Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Friday, March 21, 2014
Why Obama Scares Me
The most febrile of George W. Bush haters liked to claim during his tenure that the former president "scared" them. There is far more reason to be frightened by President Barack Obama, because fecklessness and inconstancy trigger wars. The outstanding example of weakness inviting aggression was the conduct of the democracies toward Adolf Hitler in the 1930s. Though it has been retroactively tainted as shameful cowardice, the policy of appeasement grew out of a "war weariness" that was far more understandable than our own. Britain and France suffered millions of dead and wounded in World War I and were desperate to avoid a repeat. The Munich Agreement, which ceded part of Czechoslovakia to Germany (without its consent), was signed by Britain and France in hopes that Hitler's ambitions were limited, but in any case because they believed appeasement was the best way to avoid war.
Get to Know the Common Core Marketing Overlords
They're everywhere. Turn on Fox News, local news, Animal Planet, HGTV, The Family Channel or talk radio. Pro-Common Core commercials have been airing ad nauseam in a desperate attempt to persuade American families to support the beleaguered federal education standards/testing/technology racket. Who's funding these public relations pushes? D.C. lobbyists, entrenched politicians and Big Business interests. The foundational myth of Common Core is that it's a "state-led" initiative with grassroots support that was crafted by local educators for the good of all of our children. But the cash and power behind the new ad campaign tell you all you need to know. For parents in the know, this will be a refresher course. But repeated lies must be countered with redoubled truths.
Oil Spills and Propaganda Ploys
"The Laramie Project" is an agitprop play compiled from real-life interviews that indicted the entire state of Wyoming as homophobic and therefore responsible for the murder of Matthew Shepard. One character announced it was just like "the Germans who looked the other way are guilty of the deaths of the Jews, the gypsies and the homosexuals." The play packs a political punch, and the left has seen to it that it has been widely performed at colleges and even high schools across America for years. But last year, the accepted narrative began to unravel. Author Stephen Jimenez produced years of research that argued Shepard's killers Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson were not heterosexual monsters after all. "A manager of a gay bar in Denver recalls seeing photos of McKinney and Henderson in the papers and recognizing them as patrons of his bar. He recounts his shock at realizing 'these guys who killed that kid came from inside our own community.'" It was a gay-on-gay murder. That would make the political message -- the very essence of the play -- fraudulent.
Are Voters Too Sensitive?
In a recent piece in Politico titled "Why Are Asian Americans Democrats?", professors Alexander Kuo, Neil Malhotra and Cecilia Hyunjung Mo, make the contention that "microaggressions" and social exclusion has pushes the entire Asian-American community to vote for the Democratic Party. If you're unfamiliar with the term, microaggressions, according to Fordham University, "are common verbal, behavioral, and environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile or negative slights to marginalized groups." The professors begin their microcase by pointing to a recent exchange between Senator Pat Roberts and President Barack Obama's nominee for surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, an Indian-American. Roberts invited Murthy to his state to meet a "lovely doctor from India. She's in her mid-30s and she's highly respected by the community. ... And so, I think you'd be right at home, and we would welcome you."
Lucy at the Candy Factory
In one of her classic comedy bits, Lucille Ball, as Lucy Ricardo, once got a job working on the conveyor belt packing chocolates. Every few seconds, the belt would speed up and she started packing the chocolates in a panic. Some went into boxes, others went into her mouth and still others went down the front of her dress. There are times I feel like poor, bedraggled Lucy. The news just keeps getting worse and worse and it keeps coming our way faster and faster, and none of it tastes anything like chocolate. For instance, people call Obama a dictator, and with good reason. After all, he keeps trampling on the Constitution and treating the House as if it were more like a motel. And with a disregard even for the optics, he employs the IRS and the EPA as his personal bully boys, using them to punish conservative groups and those companies whose owners have neglected to contribute to his political campaigns.
The Invasion Will be Catered
Early in the Ukraine crisis, when the Europeans were working on bringing Ukraine into the EU system and Vladimir Putin was countering with threats and bribes, one British analyst lamented that "we went to a knife fight with a baguette." That was three months ago. Life overtakes parody. During the Ukrainian prime minister's visit to Washington last week, his government urgently requested military assistance. The Pentagon refused. It offered instead military ration kits.
Opposing Voter ID Laws in the Name of Race Is Insulting to Minorities
This is a headline we should never see in the United States: "Federal Judge: Yes, Arizona and Kansas Can Require Voters To Prove Their Citizenship." The fact that this issue would be disputed at all is astonishing. That it is legally contested is stunning. That the prime mover in initiating the legal challenge is our own federal government, which has a compelling interest in ensuring the integrity of the election process, is mind-blowing.
Having a Venerable Name Can Be a Key to Upward Mobility
America used to be a land with great upward social mobility, but isn't anymore. America never was a land with great upward social mobility. Which do you believe? Keep in mind that your answer will have significant implications for public policy. Most politicians, of both right and left, favor the first statement. Conservatives say big government is stifling people's chances to move upward. Barack Obama says growing inequality of wealth is holding people down.
The Emptiness of the Right Side of History
The right side of history is bunk. In domestic politics, people (mostly liberals) tend to say, "You're on the wrong side of history" about social issues that are breaking their way. It's a handy phrase, loosely translated as, "You're going to lose eventually, so why don't you give up now?" Philosophically, the expression is abhorrent because of its "Marxist twang" (to borrow historian Robert Conquest's phrase). The idea that history moves in a predetermined, inexorable path amounts to a kind of Hallmark-card Hegelianism.
Thursday, March 20, 2014
Internet Control in an Anti-Free Speech World
What happens when the "international community" oversees the web?
Deception 1342 of the Affordable Care Act
Talk about March Madness. The 31st is the deadline for signing up for ObamaCare, which has made the buying and selling of health insurance one of the most complicated, deceptive disasters in the history of Big Government. The president could always whip out his Hugo Chavez pen again at the last minute and re-write another rotten plank of his Affordable Care Act. But as it stands now, people will have to enroll in the ACA by the end of this month or most of them will not be eligible to get government insurance until January of 2015.
A Very Jolly Election
The Republicans *would* nominate as their candidate for the recently contested House seat in Florida a candidate with the celebratory surname of Jolly. David Jolly to be exact. Needless to say David Jolly won. Perhaps his victory will establish a trend. According to the trend, the Republicans will be running candidates with surnames like Happy, or Joyous or even Gay. Imagine a wave election -- as political commentators are predicting 2014 to be -- in which the Republicans run candidates with the aforementioned names: Happy, Joyous, Gay! Imagine a future House of Representatives where the dialogue might run: "Speaker Jolly, I should like to propose an amendment to your bill on noxious particulates in the atmosphere," says the Hon. Happy. Responds the Hon. Jolly, "By all means do so, Mr. Happy." It would be a new dawn for the Republic.
Families Brace for Premium Hikes
Under ObamaCare, almost everyone loses. But thanks to the Young Invincibles, there is at least one winner -- of a $1,200 sweepstakes. It's just the latest gimmick aimed at signing up more Americans for a health care plan they overwhelmingly oppose. The Invincibles, a liberal brainchild that targets the 18-34 year-olds, is doing its part to pump up ObamaCare enrollment before the March 31 deadline -- most recently by offering cash prizes to people who download their information. Unfortunately for the lucky recipients, $1,200 may not be enough to even cover their first year's premium, based on the newest information available. As conservatives warned, rates are already rocketing through the roof -- and the sticker shock is only getting worse. The insurance sector expects ObamaCare premiums to double (and in some cases, triple) in certain parts of the country. Barely a week ago, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius tried to downplay the costs in her testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee, insisting, "the increases are far less significant than what they were prior to the Affordable Care Act."
This Is No Time to Go Wobbly on Ukraine
When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990 and claimed it as Iraq's "19th province," Margaret Thatcher stiffened the spine of the first President Bush with a famous exhortation: "This is no time to go wobbly, George." Bush didn't go wobbly. Instead he assembled a great military coalition, which liberated Kuwait early the following year. What will it take to stiffen Barack Obama's spine? As Vladimir Putin engineered a Russian conquest of Ukraine's Crimean peninsula this month, the Obama administration met his belligerence with little more than scowls and tsk-tsks. The president and secretary of state repeatedly objected that Russia's power play was out of place in the modern world.
Young People Don't Change – Neither Does the N.Y. Times
Let me begin by saying that I think the only issue in the 2014 election should be Obamacare. In fact, that should be the only issue in every election until it's repealed. I also think all Republican candidates should be trained with shock collars and cattle prods to automatically respond, upon hearing some combination of the words "abortion," "rape" and "incest": "Yes, of course there should be exceptions in the case of rape or incest, and I also support giving rapists the death penalty, unlike my Democratic opponent, who wants to give rapists the right to vote. Now, back to what I was saying about Obamacare ..." Yet and still, I'm not sure it's news that The New York Times ran into some kids at CPAC who are "pro-free market on fiscal issues and libertarian on social ones." ("Young Republicans Find Fault With Elders on List of Social Issues," March 10.)
God Waits
Life is busy: the phone keeps ringing, the kids need attention. Meanwhile, someone's at the door, the dog is barking, there are bills to be paid, a deadline at work... but where is the time for God? He doesn't pound on the door like the neighborhood children, or stand beside your desk and interrupt while you're working, or call during dinner like the phone solicitors. No, He patiently waits for *us* to call on *Him*.
Replace Obamacare, Stat
The American people realize that Obamacare is a very bad policy. But more and more conservatives agree that we need to offer a solid alternative before voters reject Obamacare root and branch. Recently, three prominent Republican senators -- Richard Burr (N.C.), Tom Coburn (Okla.), and Orrin Hatch (Utah) -- unveiled an alternative proposal. In this article, I would like to outline my own. The proposal I suggest would achieve four remarkable things: It would be more progressive than Obamacare, because it would involve more distribution from higher- to lower-income households. It would provide genuine protection for people who have a preexisting condition, as opposed to the bait-and-switch promises of Obamacare. It would provide genuine access to care for everyone, as opposed to leaving 30 million uninsured, as Obamacare does. And it would work in practice, primarily because it would confine the role of government to setting a few simple rules of the game, leaving individual choice and the marketplace to do the heavy lifting.
Technology Is Not Wisdom
Americans now have more computer power in their smart phones than did the Pentagon in all its computer banks just 30 years ago. We board a sophisticated jet and assume that the flight is no more dangerous than crossing the street. The downside of this complete reliance on computer gadgetry is a fundamental ignorance of what technology is. Smart machines are simply the pumps that deliver the water of knowledge -- not knowledge itself. What does it matter that millions of American students can communicate across thousands of miles instantly with their iPads and iPhones if a poorly educated generation increasingly has little to say?