Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Wednesday, January 1, 2014
Parting Company
Here's a question that I've asked in the past that needs to be revisited. Unless one wishes to obfuscate, it has a simple yes or no answer. If one group of people prefers strong government control and management of people's lives while another group prefers liberty and desires to be left alone, should they be required to enter into conflict with one another and risk bloodshed and loss of life in order to impose their preferences on the other group? Yes or no. My answer is no; they should be able to peaceably part company and go their separate ways.
Hit Piece Journalism
Front-page editorials, disguised as news stories, have become such familiar features of the New York Times that it should have been no surprise to discover in the December 28th issue a front-page story about a professor of finance at the University of Houston who has been a paid consultant to financial enterprises. Since professors of all sorts have been paid consultants to organizations of all sorts, it is questionable why this was a story at all, much less one that covered an entire inside page, in addition to a central front-page opening, under the headline "Academics Who Defend Wall St. Reap Reward."
Myths to Ditch in 2014
The Beltway consensus seems to be that 2013 was a bad year for the same reason nearly every other recent year was bad: polarization and partisanship. Personally, I can think of plenty of more important things to worry about than partisanship. Democracy is about disagreements, and partisanship is often a sign of healthy disagreement. But polarization is a bit different. It speaks not just to a lack of basic agreement about what kind of society we should live in, but a breakdown in understanding and respect among Americans. There's a lot of them-vs.-us talk these days on the left and the right. And while I'd never want to live in a country where we all join hands and sing "Kumbaya," maybe a bit more understanding wouldn't be all bad.
Common Core
My TV producers asked our Facebook audience to vote for a topic they'd most like to hear discussed on my year-end show. The overwhelming winner, for some reason: the education standards program Common Core. Most Americans don't even know what that is. But they should. It's the government's plan to try to bring "the same standard" to every government-run school. This may sound good. Often, states dumb down tests to try to "leave no child behind." How can government evaluate teachers and reward successful schools if there isn't a single national standard?
Remembering Harold Simmons
I've not read the official obituaries because they are predictable. "Billionaire." "Reclusive." "GOP donor." "Swift Boat Vets." "Industrialist." "Controversial." "Dallas." And there you have it: the death of a sinister figure driven by greed, the puppeteer manipulating the political process, a 21st century J.R. Ewing. (Or is it Mr. Burns?) If this is what you've read, it's written by someone who didn't know Harold Clark Simmons. I never knew a man quite like him.
What to Expect in 2014
2013 was a year of revelations, a year of possible turning points. For nearly two decades, since Ronald Reagan left office, America moved steadily in the direction of the left, both culturally and politically. When the Soviet Union fell, optimistic scholars believed the world had shifted inexorably in the direction of free markets and liberal democracy. Instead, the West gradually embraced bigger government and weaker social bonds, creating a fragmented society in which the only thing we all belong to, as President Barack Obama puts it, is the state.
The Gifts of Jahi
New Year's Day should be a time of fresh beginnings and forward motion. But for the family of 13-year-old Jahi McMath, the holiday season has been suspended in a cloud of unfathomable pain and suffering: A routine tonsillectomy gone wrong. A beautiful child declared "brain dead." Lawyers, TV cameras, tears. The McMaths are fighting for life. On Monday, they won a court order that prevents Children's Hospital of Oakland from pulling the plug on Jahi until Jan. 7. Her relatives have been attacked as "publicity hounds" for doing everything possible to raise awareness about the young girl's tragic case. They've been criticized as troublemakers for challenging powerful hospital officials. They've been labeled "selfish" and ignorant because they are praying for a miracle.
Free Exercise of Virtue Prohibited as of Today in USA
As of today -- Jan. 1, 2014 -- a Democratic administration led by President Barack Obama will use a regulation permitted and funded by a Republican-majority House of Representatives to prohibit Americans from freely exercising not just Christianity, but virtue itself in the United States of America. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines virtue as "conformity to a standard of right" -- and, in truth, there is only one such standard. Individuals are born and die, nations rise and fall -- yet it remains.
Demon Rum and Other Excuses: The Year's Highlights in Blame-Shifting
We've all been there, perhaps as recently as Tuesday night. You have a few drinks, and the next thing you know, you're smoking crack. What? You've consumed alcohol on many occasions, but you've never smoked crack? As it turns out, you're not alone. Survey data indicate that 82 percent of Americans have consumed alcohol, but only 3 percent have tried crack; another 11 percent have consumed cocaine in powder form.
Tuesday, December 31, 2013
A New Year and Old Problems
Whenever we stand on the threshold of a new year, we are tempted to forget the hazards of prophecy, and try to see what may lie on the other side of this arbitrary division of time. Sometimes we are content to try to change ourselves with New Year's resolutions to do better in some respect. Changing ourselves is a much more reasonable undertaking than trying to change other people. It may or may not succeed, but it seldom creates the disasters that trying to change others can produce.
Not Getting What We Pay For
In real life when you find yourself paying more and getting less, you usually search for another product or service. With the federal government, it isn't possible to take your business elsewhere unless you are prepared to give up your citizenship, as some have done. Such a drastic step is rejected by most of us because we still believe in the ideal that once was America, though not in the direction in which the country is currently headed. At the end of the year comes a letter from the person who prepares my taxes. He wants me to know about changes in the tax law associated with Obamacare. It is written in a way that only people with a gift for foreign languages can understand. Here are some excerpts.
GOP Must Strike While ObamaCare Iron Is Hot
When it comes to health care, Republicans need to strike while the iron is hot, and it is white-hot now -- and will probably get worse -- because of the Obamacare disaster. The nation's health insurance rolls are hemorrhaging with Obamacare-forced cancellations, and new sign-ups are dreadfully slow -- and not just because of the disgraceful website glitches. People don't want what Obama's offering, er, mandating, and they're not buying what he's selling (at gunpoint).
Things We Know That Just Ain't So
2013 will be remembered as the year President Barack Obama's halo went askew. It deserves to be remembered for some other things. It was the year Democrats killed the United States Senate. If you missed the story, it's not surprising. When Sen. Harry Reid eliminated the filibuster, it was billed as the Democrats' last-ditch response to Republican "obstructionism." We were invited to play *tu quoque* because Republicans had threatened to invoke the "nuclear option" themselves in 2005. Largely ignored was Reid's relentless assault on Senate traditions.
Peña Proves Himself an Efficient Reformer
Most Americans have an image of Mexico as a nation convulsed by violent drug wars and sending hundreds of thousands of desperate immigrants across our southern border. That image is out-of-date. The drug war has largely quieted down and scarcely affects most of the country while, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, net migration from Mexico to the United States since 2007 has fallen to zero.
ObamaCare and the Price of Bad Habits
And so with ukuleles and autoharps, and cheers and groans, Americans usher Obamacare onto the public stage, knowing -- with hope, with disgust, with fear, with acceptance -- that the thing is here to stay, in the way all government programs, once enacted, hang around like a deadbeat brother-in-law: chain-smoking, impossible to get rid of. Foes and friends of Obamacare understand this truth: You never get rid of a government program. Did Ronald Reagan, despite vows and expectations, ever get rid of the promiscuous and worthless Department of Education? Or the Department of Energy? Hardly. In like-manner, Obamacare will endure. The government already claims 1.1 million sign-ups. It is below original expectations; each one nevertheless represents an aspiration not even a President Cruz would find possible to repudiate. And more sign-ups are to come.
Duck Dynasty and a Christmas Creche
The A&E/Duck Dynasty circus and an effort in South Florida to denigrate a Christmas creche display are both driven by the same components. They are classic examples of political correctness run amok, coupled with the idea that the whiners of the world are somehow entitled to special consideration, even when that consideration amounts to nothing more than the tyranny of the minority.
Haunting the White House
Barack Obama seems less and less like a president and more and more like a visitor from the spirit world. He looks real enough, but wouldn't an actual human being be embarrassed if he had to keep saying that he didn't know about things that were happening right under his nose? Can you even imagine being the commander-in-chief and claiming to be unaware of Operation Fast and Furious, electioneering at the IRS and what took place at Benghazi, until you read about it in the NY Times?
Monday, December 30, 2013
Help Wanted: Principled, Conservative Leaders
As 2013 comes to a close, it's as good a time as any to do some national soul searching. Polls show that three out of four Americans say the nation is on the wrong track. Disapproval ratings of our president are lodged above fifty percent. Clearly, whatever was generating the glow that got the most left-wing president in American history elected twice is starting to fade.
The Castro Tyranny Turns Another Year Older
New Year's Day marks the 55th anniversary of Cuba's communist revolution. It is the oldest -- indeed the only -- full-blown dictatorship in the Western Hemisphere. As Human Rights Watch noted in April, no other country in Latin America is ruled by a regime that "represses virtually all forms of political dissent." More than half a century after Fidel Castro seized power with the promise that "all rights and freedoms will be reinstituted" -- and more than seven years since Raúl Castro succeeded his brother as tyrant-in-chief -- Cuba is consistently rated "Not Free" in Freedom House's annual index of political and civil liberties worldwide.
Sunday, December 29, 2013
Illuminating Lessons of 2013
This report on the State of Conservatism comes at the end of an *annus mirabilis* for conservatives. In 2013, they learned that they may have been wasting much time and effort. Hitherto, they have thought that the most efficient way to evangelize the unconverted was to write and speak, exhorting those still shrouded in darkness to read conservatism's most light-shedding texts. Now they know that a quicker, surer method is to have progressives wield power for a few years. This will validate the core conservative insight about the mischiefs that ensue when governments demonstrate their incapacity for supplanting with fiats the spontaneous order of a market society.