Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
The Democrats' War on the Two-Party System
How Obama and the Left are working to create one-party tyranny.
Gold Medals, Fried Chicken & Antiques
Now that the Winter Olympics are over for another four years, let me say, at the risk of being regarded as a party pooper, that I think the Games are one of the worst ideas anyone has ever come up with. As far back as 1948 and 1952, I knew that when people praised them as a way to bring nations together in peaceful competition, with the emphasis on the individual athletes, I knew I was listening to high-sounding hooey. I knew that because every day, the newspapers would let us know how many medals the U.S., the Soviet Union and East Germany, had won. And if it happened that the Commies were winning more gold medals than we were, we'd make a big deal about the larger number of silver and bronze medals we were taking home.
In the Case of My Brother's Keeper, Race Does Matter
President Obama announced last week a new race-based initiative, My Brother's Keeper. According to the White House, the program will coordinate government agencies and private foundations to help young men and boys of color. "Of color" basically means blacks and Latinos. In fact, it's pretty obvious the program is aimed at young black men. This fact has invited some conservative criticism. The Weekly Standard's Terry Eastland notes that the program is likely unconstitutional. Doling out benefits explicitly based on race is generally a no-no, according to the Supreme Court
Black People Duped
People in the media and academia are mostly leftists hellbent on growing government and controlling our lives. Black people, their politicians and civil rights organizations have become unwitting accomplices. The leftist pretense of concern for the well-being of black people confers upon them an aura of moral superiority and, as such, gives more credibility to their calls for increasing government control over our lives. Ordinary black people have been sold on the importance of electing blacks to high public office. After centuries of black people having been barred from high elected office, no decent American can have anything against their wider participation in our political system.
Take Part in the Traditions of Lent
Rhythm is life giving. We function according to days, weeks, months and years. We celebrate anniversaries and birthdays, dread tax time and look forward to time off. The cycles we go through help us move forward and stay in sync with the people around us. They increase both our productivity and our enjoyment of life, and they are essential to the health of our society. We see this truth throughout the natural world as well. Our calendars and timetables are based on seasons and phases, the perfectly predictable movement of our planet and moon through space.
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
It's the Desert, Stupid
Someone better send John Kerry a high school geography textbook. Our brilliant Secretary of State doesn't seem to know that California is about two-thirds desert. Based on his recent statements about the cause of my home state's 13-month drought, Kerry doesn't know anything about California's history or climate, either.
All Talk, No Do
Well, we saw it coming. But wait, that's getting it backwards. We ought to have seen it coming. And we didn't -- "we" as a collective: we, the American people acting in our sovereign capacity as voters. Why was it not plain to us in 2008, and yes, again in 2012, that Barack Obama was an unlikely choice for Leader of the Free World, not to mention head policy director of the World's Most Dynamic Economy? It was not plain to us because we failed to look. That is, I think, the right answer. It is certainly the answer to the conundrum concerning how we got into our current foreign policy mess with the Russians -- whom we bested only 25 years ago -- and what happens next. I did not say "how we get out of" said conundrum. I think we don't. The Russians, of all washed-up imperial powers, have us by the nose and mean to inconvenience us.
The Closed Mind of the Open-Minded Mr. Kaiser
Former Washington Post Managing Editor Robert Kaiser took to the opinion pages of the Post to lament the disintegration of the good old days in Washington when political life was wonderfully collegial and lawmakers had fun governing. Oh, the irony of this Beltway liberal's devoting 2,225 words to decrying conservatives for destroying something that liberals have largely been in charge of for years -- government and its growth. Kaiser sounds a lot like Chris Matthews, who often mourns for the days when politics was fun -- as if the process of governing is the only thing that matters. For Kaiser says he misses those days when liberal GOP lawmakers (though he doesn't identify them as such) "knew and cared a great deal about governing."
A Brave News World for Religious Freedom
In 400 years, America may not look the same to the first settlers -- but the battles it wages certainly would. Even after four centuries, true religious freedom is as scarce today as it was when the pilgrims stepped onto the ship that would carry them to the new world. The only difference is, the threats to that idea come not from a foreign power -- but within. Never has that been clearer than now, standing on the rubble of the Arizona Religious Freedom Restoration Act. While the bill may be dead, the conversation is not. In the aftermath of one of the dirtiest PR wars in modern liberalism, people on both sides have finally had time to survey the damage in what many believe is a national turning point. Unfortunately for Americans, the biggest story of the Arizona dispute was the industry tasked with relaying it: the media. More concerned with being politically correct than factually correct, the press sunk its teeth into SB 1062, using its power to distort a debate it was meant to detail.
A Note to 'Fiscal Conservatives' From a Social Conservative
If there were as many "fiscal conservatives" as there are people who claim to be, it is hard to see how Republicans would lose as many elections as they do. One frequently hears this political self-identification: "I'm socially liberal, but fiscally conservative." Or, "If the Republicans weren't conservative on so many social issues, I would vote Republican." Or, "It's too bad the Christian Right dominates the Republican Party. I would vote for the Republicans on fiscal issues, but I can't stand the religious right."
Freedom Is Not Free
There may be something to the claim that all people want to be free. But it is a demonstrable fact that freedom has been under attack, usually successfully, for thousands of years. The Federal Communications Commission's recent plan to have a "study" of how editorial decisions are made in the media, placing FCC bureaucrats in editorial offices across the country, was one of the boldest assaults on freedom of the press. Fortunately, there was enough backlash to force the FCC to back off.
The Judicial Assault on American Flag T-Shirts
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously condemns free speech.
Obama Makes Wars More Likely
Among the academic set from which President Barack Obama springs, everyone agrees that wars are the result of "arrogance" and bullying by the United States. So concerned was then-Sen. Obama about the potential for U.S. aggression that he declined to vote for 2007 legislation that would have designated Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization. The IRGC had been involved in training and arming terrorists worldwide, particularly in Lebanon (Hezbollah) but also in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Palestinian territories. But Obama worried that such a vote would be "saber rattling."
Let Them Eat Cake
In Arizona has come a test of the motto conservative Christians like to invoke: "Hate the sin, love the sinner." Republican Governor Jan Brewer has vetoed the "religious freedom bill" passed by the Republican legislature. While there is no mention in the bill of same-sex marriage, or even homosexuals, most people believe same-sex marriage and homosexuals were the targets of the proposed law. Proponents asserted Senate Bill 1062 was written to protect the "free exercise of religion" for businesses and their employees. U.S. citizens already enjoy that protection under the First Amendment, but the bill's backers believed that further protections were needed due to the aggressive posture taken by many gay rights advocates pushing for legal and societal approval of same-sex marriage.
Don't Write Those Tea Party Obituaries Just Yet
February marked the fifth anniversary of the reemergence of the label "Tea Party" in American politics. It was in February 2009 that Rick Santelli delivered his famous rant on CNBC, and a few days later, a group calling itself the Tea Party Patriots was organized. Today the conventional wisdom is that the Tea Party movement is exhausted. Polls are cited showing that only one quarter of Americans express approval of the Tea Party. Democrats run ads claiming their opponents are Tea Party radicals. Many Republicans argue that Tea Party candidates have lost winnable Senate races, cementing the Democratic majority there rather than overturning it. There is something to these lines of attack, but it misses a larger picture.
Misreading Putin, and History
One hundred years after a spark in Central Europe ignited a conflagration from which the world has not yet recovered and from which Europe will never recover, armed forces have crossed an international border in Central Europe, eliciting this analysis from Secretary of State John Kerry: "It's a 19th century act in the 21st century. It really puts at question Russia's capacity to be within the G8." Although this "19th century act" resembles many 20th century (and 16th, 17th and 18th century) acts, it is, the flabbergasted Kerry thinks, astonishing in the 21st century, which he evidently supposes to be entirely unlike any other. What is more disconcerting -- that Kerry believes this? Or that his response to Putin's aggression is to question Russia's "capacity" -- Kerry means fitness -- for membership in the G8?
Monday, March 3, 2014
The Cultural War Against Christians
Arizona Governor Jan Brewer was right to veto SB1062, which would have amended the Arizona Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The bill, per most interpretations I've read, would have given broad discretion to business owners, because of their religious convictions, to refuse to do business with anyone associated with homosexual lifestyles. Religious freedom is about protection of your right to practice your religion and not being forced to violate it. However, the right to religious freedom does not mean the right to write-off and marginalize into non-existence a whole class of citizens whom you don't like or agree with.
An American Hero Calls Out President Zero
I was going to write about a different subject this week, until I came across this [letter](http://www.ijreview.com/2014/03/118599-wounded-warrior-blasts-obama-lack-leadership-fiercely-worded-open-letter/). It was written by a man who walked the walk, until the war in Iraq changed that equation forever. And while it focuses on that war, it is a devastatingly accurate portrait of our current Commander-in-Chief, in all his feckless, lead-from-behind, hypocritical glory. In addition, it unambiguously, if inadvertently, illuminates why America's foreign policy is a shambles from Ukraine and Iran, to Syria and North Korea, and why for a substantial number of Americans, the debacle in Benghazi will never, *ever* be swept under the rug...
The Value in Preaching to the Unconverted
My late colleague David Nyhan, a gifted Boston Globe journalist for more than three decades, told me two things on the day my first column appeared on this page. "Your readers will find you and you'll find your readers," he promised me. "And no matter what you write, it almost always looks better in print." Nyhan was a passionate liberal; I'm an avid conservative. We saw things very differently on any number of issues. But his words of reassurance back when I was the Globe's newest columnist proved spot-on. For those of us in the punditry line, so many things have changed in the years since my debut: above all, the Internet tsunami. But one thing I have never had to wonder about is whether anybody would read my pearls of wisdom. They might not heed them (they usually don't, come to think of it, which helps explain why the world is still a mess). But as Nyhan knew, the readers would come. And many would keep coming back, column after column, year after year.