Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Thursday, May 29, 2014
A Dearth of Intimacy
"This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh..." The world's greatest poets, screen writers and story tellers could never pen more intimate words than those spoken by Adam when God created Eve to be his bride. I discovered anew this weekend at my daughter's wedding that the world is hungry for such intimacy, and that joy overflows from our very souls when we catch a glimpse of adoring love between others. Kristin became Mrs. Randy Carey in front of nearly 400 witnesses who felt the tremendous power of the Holy Spirit and the unconditional love He gives as they were united. All of our lives were impacted greatly by the story of these two young people who walked in fidelity throughout their courtship; who sought God together on their knees as they prepared for their wedding. Their primary desire was to be wed in a ceremony that would reflect God's immense love for all of us, and that would tell the beautiful story of His pursuit of each of us; of His longing for you and me to be as captured by His presence as Adam was by Eve in the Garden so long ago.
What Was D-Day?
Seventy years ago this June 6, the Americans, British and Canadians stormed the beaches of Normandy in the largest amphibious invasion of Europe since the Persian king Xerxes invaded Greece in 480 B.C. About 160,000 troops landed on five Normandy beaches and linked up with airborne troops in a masterful display of planning and courage. Within a month almost a million Allied troops had landed in France and were heading eastward toward the German border. Within 11 months the war with Germany was over.
Death on Campus
Apropos of a 22-year-old deranged student's slaughter of his male roommates, two coeds, and another male student, as well as leaving 13 injured and in the hospital, I have been doing my research. In the courses of which, I came across this quote on the front page of Tuesday's New York Times. A second-year student in global studies at the university where the crimes were committed said in the news story's second paragraph that, "If we don't talk misogyny now, when are we going to talk about it?" She went on in the next paragraph with similar profundities. It put me in mind of another quote from the Times on Sunday in the op-ed section by columnist Charles M. Blow. He was commenting on the owner of the Dallas Mavericks' allegedly "bigoted" remark (though it seemed perfectly sensible to me) a few days before. Blow said the remark typified "the endlessly ached-for, perpetually stalled 'national conversation on race' that many believe is needed but neglected. ..."
Ignoring the Path to Recovery
It is said that the problem with the younger generation -- any younger generation -- is that it has not read the minutes of the last meeting. Barack Obama, forever young, has convenient memory loss: It serves his ideology. His amnesia concerning the policies that produced the robust recovery from the more severe (measured by its 10.8 percent unemployment rate) recession of 1981-82 has produced policies that have resulted in 0.1 percent economic growth in 2014's first quarter -- the 56th, 57th and 58th months of the recovery from the recession that began in December 2007. June begins the sixth year of the anemic recovery from the 18-month recession. Even if what Obama's administration calls "historically severe" weather -- aka, winter -- reduced GDP growth by up to 1.4 percentage points, growth of 1.5 percent would still be grotesque.
The Tea Party Lives – in Europe
While Tea Party candidates underperformed against establishment Republican incumbents in recent U.S. primary elections, in Europe their conservative cousins have just scored some spectacular victories. Commentators are calling elections for seats in the European Parliament and local council seats in Britain a "political earthquake" and "revolution" as strongly conservative candidates made significant gains. In Britain, the UK Independent Party (UKIP) outperformed the established Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat parties. Labour hired one of President Obama's top political strategists, David Axelrod, as a consultant. It didn't help.
Wednesday, May 28, 2014
Team Obama Exposes a CIA Station Chief
When George W. Bush was president, a week didn't go by when the press wasn't dismissing his intelligence and proclaiming his administration's incompetence. Over the weekend, President Barack Obama made a surprise visit to the troops in Afghanistan. Someone on his staff demonstrated truly jaw-dropping incompetence by accidentally releasing to 6,000 journalists the name of the CIA station chief in Afghanistan as part of Obama's welcoming delegation. That is a death sentence, not just for the agent but for all those around him. Try to imagine the media firestorm this would have created had the transgression occurred during the W years. Remember the endless coverage day after day, week after week over the disclosure of Valerie Plame's name, a veritable D.C. paper-pusher by comparison? She became the poster child in a relentless campaign to undermine Bush's foreign policy -- and the man himself.
The Meaning of the European Elections
Citizens put the European Union in the crosshairs.
Egypt's Hard Lesson in Liberty
Five years ago, President Barack Obama traveled to Egypt -- then still governed by the pro-American, secularist authoritarian Hosni Mubarak -- to explain how he believed this Earth could at last become a paradise. "The people of the world can live together in peace," Obama said at Cairo University. "We know that is God's vision. Now that must be our work here on Earth." In Obama's view -- although he did point to the threat of terrorist groups such as al-Qaida -- the primary source of recent historical tensions between the West and the Islamic world has been the colonialism and cultural imperialism of the West.
Justice for Taryn and Tanner
Behold Canada and America. One country supports the efforts of a U.S. special forces soldier's widow to hold accountable the jihadist who killed her husband and the father of her two young children. The other country helped free that jihadist from Guantanamo Bay in a shady deal that appeased his far-left allies. Guess which side President Obama's on. The widow is Tabitha Speer. Her children are Taryn and Tanner. Their husband and father was an American hero: Sergeant First Class Christopher Speer, a 28-year-old medic with the U.S. Special Forces. As I reported in my syndicated column 11 years ago, Speer died in Afghanistan during an ambush by al-Qaida operatives. The remorseless Islamic zealot who lobbed the fatal grenade that killed Speer in 2002: 15-year-old Omar Khadr.
Gun Control's False Promise
The Isla Vista Massacre Reveals the Emptiness of the Anti-Gun Lobby's 'Real Solutions'
Does Obama Care About the Troops?
On the day before Memorial Day, President Barack Obama secretly flew into Afghanistan for a surprise visit to the troops. "We're going to stay strong by taking care of our wounded warriors and our veterans. Because helping our wounded warriors and veterans heal isn't just a promise, it's a sacred obligation ... I'm here to say that I'm proud of you," he stated. But he wasn't in Afghanistan out of mere pride for the troops. As usual, Obama was using the troops for political purposes. Whether he's taking credit for their successful missions ("Today, at my direction, the United States launched a targeted operation against that compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan") or portraying them as victims of brutal, hawkish foreign policy (we "have seen over 3,000 lives of the bravest young Americans wasted" in Iraq), the troops are but implements in Obama's quest for political victory.
Scrambled Regs Pushed Off by IRS
The Obama administration never met a rule it didn't want to postpone. But last week, the President finally delayed something we can all agree with. Leading up to the midterm elections, most people probably mistook the IRS as the Democrats' party headquarters. From stripping conservatives' tax-exempt status to disproportionately auditing tea party donors, the tax agency has been the President's political base camp. Early this year, the Wall Street Journal stumbled on the next phase of Republican targeting: a change to the regulations governing 501c4 lobbying groups like FRC Action. "With one little IRS rule, [the White House] can shut up hundreds of groups that post a direct threat by restricting their ability to speak freely in an election season..." Under the proposal, the IRS would subject lobbying groups like FRC Action to taxation and reporting on everyday activities like: grassroots lobbying, candidate forums, candidate debates, voter registration, voter guides, and general issue advocacy.
Putin's Well-Worn Fascist Lies
Vladimir Putin, with the aid of his vast propaganda machinery, has convinced many Russians that the interim government in Ukraine is expressly Nazi and fascist. And while there were some neo-Nazi goons among the protesters who brought down the corrupt government of Victor Yanukovich, and there are definitely ultranationalists among the coalition resisting Moscow, it's simply a transparent lie that the current government is fascist. That hasn't stopped some left-wing writers and crackpots in the West from buying the Russian claim that the United States is in cahoots with a "fascist junta" in Ukraine.
Eat Without Fear
It's easy to scare people about what's in their food, but the danger is almost never real. And the fear itself kills. Take the panic over genetically modified organisms, or GMOs. Ninety percent of all corn grown in America is genetically modified now. That means it grew from a seed that scientists altered by playing with its genes. The new genes may make corn grow faster, or they may make it less appetizing to bugs so farmers can use fewer pesticides. This upsets some people. GMOs are "unnatural," they say. A scene from the movie "Seeds of Death" warns that eating GMOs "causes holes in the GI tract" and "causes multiple organ system failure."
Impeachment, the VA & the NFL
A very bright reader of mine wrote, calling for Obama's impeachment. Although I share his concern for the harm the man has caused America and the world, I wouldn't like to see the GOP once again crawl out on that very precarious limb armed only with good intentions and a chainsaw. As I see it, it is the one sure way the Republicans can blow the midterm elections. Most people don't want to see election results, no matter how wrong-headed they are, overturned by sore losers. As we saw in Bill Clinton's case, he became more popular than ever when people viewed him as a martyr. And in Obama's case, in spite of a general dislike of his policies, the split when it comes to him personally is dead-even.
White Privilege
What would you think if your 8-year-old came home and told you that "white privilege is something that white people have, meaning they have an advantage in a lot of things and they can get a job more easily"? You would have heard that at the recent 15th annual White Privilege Conference in Madison, Wisconsin, attended by 2,500 public-school teachers, administrators and students from across the nation. The average parent has no idea of the devious indoctrination going on in classrooms in many public schools. What follows are some of the lessons of the conference.
Tuesday, May 27, 2014
One Easy Reform
The latest mass-casualty shooting spree -- this one in Santa Barbara, California -- has touched off the usual debate about how to put a stop to these hideous spasms of murder. These random massacres have become, as I wrote in a previous column, an American psychosis. Some, including the anguished father of one of the victims, point to guns and the National Rifle Association as the villains. Defenders of guns respond with the usual arguments -- which I find persuasive. That much having been said, I wish people who defend the Second Amendment wouldn't talk about their guns with such lascivious pleasure. Guns are necessary to self-defense. The right to own them is enshrined in the Constitution. Enough said. Let's not worship them. Gun worship -- by the Hollywood left which uses it to sell tickets, and by the conservative right, which fetishizes guns -- are both part of our national problem.
Time to Share the Foreign Policy Vision (If Any)
The way to have the foreign policy you want is first to figure out what kind of foreign policy you want. It is a task at which American leaders grow less and less adept, possibly on account of Americans' general inability to figure out what they want: involvement, isolation or variations of the two? What, exactly? Barack Obama, who plans a major foreign policy speech this week at West Point, merits a modicum of sympathy. A modicum, I said -- let's not get over-generous -- for his disposition to figure out things on the fly, such as Syrian chemical weapons, Putin, the Ukraine, Egypt, the Middle East and other dangers.
Scenario for a Republican Nightmare in the 2016 Elections
The 2016 presidential election is shaping up as another close race, like the last four. From 2000 to 2012, both major parties' nominees received between 45 and 53 percent of the vote. Historically, that's a narrow range, not seen since 1880-1892. It suggests something close to parity between two highly competitive parties. Polls for the 2016 race, however, suggest strikingly different results. One would be a nightmare for Republicans. The other would be a nightmare for Democrats.
A Young College Grad Calls My Show
Last week, on my radio talk show, I received a call from Jeff, a 21-year-old in North Carolina. I have abridged it and edited it stylistically. JEFF: I wanted to respond to your question about America being feared in the world. You brought up Syria. I think it's a little naive, and maybe that's not even the right word, to boil down such complex international issues into just good and bad. Like to say that America, for you, represents good. And to just boil down the Syria situation into good and bad is to underestimate the complexity of the situation. Because if the United States were to get involved there, you know, there might be consequences for us in that region that I think would be definitely more bad than good.