Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Saturday, October 11, 2014
Clarity About Charity
I acknowledge that charity is one of the virtues, but I have a hard time accepting the way it works. For one thing, I don't know why people often insist that it be anonymous. To me, a critical part of accepting charity is to express gratitude to the giver. Otherwise, or so it seems to me, people will inevitably come to accept it as their due. I also do not understand that which strikes me as charity in perpetuity. For instance, every time I turn on my radio I'm hearing commercials calling for donations to feed the poor in Haiti. I'm told how little it will cost me to feed x-number of Haitian kids for x-number of months for x-number of dollars. But inasmuch as I've been hearing these same commercials for years now, I keep wondering how it is that nobody has ever taught Haitians how to fish and how to grow their own crops. Is this an entire nation that relies entirely on the generosity of American radio listeners in the same way that generations of Americans have come to depend on the largesse of the American taxpayer?
Friday, October 10, 2014
The White House's Link to the Secret Service Prostitution Scandal
Culprit made advisor on “global women’s issues” for the State Department.
Intolerance Fits Liberals to a T (Shirt)
A Kentucky company called "Hands On" wishes liberals would keep their "hands off!" Two years after the Christian outfitters turned down a t-shirt order for a local gay pride parade, the far-Left crowd is getting its revenge. After 24 months of back-and-forth, Lexington's Human Rights Commission finally issued its ruling this week, finding the business guilty of breaking the town's "fairness" ordinance. Their punishment? City-ordered reeducation known as "diversity training." The Commission's Executive Director, Raymond Sexton, says he agrees that it's time for Christians in the marketplace "to leave their religion at home." Otherwise, he warned, "you can find yourself two years down the road and you're still involved in a legal battle because you did not do so." Still, he tried to hedge, "We're not telling somehow how to feel with respect to religion, but the law is pretty clear that if you operate a business to the public, you need to provide your services to people regardless..." Sexton explained to Fox News's Todd Starnes.
No One Trusts Us
It should come as no surprise that Turkey so far refuses to put boots on the ground to fight the ISIS takeover of Kobane, a beseiged Kurdish town across Turkey's border with Syria. While there is much to criticize about our erstwhile NATO ally's government, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has clearly made a calculation that he can't trust the United States -- or more accurately, that he can't trust this administration. And why should he? The level of confusion, incompetence and lack of will President Obama has demonstrated in dealing with the multiple crises that face us in the Middle East is mind numbing. He has ordered airstrikes against ISIS, too late and too few, but he has refused to allow the military to do its job well. Without Special Forces spotters on the ground, an air campaign cannot be entirely effective.
Let's Repeal Reality
Katherine Timpf is young, beautiful and very sane. Oh, have I said something wrong? Good. Writing for National Review, Timpf covers the complete flight from reality that characterizes today's progressivism/feminism. A quick glance at her recent titles gives the flavor of the world they seek to create and impose. "Feminists: Remove World War II Sailor Statue Because It's 'Sexual Assault'" (that would be the iconic image from Times Square on VJ Day in 1945). "Feds Spending Money To Find Out Why Obese Girls Get Fewer Dates." "Feminists: Slow Motion Is Sexist." And today's installment: "Schools Told to Call Kids 'Purple Penguins' Because 'Boys and Girls' Is Not Inclusive to Transgender." It's not just one school. The guidelines were given to all teachers in the Lincoln, Neb., school district, and if you happen upon any college campus, you'll quickly discover that our institutions of higher learning are in the business of denying basic biology: It's now unacceptable to refer to just two genders. There's "he," "she" and "xe," among others.
Look Who's Data Mining Your Toddlers
Attention, parents: Have your little ones been subjected to "TS Gold" in school yet? If you care about student privacy, data mining and classroom intrusions, you might want to start asking questions and protecting your children now before it's too late. What's happening here in Colorado with this onerous testing regime is happening everywhere. Informed families and teachers from all parts of the political spectrum agree: It's a Big Government/Big Business "gold" rush you don't want to join. "TS Gold" stands for Teaching Strategies Gold. This "school readiness assessment system" was mandated in our state several years ago. It has already permeated private day-care centers and preschools; pilot testing in publicly funded preschools and kindergartens is currently taking place. More than 42,000 kids in Colorado alone have been subjected to the assessments.
Rocking the Vote to the Left
That left-wing group called Rock the Vote has released its latest silly new video urging the youth of America to vote. But vote for what? As usual, they featured celebrities and young people urging a turnout for marriage equality, for global warming awareness and against deforestation. It comes with visual aids for their pet issues. There's a globe with an old-fashioned ice bag on it, a gun with a padlock on the trigger, and a ball-and-chain representing student loans. There are those edgy figures, like the rapper whose "song" drones throughout the video: "My name is Lil Jon and I'm turning out for the legalization or marijuana." HBO star Lena Dunham doesn't get naked (as she usually does), but she does proclaim, "My name is Lil Lena, and I'm turning out for reproductive rights."
Colombian Hooker Flap a Microcosm of Administration's Problems
In news that must have left my friends at the New York Post -- never mind the gang at "The Daily Show" -- with a renewed confidence that ours is a just and beneficent God, the White House has been caught covering up a scandal involving a Cartagena hooker. The phrase "Cartagena hooker" alone is a mellifluous gift to ink-stained wretches everywhere, but the revelation that the White House reassigned the alleged client of the aforementioned Andean call girl to the State Department's office of "Global Women's Issues" is the sort of flourish Tom Wolfe or Chris Buckley wouldn't dare attempt as satire.
Stop Calling It Marriage Equality
This week, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected gay marriage appeals from Indiana, Oklahoma, Utah, Virginia and Wisconsin, in essence allowing lower courts to legalize same-sex couples. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, an institution that has vigorously opposed gay marriage for some time now, conceded that the political battle over marriage is over. "As far as the civil law is concerned," the Mormon church admitted, "the courts have spoken." Actually, nothing is over until God says it's over. At least, this is my understanding of how religion operates. So though I don't want to accuse Mormons of being a bunch of serial quitters, let's just say this isn't the first time they've folded in the face of adversity. Luckily, every time a door closes...
The Double Game Our Allies Play
During the 1944 Warsaw uprising, Stalin ordered the advancing Red Army to stop at the outskirts of the city while the Nazis, for 63 days, annihilated the non-Communist Polish partisans. Only then did Stalin take Warsaw. No one can match Stalin for merciless cynicism, but President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey is offering a determined echo by ordering Turkish tanks massed on the Syrian border, within sight of the besieged Syrian town of Kobane, to sit and do nothing. For almost a month, Kobane Kurds have been trying to hold off Islamic State fighters. Outgunned, outmanned and surrounded on three sides, the defending Kurds have begged Turkey to allow weapons and reinforcements through the border. Erdogan has refused even that, let alone intervening directly. Infuriated Kurds have launched demonstrations throughout Turkey protesting Erdogan's deadly callousness. At least 21 demonstrators have been killed.
Democrats on Defensive Over Role of Government
Things are spinning out of control. Out of control, at least, by government, and by the United States government in particular. You don't have to spend much time reading the news -- or monitoring your Twitter feed -- to get that impression. Armed fighting in Ukraine. Islamic State beheadings in Iraq and Syria. Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators in Hong Kong. Ebola spreading from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea to Dallas, Texas, where 100 people were exposed to the Liberian who lied to airport screeners and arrived in the United States with the disease. Or the Spanish nurse who came down with the disease.
Harvard Students Parade Their Academic Poison
I wouldn't be nearly so troubled by Harvard University students identifying America as a bigger threat to world peace than the Islamic State if it weren't representative of the thinking of so many students throughout the nation. But it is. The college blog Campus Reform posted a video of short interviews it conducted of Harvard students on campus last week. The question was simple and straightforward: "What is a greater threat to world peace, ISIS or America?" One student answered: "I think American imperialism and our protection of oil interests in the Middle East are destabilizing the region and allowing groups like ISIS to gain power. ... We are, at some level, the cause of it."
Thursday, October 9, 2014
Running From the 'R' Word
If Attorney General Martha Coakley uttered the word "Republican" even once in last night's televised gubernatorial debate, I missed it. For a Democrat hoping to win the highest office in one of the nation's bluest states, it was a mystifying omission. After all, most Massachusetts voters, most of the time, would rather crawl through broken glass than vote for the candidate with the "R" after his name. The GOP's brand in this state could hardly be more toxic. That is why Charlie Baker's second campaign for governor has so clearly been built on a strategy of being the sort of Republican Massachusetts voters can feel comfortable with -- the sort of Republican who supports a socially liberal, activist government, but who promises to run it more efficiently and economically than it's been run under Deval Patrick.
Don't Scare Us, Prepare Us
The head of the FBI says a terrorist attack may be coming. He doesn't know where or when, of course. But Director James Comey says the hard-core terror group Khorasan is planning to attack the United States and is "looking to do it very, very soon." Comey offered no details, nothing specific. He also used the weasle-word "may." Yet he says we all have to act as if a terrorist attack on us at home is "coming tomorrow."
The Supreme Court's Nonruling on Gay Marriage
Three points need to be made about Monday's decision by the Supreme Court not to decide whether the equal protection clause of the Constitution grants people of the same sex the right to marry. Point 1: While the court's liberal wing probably wanted to accept cases banning same-sex marriage in five states that have been overturned by three different federal appeals courts in recent months, the conservative majority, along with swing Justice Anthony Kennedy, apparently wished to see states resolve the issue. Perhaps they sought to avoid another Roe vs. Wade in which a previous court overturned all state abortion laws, creating a controversy that continues today. Even so, Kennedy waded into the deep again on Wednesday, blocking the appeals court ruling declaring gay marriage legal in Idaho and Nevada, but it's likely only a temporary delay.
Good Old Joe
What do you suppose our ebullient vice president says to his sorely pressed staff when he rolls into the office at the end of the day and discovers that, yes, he has done it again? He has committed another verbal blunder, a gaffe as it is called. My guess is that he laughs it off. That is what he does in public. Why should he act any differently in private? He has been committing gaffes since the beginning of his career. Sometimes they have forced him to cancel a presidential race as in 1988 when he was caught using vivid lines drawn directly from a speech by the British Labour leader Neil Kinnock. Who would have ever noticed, right Joe? Sometimes the gaffes have forced him to make a public apology to one or another foreign power as he did recently with three important allies. Yet most of the time he simply laughs and apologizes while we all laugh along with him. Good old Joe. Remember when he was speaking at the last inauguration to the Iowa State Society Inauguration Ball and he yawped, "I'm proud to be the president of the United States." Good old Joe.
Is the French Revolution Our New Model?
At the end of the 18th century, there were two great Western revolutions -- the American and the French. Americans opted for the freedom of the individual, and divinely endowed absolute rights and values. A quite different French version sought equality of result. French firebrands saw laws less as absolute, but instead as useful to the degree that they contributed to supposed social justice and coerced redistribution. They ended up not with a Bill of Rights and separation of powers, but instead with mass executions and Napoleonic tyranny. Unfortunately, the Obama administration is following more the French model than the American.
GOP's Big Idea: Let's Not Have a Wave Election
On Monday, The Washington Times reported on the Homeland Security Inspector General's finding that detention facilities for illegal border-crossers are teeming with diseases because the guests don't know how to take medicine or use toilets. By Tuesday, there were more than 1,000 comments. That's a lot of comments. Articles on ISIS usually get between five and 100 comments. True, a month ago, a CNN poll reported that 90 percent of Americans said they believed ISIS was a direct threat to the United States. What else could they say? You'd feel awfully silly if you told a CNN pollster ISIS wasn't a threat and, the next day, the group set off a bomb in Times Square.
Pornography Pandemic
Pornography is everywhere. It's an evil with far-reaching affects that damage many layers of society. But no one is hurt more by the overwhelming presence of pornography in our society than children. According to a study by the London School of Economics, nine out of ten children who go online (by the way, many of them just doing their homework) will view pornography. Even when kids are acting responsibly and innocently, adults in the pornography business are so fixated on creating new porn addicts that they have made it virtually impossible for children to escape their grasp. Think about it -- 90 percent of all kids on the Internet will be subjected to the sexual images and values of perverted pornographers.