent into infantilism. Obama entered the presidency trailing clouds of intellectual self-regard. His carefully cultivated persona was of a uniquely thoughtful, judicious, deliberative, evidence-driven man comfortable with complexity. The protracted consideration of Keystone supposedly displayed these virtues. Now, however, it is clear that his mind has always been as closed as an unshucked oyster.
Why Are There No Lefties on Talk Radio?
This column over the years has been interested in liberalism in a special way, as a coroner is interested in a corpse in a special way. Specifically, I have been interested in the pathologies that laid the patient low. What precisely has been the cause of death? The coroner asks what made a robust fellow a corpse. Was it a remorseless cancer or a tragic accident? Was it Huntington's disease or something else, possibly, simple alcoholism? In the case of the liberal, the cause of death was almost certainly a massive overindulgence. Simply stated, the liberals attempted too much. They even attempted to solve problems that were not conventionally understood as problems. After all, there were no plausible solutions, for instance, for the elimination poverty, which in America amounts to relative deprivation, not destitution. How can we solve a citizen's relative deprivation?
Wednesday, January 14, 2015
Hey, How's America's Rail Security Doing?
With vengeance-seeking global jihadists on the loose here and around the world, now is a good time to ask (again): Are we ready for a nefarious terrorist attack on our train and transit lines? Smoke and fire plagued two of the nation's major metro rail stations this week, raising justified questions about safety and preparedness. On Monday, one person died and 84 fell ill after heavy smoke filled the L'Enfant Plaza Metro in Washington, D.C. Officials believe an "electrical arcing event" caused the lethal Beltway incident. A probe into the cause of the arcing -- as well as an investigation into evacuation delays that trapped hundreds of passengers -- is underway.
France Needs a Second Amendment -- And So Do We!
CBS News gave an early report on the terrorist attacks in Paris. It included this telling sentence: "A reporter for Britain's Telegraph newspaper in Paris told Sky News that the first two officers to arrive, who were apparently unarmed, fled after seeing gunmen armed with automatic weapons and possibly a grenade launcher." Every American, every citizen of a free country, needs to read, and re-read that sentence. Here is the answer of liberals and socialists to the problem of domestic security. Let the police do it. Let the state protect you. Give all weapons to the professionals who are trained and who can be trusted.
In Denial About the Attack in France
When America was hit on 9/11, the world united around us. France just had its 9/11, and again the civilized world has come together, all except the United States. Where were America's leaders as the rest of the world united? The reaction to Islamic terrorists killing 17 people in Paris in the name of their radical creed has been greeted with a very strange perceived need to deflect or just dismiss it in liberal political and media circles. Most journalists tried to downplay or ignore Obama's failure to attend the huge Sunday "unity" rally in Paris, where 40 world leaders gathered in a show of support for France. While the New York tabloids mocked Obama, most national newspapers mentioned "World leaders link arms" and barely noticed the leader of the free world had stayed home to watch football games.
Charlie Hebdo in the Dock
Despite Its Stand Against the Terrorist's Veto, France Treats Offensive Words and Images as Crimes
Better Luck Next Times
Apparently, the New York Times is in favor of faith in the public square -- if the purpose is to mock it. Editors at the Times poured gasoline on the fire of Atlanta's latest controversy with an editorial that should shock even their most liberal readers. Just when you thought the media couldn't sink any lower, the Times takes on the same First Amendment that gives it the freedom to print these vicious attacks on Christians. In a stunning column [Tuesday], the newspaper argues that men and women of faith have no place in public management of any kind. The piece, which shows a remarkable disinterest in the facts, claims that Atlanta Fire Chief Kelvin Cochran didn't have permission to publish his book on biblical morality. Not only did Cochran have permission from the city's ethics office to publish his book, but he only distributed it in his personal capacity at church -- where a handful of his coworkers attend.
Basic Economics
"Whether one is a conservative or a radical, a protectionist or a free trader, a cosmopolitan or a nationalist, a churchman or a heathen, it is useful to know the causes and consequences of economic phenomena." That quotation, from Nobel laureate George J. Stigler, is how Dr. Thomas Sowell begins the fifth edition of "Basic Economics." It's a book that explains complex economic phenomena in a way that many economists cannot. And, I might add, it provides an understanding of some economic phenomena that might prove elusive to a Ph.D. economist. "Basic Economics" is a 653-page book, not including the index. One doesn't have to start reading it at the beginning. Near the book's end, there's a section titled "Questions," and it points the reader to answers. How about this question: How can the prices of baseball bats be affected by the demand for paper or the prices of catcher's mitts be affected by the demand for cheese?
Charlie Hebdo Lost
The West has the capacity to win a war on radical Islam. But it won't. It won't because the West is too busy soul-searching to defend its core values. Western leaders mouth slogans about #JeSuisCharlie in the aftermath of the murder of 12 at the Charlie Hebdo headquarters, but they don't mean it; they suggest that the world stands united against radical Islamic terror even as they ignore the bullet-ridden bodies of four at a kosher supermarket in Paris. The proof: Look at the list of those who attended Sunday's unity march in Paris.
Cyber Insecurity
The troubling implications of the Central Command social media hacking.
The Better Option
It's easy to "fire" a business that rips you off. Just go to a different one. It's a lot easier to patronize another business than to get government to fix the problem. But bad businesses and the politicians they own, I mean influence, often don't want you to have that choice. I've written about how taxi companies don't like competition from ride-sharing services like Uber. Taxi companies, rightly, say it's unfair that they have to obey all kinds of rules and get complicated licenses that Uber drivers don't get. Rather than getting rid of the excessive regulations, many local politicians just say that new competition is "unfair" and ban ride-hailing services. They've banned Uber in places like Thailand, Spain, Nevada and Massachusetts.