Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Wednesday, October 1, 2014
The Brightest Spot in Holder's Record
How the Attorney General Tried to Make Criminal Justice Less Senselessly Punitive
Reagan Had It Easy in the Cold War?
They don't hand out master's degrees in revisionist history, but if they did, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman might deserve one. Obama is mired in a geopolitical mess of his own making, from the Ukraine to the ISIS menace, yet Friedman's decided to argue that Obama shouldn't be harshly judged. His era is much more complicated than Reagan's, you see. "I'll leave it to historians to figure out years from now who was the better president," he claimed. Reagan's era was defined by a capitalist-communist competition between "two organized superpowers," while Obama's era centers on a puzzling conflict "between a superpower and many superempowered angry men."
Pesky Questions About Those AWOL Afghans
So the five Afghan soldiers who went missing from two separate U.S. military bases are now all accounted for and apparently headed back to their home country. Feel safer now? Don't. The Pentagon, State Department and Department of Homeland Security would like this story to be over and done. (Just like they wanted the White House "fence-jumper" story to be buried. But then we found out he didn't just jump the fence; he also overpowered a Secret Service agent, burst through the halls and invaded the East Room wielding a knife.)
The Throat-Clearing President Versus the Throat-Cutting Terrorists
Last week, President Obama spoke to the United Nations about the growing threat of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. In the course of that speech, he discussed a wide variety of threats to Western civilization, ranging from Ebola to global warming, from chaos in Syria to China's incursions in the South China Sea. The speech seemed unfocused, meandering. But it held together thanks to one common thread: Barack Obama believes that words solve everything. Particularly his own. Obama's narcissism isn't mere arrogance. It's messianism. It's pure faith that his verbiage can alter the course of history. "We are here," Obama said, "because others realized that we gain more from cooperation than conquest." Well, actually, no -- the United Nations exists because evil nations were forced through conquest to admit that cooperation might be a more advantageous strategy.
Administration Does END-A Run Around Law
Desperate to shift attention away from their poor policy record in the run-up to elections this fall, Democrats continue their push for House passage of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) -- a law designed to create special protections for the categories of sexual orientation and gender identity at the expense of the freedoms of association, speech, and religion. While prospects for passage in the House are bleak, the administration has begun moving ahead on its own to advance a radical new understanding of sexuality in the law. Most recently, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), an administrative agency charged with enforcing federal employment non-discrimination laws, has filed two lawsuits against businesses in Florida and Michigan charging that a funeral home operator and an eye clinic discriminated against their respective transgender employees by ending their employment as the employees began to transition to the opposite sex.
Obama's Mixed Messages on War
It's funny how President Obama is always talking about "I" and "me" whenever it makes him look good, but suddenly it's "they" and "we" when mistakes are made. For instance, for years Obama boasted about how he ended the Iraq war and how he withdrew American troops. "You know I say what I mean and I mean what I say," he boasted on the campaign trail in 2012. "I said I'd end the war in Iraq. I ended it." Then, over the summer, as one Iraqi city after another fell to Islamic State militants, and as critics insisted that Obama's decision to pull all of our troops out of Iraq was partly to blame, he suddenly changed his tune, mocking the critics. "What I just find interesting is the degree to which this issue keeps on coming up, as if this was my decision [to withdraw U.S. troops]."
It's Better Now
Americans now face beheadings, gang warfare, Ebola, ISIS and a new war in Syria. It's natural to assume that the world has gotten more dangerous. But it hasn't. People believe that crime has gotten worse. But over the past two decades, murder and robbery in the U.S. are down by more than half, and rape by a third, even as complaints about "rape culture" grow louder. Terrorism is a threat. But deaths from war are a fraction of what they were half a century ago, when we fought World War II and the Korean War, and Chairman Mao murdered millions. Despite today's wars in Iraq, Syria, etc., last decade saw the fewest deaths from war since record keeping began.
The Perfect Baseball Day
"You just jinxed it, Dad." My youngest son, the world's greatest fan of the Washington Nationals, has lodged this indictment against me on multiple occasions. The scene of the crime is always the same: We are at Nationals Park. It is the third or fourth inning. A Nat's pitcher is mowing down opposing batters. "Strasburg has a no hitter going," I might say. My son will then roll his eyes and throw up his hands. "You just jinxed it, Dad."
Can America Still Be Saved?
I believe it is essential that the GOP take back control of the Senate in November because it would help limit the damage that Obama can do to this nation in his final two years. But I'm not sure that's enough. If you doff your rose-colored glasses, it's awfully hard to see a lot of silver linings. Once you get past our gallant past and the promise of our divinely-inspired Constitution, what do you see? What I see are a million abortions a year. I see the foolishness of same-sex marriages and I see states tripping over themselves in their rush to legalize brain-deadening drugs. I see the filth and decadence of our popular culture. I see journalists who have rejected objectivity and assumed the role of propagandists for the Left. I see our leaders promoting a racial divide that ignores black violence, black illegitimacy rates and the morphing of black thugs into Muslim terrorists, while accusing the entire white race of bigotry.
Will the West Defend Itself?
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), sometimes called ISIS or IS, is a Sunni extremist group that follows al-Qaida's anti-West ideology and sees a holy war against the West as a religious duty. With regard to nonbelievers, the Quran commands, "And kill them wherever you find them, and turn them out from where they have turned you out." The Quran contains many other verses that call for Muslim violence against nonbelievers for the sake of Islamic rule. Contrast the words of the Quran with the statements of limp-wristed Western leaders such as this by President Barack Obama: "We have reaffirmed that the United States is not and never will be at war with Islam. Islam teaches peace." While reacting to ISIL's slaughter of British citizen David Haines, Prime Minister David Cameron said, "Islam is a religion of peace." Then there was the U.S. secretary of state's explanation: "The real face of Islam is a peaceful religion based on the dignity of all human beings." But John Kerry and other Western politicians calling Islam a religion of peace doesn't make it so.
Tuesday, September 30, 2014
For Casinos -- and for Repealing the Casino Law
On Election Day, I plan to vote for Question 3, the ballot initiative to repeal the Massachusetts casino law. Not because I oppose Massachusetts casinos -- I don't -- but because I strongly oppose the law. If Question 3 passes, casinos would once again be illegal in Massachusetts. There would no longer be a need for a powerful gaming commission to pick and choose among applicants for one of the coveted licenses to operate a casino in the state. For Massachusetts residents with a yen for slots or roulette, the nearest legal options would remain in Connecticut, Rhode Island, or Maine.
'60 Minutes' of Lying and Denying
Over the weekend, President Obama once again embraced his inner, bankrupt persona, denying any responsibility for the rise of ISIL. In his "60 Minutes" interview with Steve "Softball" Kroft, Obama did what he does best: lie unabashedly and throw other people under the bus to deflect from his own failures. "If you'll recall, Steve, you had an international network in al Qaeda between Afghanistan and Pakistan, headed by Bin Laden. And that structure we have rendered ineffective," Obama contended.
What the Arab World Produces
At least since the early part of the 20th century, aside from oil, the Arab world has produced and exported two products. It has produced essentially no technology, medicine or anything else in the world of science. It has almost no contributions to world literature, art or to intellectual development. According to the most recent United Nations Arab Human Development Reports (2003-2005), written by Arab intellectuals, Greece, with a population of 11 million, annually translates five times more books from English than the entire Arab world, population 370 million. Nor is this a new development. The total number of books translated into Arabic during the last 1,000 years is less than Spain translates into Spanish in one year.
Who Are You Calling the Party of the Rich?
The median American household saw its net worth decline by 36 percent during the Great Recession. That is a hard reality. A Republican held the White House when the crash hit, and voters, in no mood to be charitable, blamed the GOP. Besides, Democrats were ready with an explanation that slid right into an existing groove of American thinking: The financial crisis was caused by Republicans going easy on their big banker friends. By 2012, the recession had been over for three-plus years, and yet the average American saw little improvement. Average net worth continued to drift downward. Long-term unemployment had reached record levels, and labor force participation declined. More Americans had joined the disability rolls than gotten work. Poverty was higher than at any time since the 1960s. Republicans expected the election to be a referendum on President Obama's leadership. It wasn't. The president, with an assist from Mitt Romney's "47 percent" gaffe, was able to argue that as bad as things were, at least Democrats were on the side of the "middle class."
Obama's Narcissism a Threat to National Security
We mention President Obama's narcissism not as an exercise in name-calling but because it continues to be relevant to how he conducts himself in office, and it's not pretty. This undeniable character trait was on full display in his interview with Steve Kroft of "60 Minutes," in the sense that he simply cannot entertain the possibility, much less -- infinitely less -- admit the possibility that he has made a mistake or exercised poor judgment. If anything remotely positive happens on his watch, he presumes to take full credit for it -- way more than the normal opportunistic politician. With the killing of Osama bin Laden, for example, Obama boasts as if the raid were his initial idea and he delivered the kill shot. Most people in his position would play down their role in such an event and give credit to our special forces personnel who made it happen.
Combating Campus Sexual Assaults
College freshmen are completing their first month on campus. According to the website The Other Freshman 15, "The first 15 weeks of college can be the riskiest for sexual assault. ... One out of five students experience rape or sexual assault while they are in college, and in the great majority of cases (75-80 percent), the victim knows the attacker." The Washington Post recently carried a front-page story about campus sexual assaults. As the father of former college students, two of whom are daughters, I was stunned by the presumptions in the story. It was written in a way that assumed all female college students will have sex and get blind drunk at parties where they will be assaulted by young males.
The Unwisdom of Solomon
Tee-hee; snicker-snicker. You see those right-wing clodhoppers scrambling for cover? Yes, sir, Highland Park High School, in Dallas, decided its kids deserved the chance to absorb exemplary works such as "The Art of Racing in the Rain" and "An Abundance of Katherines"; wherefore the school restored them to the approved reading list, local "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian," local bigots and prudes notwithstanding. (A local bigot is someone who suspects John Milton may be a greater writer than Tennessee Williams.) What a field day for those liberal, ah, intellectuals who specialize in ridiculing parents rude enough to question the grounding of high school students' literary tastes in -- as the Associated Press summed it up -- "sex scenes and references to rape, abuse and abortion." Highland Park High -- one of the best, most successful high schools in the country by the way -- suspended the use of seven titles protested by parents.
Random Thoughts
Random thoughts on the passing scene: What a non-judgmental society amounts to is that common decency is optional -- which means that decency is likely to become less common. The biggest issue in this fall's election is whether the Obama administration will end when Barack Obama leaves the White House or whether it will continue on, by appointing federal judges with lifetime appointments who share President Obama's contempt for the Constitution. Whether such judges will be confirmed by the Senate depends on whether the Senate continues to be controlled by Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid. Why in the world would any sane American go to North Korea and put themselves at the mercy of a crackpot dictator?
Obama Stands Aloof From America's Four Foreign Policy Traditions
President Obama's speech at the United Nations last week was "an important turning point in American foreign policy -- and in his presidency." That's the verdict of Brookings Institution scholar and former Clinton White House aide William Galston, a Democrat who has not been an unqualified admirer of this Democratic president's foreign policy. Whether Obama's decision to launch air strikes against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and Khorasan terrorists is a turning point, it was at least a move in the direction of a tradition in American foreign policy that has been conspicuously lacking in his administration. That tradition was christened by Walter Russell Mead in his 2001 book, "Special Providence," as the Jacksonian Impulse, one of four that have together shaped American foreign policy since the founding of the republic. The others, named after American leaders, are the Hamiltonian, Wilsonian and Jeffersonian traditions.
Monday, September 29, 2014
Americans Concerned About Declining Influence of Religion
A new Pew Research Center survey of opinion about the importance of religion in American life shows an interesting picture. Over the last 12 years, the percentage of Americans that think religion is losing influence in American life has increased dramatically. In 2002, 52 percent of those surveyed said religion is losing influence. In 2014, 72 percent of Americans said religion is losing influence. However, while increasing numbers of Americans feel religion is losing influence, most feel this is a bad thing. Fifty-six percent say that the waning influence of religion is a bad thing compared to 12 percent that say it is a good thing.