Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Friday, September 5, 2014
Vow to be the Parent (Not Your Child’s Best Friend)
As my daughter, Kristin, and I recently browsed through my last book, *30 Ways in 30 Days to Save Your Family*, we came across a chapter entitled, *Vow To Be The Parent (Not Your Child's Best Friend)*. I had to laugh to myself because Kristin -- my third and youngest child -- is now 22 and married, and I know my days of "active parenting" are more or less over. She is now first and foremost a friend. As long as there is breath in me I will be her mother -- ready to provide counsel and advice as I am invited to share it. But I must be invited.
My Secret Shame: I'm Addicted to '19 Kids and Counting'
The new season of "19 Kids and Counting" is here. And I'm excited. So what? Generally speaking, I enjoy the most salacious, violent and depressing television shows I can find. Maybe it's just a perverse form of escapism, maybe it's the high quality of shows being produced these days, but I can't resist "prestige" television -- "The Wire," "Breaking Bad," "Fargo," "The Sopranos," "Game of Thrones," "House Of Cards," "The Walking Dead" and so on. For that matter, I also hung around for four seasons of "The Killing" and watched every episode of the "Halt and Catch Fire." So, apparently, whatever you make, I' y for watching such dreck -- and I never left. I can't remember when it happened exactly, and I don't know if I'll be able shake this bizarre feeling, but I do know that I'm hooked on what has to be the most countercultural show on TV these days.
Democrats Look Increasingly Like the Party of the Past
Liberals like to think and talk about themselves as if they were the wave of the future. Note, for example, how Barack Obama and John Kerry have denounced Islamist terrorists and Vladimir Putin for behaving as if they are still in the "19th century." On domestic policy, liberals see history as a story of progress from tiny government to ever-larger government -- though never stating exactly how far that movement should go. Obama came to the nation's attention in 2004 as a new figure, young and future-oriented. His successful 2008 campaign was seen as a drive for "hope and change." But in many ways today's Democrats seem stuck in the past, a party whose headliners are increasingly legacy candidates.
Ferguson, Foley & Folly
It's a shame that the first time most of us ever heard of Ferguson, a St. Louis suburb with a population of 21,000, it was as the site of a race riot. It's a shame because most of the actual villains are uninvited outsiders, consisting of race hustlers, ne'er-do-wells, journalists and Eric Holder. A question that occurs to me is the same one that came to mind when all those kids from Central America showed up in Texas. Where did they come up with the money for the trip? Most of those arrested for rioting and looting in Ferguson have come there from New York, California and a lot of places in between. Are we supposed to believe they all hitchhiked? Certainly even these creeps aren't stupid enough to spend good money getting there simply in order to make off with a few bottles of hooch and a few cartons of smokes. So, who the heck paid their way?
Thursday, September 4, 2014
Jon Stewart and Anti-Semitism
I've been accused of anti-Semitism twice, and I still bristle. The first was after the Buchanan presidential run of '92, which I supported, and which triggered an ugly whisper campaign in Hollywood suggesting an anti-Semitic streak lurking under the hood. The second time, 10 years ago, was a frontal attack. I had conducted a teleconference, involving a dozen or more journalists, to unveil the results of a study conducted by the Parents Television Council involving Hollywood and religion. I learned about an hour later that Lynn Smith of the L.A. Times was working up a story suggesting I'd made anti-Semitic remarks.
Decide Something, Mr President
Time's up, Mr. President. Your on-the-job-training as the leader of the Free World has been over for several years. I know it still comes as a shock to you that you're the president of the United States. A lot of us feel the same way. But you really are the Prez. So take off the training wheels and golf cap and please start acting like one. You only have about two years left to prevent your entire Oval Office career from being a total failure.
Speed Kills Racial Profiling Study
In an article about police shootings in last Sunday's New York Times (8/31), Michael Wines disputes the conventional wisdom about a disproportionate number of African-Americans being shot by police, saying there are no data one way or another. But Wines revives the canard about blacks being disproportionately targeted in traffic stops. There actually is a study for that. Throughout the 1990s, the nation was fixated on tales of jack-booted New Jersey state troopers who were stopping speeders on the turnpike *just because they were black!* In a 2000 primary debate, Vice President Al Gore sneered at then-New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley, saying, "Racial profiling practically began in New Jersey, Senator Bradley."
LA Judge: I'll Stand Bayou on Marriage
It took a brave southern judge, but the Left's perfect record on same-sex "marriage" rulings finally snapped. Wednesday, Judge Martin Feldman broke a string of 20-plus activist decisions and yielded to the democratic process on Louisiana's marriage amendment. After more than a year of constitutional contempt, Judge Feldman restored some semblance of credibility -- and sanity -- to a federal bench that had been rewriting marriage law since the Supreme Court's *Windsor* decision. Refusing to cave to the small -- but vocal chorus -- of liberals, Feldman said he was reluctant to throw away centuries of natural, social science, and legal tradition to satiate a radical fringe. "This Court is persuaded that Louisiana has a legitimate interest... whether obsolete in the opinion of some, or not, in the opinion of others," he wrote, "in linking children to an intact family formed by their two biological parents."
Neanderthal Man Rocks
When I read the other day about those cross-hatched engravings found by archaeologists in Gorham's Cave in Gibraltar being "the first known examples of Neanderthal rock art," I, of course, thought immediately of Rolling Stone magazine. Rolling Stone, the magazine for modern aesthetes, covers "rock art" ceaselessly. That a Rolling Stone writer might have found modern rock's roots among Neanderthal man came as no surprise to me. What about punk rock? What about grunge? I believe the word is grunge. Yet I had leapt to a hasty conclusion. The report I was reading about in London's Daily Mail was not drawn from Rolling Stone but rather from the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. And it was not about the artistic aspirations of rock singers, but rather about artists who really were scribbling on ancient rocks over 39,000 years ago, artists drawn from the species Homo neanderthalensis, a species of human much like us only less intellectual.
War -- Past, Present and Future
The world seems to be falling apart. Only lunatics from North Korea or Iran once mumbled about using nuclear weapons against their supposed enemies. Now Vladimir Putin, after gobbling up the Crimea, points to his nuclear arsenal and warns the West not to "mess" with Russia. The Middle East terrorist group the Islamic State keeps beheading its captives and threatening the West. Meanwhile Obama admits to the world that we "don't have a strategy yet" for dealing with such barbaric terrorists. Not long ago he compared them to "jayvees."
Eric Holder: A More Dangerous Race-Card Hustler Than Al Sharpton
It's one thing to watch race hustlers like the Rev. Al Sharpton bellowing, "No justice, no peace." But when the attorney general of the United States makes false but racially incendiary claims about today's alleged "pernicious racism," we are in uncharted territory. Holder complains about different prison rates, different school expulsion rates and longer prison sentences for black boys and men compared to white boys and men. He equates "equal rights" with "equal results." In Ferguson, Missouri, after announcing federal investigation into the cop-shooting death of an unarmed black teen, Holder said: "I am the attorney general of the United States. But I am also a black man. I can remember being stopped on the New Jersey Turnpike on two occasions and accused of speeding. ... I remember how humiliating that was and how angry I was and the impact it had on me."
Hong Kong: One Country, One System
The promise the Chinese government made to Britain and to the world as Hong Kong reverted to Chinese control at midnight on June 30, 1997, that China would abide by the "one country, two systems" plan, which would afford Hong Kong greater autonomy, except in matters of foreign relations and defense, was to last 50 years. That promise is falling 33 years short of fulfillment. The communist government in Beijing has been nipping at the edges of Hong Kong's freedoms for some time, but last Sunday it decided to take a bigger bite. Writes The New York Times, "China's legislature laid down strict limits ... to proposed voting reforms in Hong Kong, pushing back against months of rallies calling for free, democratic elections." The "strict limits" include new guidelines for nominating candidates, which means Beijing would choose who runs the city's government.
An Eye on the Baltic States?
The Islamic State is a nasty problem that can be remedied if its neighbors, assisted by the United States, decide to do so. Vladimir Putin's fascist revival is a crisis that tests the West's capacity to decide. Putin's serial amputations of portions of Ukraine, which began with his fait accompli in Crimea, will proceed, and succeed, until his appetite is satiated. Then the real danger will begin. Suppose Ukraine is merely his overture for the destruction of NATO, the nemesis of his Soviet memory. Then what might be his version of the Gleiwitz radio station episode 75 years ago?
Wednesday, September 3, 2014
36% of Generation Turning 21 This Year Born to Unmarried Mothers
If you count a generation as spanning 20 years, then approximately 36 percent of the American generation born from 1993 through 2012 -- which has begun turning 21 this year and will continue turning 21 through 2033--were born to unmarried mothers. That does not count the 40.6 percent of babies born in 2013 who were also born to unmarried mothers. In fact, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at least 40 percent of the babies born in each of the last six years -- 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013 -- were born to unmarried mothers.
Deport the Tsarnaev Sisters
The Sisters Tsarnaev have been nothing but trouble. Double, bubbling trouble. While their Boston Marathon bomber brother Dzhokhar awaits trial this month for the bloody 2012 attacks that killed three and injured hundreds, his elder Chechen immigrant siblings Ailina and Bella remain on the loose in the U.S. after their own frequent run-ins with the law. Last week, Ailina was arrested in Harlem after allegedly threatening "to blow up her live-in lover's baby mama," as the New York Post reported. Police charged Ailina, 23, with aggravated harassment and released her. Will the legal system learn? Ailina's time in America sends one clear message: No consequences. More trouble.
Rand Paul vs. the Hawks
The Kentucky Senator Urges Interventionists of Both Parties to Contemplate Unintended Consequences
Obama's Non-Ideological Foreign Policy Not Working
So much for non-ideological foreign policy. When Barack Obama ran for president he vowed to be non-ideological. He was a pragmatist and a problem-solver. It wasn't just that George W. Bush's ideology was awful, ideology itself was a kind of sinful stupidity. "What is required," Obama declared the day before his first inauguration, "is a new declaration of independence, not just in our nation, but in our own lives -- from ideology and small thinking, prejudice and bigotry -- an appeal not to our easy instincts but to our better angels." On foreign policy in particular, Obama had been singing this tune for years.
DeGravelle Slams the Gavel on Clinic Law
The only thing abortion groups wanted on Labor Day was to keep women out of the labor *room*. And over the weekend, a few unelected judges were happy to help. A day after Planned Parenthood's "abortion vigil," judges in two states tried to answer those prayers by putting the brakes on common sense clinic laws. While most people were loading their cars for the long weekend, U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel decided to help drive the agenda of the pro-abortion crowd by temporarily blocking Texas's new rules for abortion facilities. In his 21-page opinion, Yeakel complains that asking clinics to put safety first by upgrading their equipment and facilities was too burdensome. "These substantial obstacles have reached a tipping point," Yeakel ruled, halting a law that could have put as many as 14 clinics out of business.
Of Racial Delusions and Riots
Last week, as riots in Ferguson, Missouri decrescendoed and the country held its collective breath over the question of the indictment of Officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown, rappers Diddy (formerly P. Diddy, formerly Puff Daddy, formerly Sean Combs), 2 Chainz, The Game, and Rick Ross, along with 10 of their fellows, released a song: "Don't Shoot." The Game explained why he felt the necessity to record the song: "I am a black man with kids of my own that I love more than anything, and I cannot fathom a horrific tragedy like Michael Brown's happening to them. This possibility has shaken me to my core."
Green Markets
Last week I said the Environmental Protection Agency has become a monster that does more harm than good. But logical people say, "What else we got?" It's natural to assume greedy capitalists will run amok and destroy the Earth unless stopped by regulation. These critics don't understand the real power of private ownership, says Terry Anderson of the Property and Environment Research Center. "Long before the EPA was a glint in anyone's eye," said Anderson on my TV show, "property rights were dealing with pollution issues."