Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Tuesday, September 17, 2013
The N-Word & the L-Word
There are people who will find excuses for pedophiles and for women who feel themselves entitled to having abortions five minutes before the baby is ready to pop, but will call for a lynch rope if anyone dares to pronounce the word that the n-word refers to. We have been told time and again that the world will stop spinning if white people utter the word that's tossed around like a Frisbee in the black community. Blacks never explain why the word that's supposed to be the worst obscenity imaginable has such wide currency within their own ranks. Black stand-up comedian Chris Rock made his name doing a bit in which he compared blacks, whom he claimed to love, to ni**ers, whom he despised and ridiculed. It resonated with middle-class black audiences because it summed up their own attitudes. So why is it that whites aren't allowed to make the same obvious distinctions without resorting to the babyish n-word?
Cyber-Bullying
[Rebecca Ann Sedwick](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/14/us/suicide-of-girl-after-bullying-raises-worries-on-web-sites.html?emc=edit_tnt_20130913&tntemail0=y) was only 12 years old. But she hurled herself off of the top of an abandoned building last week in Florida in order to free herself from the daily torment of her peers. The bullies' weapons? Words. But their cruelty towards Rebecca didn't happen on the playground, in the lunchroom, or next to the school lockers. It happened on social media, in particular through an app called Ask.fm. The app allows users to send anonymous comments to others over the Internet, making it a place where bullies flourish.
Republicans Need Future-Looking Policies, Not Old Bromides
Republicans have been getting a lot of advice on how they should change their party ever since Mitt Romney's defeat in November 2012. They need it. They are in more than the usual disarray that afflicts parties out of the White House. Many members of their majority in the House of Representatives are out of step with the Republican leadership on issues ranging from Syria to defunding Obamacare. They have a clutch of presidential candidates who are little known nationally and take starkly different stands on issues. Any recent uptick in polls represents more a rejection of the Obama Democrats than an embrace of their opponents.
The Syria Seduction
Expecting Syria to live up to an agreement between Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov for the cataloging, inspection, removal and eventual destruction or sequester of chemical weapons is a subtle seduction. Why would a dictator like Bashar al-Assad relinquish his most potent weapon in the midst of a civil war? President Obama and his sycophants claim it was the threat of military action against Syria that focused Assad's mind. That hardly seems credible after Kerry's promise that any U.S. missile strike would be "unbelievably small."
David Brooks' Lame Trashing of Sen. Cruz
New York Times columnist David Brooks argued on PBS' "NewsHour" Friday night that "Sen. Ted Cruz and similar legislators" are obstructionists who care more about undermining the Republican establishment than advancing legislation. Note that I didn't use "conservative" to modify "columnist" or "David Brooks," though the Times and other mainstream media outlets routinely bill Brooks as conservative. Featuring a left-leaning moderate and depicting him as a conservative is a clever technique the liberal media employ to discredit conservative ideas.
Student Indoctrination
The new college academic year has begun, and unfortunately, so has student indoctrination. Let's look at some of it. William Penn, Michigan State University professor of creative writing, greeted his first day of class with an anti-Republican rant. Campus Reform, a project of the Arlington, Va.-based Leadership Institute, has a video featuring the professor telling his students that Republicans want to prevent "black people" from voting. He added that "this country still is full of closet racists" and [described](http://tinyurl.com/lve4te7) Republicans as "a bunch of dead white people -- or dying white people." To a student who had apparently displayed displeasure with those comments, Professor Penn barked, "You can frown if you want." He gesticulated toward the student and added, "You look like you're frowning. Are you frowning?" When the professor's conduct was brought to the attention of campus authorities, MSU spokesman Kent Cassella said, "At MSU it is important the classroom environment is conducive to a free exchange of ideas and is respectful of the opinions of others."
Rules Over Politics at the Fed
When Democratic Sen. Jon Tester of Montana announced last Friday that he would vote against Larry Summers' putative candidacy for Fed chairman if it came before the Senate Banking Committee, he put a dagger in Summers' Fed career before it even started. Tester would have made the fourth Democratic nay vote in the committee, and it is highly unlikely that Republicans would have taken up the slack to push through a Summers nomination. So over the weekend, Summers wisely withdrew from the horserace, telling President Obama that the confirmation process would be too political and acrimonious.
Minimum Wage Madness
Political crusades for raising the minimum wage are back again. Advocates of minimum wage laws often give themselves credit for being more "compassionate" towards "the poor." But they seldom bother to check what are the actual consequences of such laws. One of the simplest and most fundamental economic principles is that people tend to buy more when the price is lower and less when the price is higher. Yet advocates of minimum wage laws seem to think that the government can raise the price of labor without reducing the amount of labor that will be hired.
Our Non-Serious President
Fresh from terrorizing the Russians and bringing everlasting peace to a war-torn Middle East, Barack Obama undertook Monday to work on the Republicans the same tactics that worked so resoundingly on the trembling Vladimir Putin. He made a speech. Obama makes a lot of speeches because he has a lot to say on all topics. The one he made in the Rose Garden, touting his impending triumph over the country's economic woes, had all the right props, from impressive background to worshipful audience. The language was robust: "Republicans in Congress don't seem to be focused on how to grow the economy and build the middle class. I say 'at the moment' because I'm still hoping that a light bulb goes off here.
Does Popular Doom Republicans?
Mitt Romney's iPod playlist featured Johnny Cash, Frankie Valli, the Beach Boys and the Soggy Bottom Boys. Barack Obama's iPod had, the president assured his fans, something for everyone -- "Stevie Wonder, James Brown. I've got Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan," Obama said. "And then I've got everything from Jay-Z to Eminem to the Fugees, to -- you name it." This pop cultural posturing isn't new, as historian Tevi Troy chronicles in a highly entertaining survey of how American presidents have consumed and affected pop culture: "What Jefferson Read, Ike Watched, and Obama Tweeted".
Yes, We Are the World's Policeman
In his speech to the nation on Syria last week, the president twice emphasized that America is not the "world's policeman." According to polls, most Americans agree. Unfortunately, however, relinquishing this role assures catastrophe, both for the world and for America. This is easy to demonstrate. Imagine that because of the great financial and human price the mayors and city councils of some major American cities decide that they no longer want to police their cities. Individuals simply have to protect themselves.
Monday, September 16, 2013
Obama & Other Horror Stories
It occurred to me the other day that people are confined to mental institutions when they're found to constitute a danger to themselves or others. So, why is it that Obama is still running around loose? I also found myself thinking how far this nation has declined since the time of the Founding Fathers, while at the same time acknowledging that this seems to be the natural order of things. Historically, the patriarch of a family, through invention or industry, accumulates a great fortune. But, eventually, he dies, leaving his wealth to be dispersed to future generations. In time, the family deteriorates into a collection of floozies, playboys, drunks, addicts and, inevitably, politicians.
Summers' End
Larry Summers will not be the 15th Chairman of the Federal Reserve. Because you have a rich and full life without keeping track of who's in and who's out in Washington, DC, you might not have known that Larry Summers was being considered for the post of Fed Chairman, but he was. How do I know that he will not be Chairman of the Fed? Because he has withdrawn his name from consideration.
Black Keeps Americans Out of the Red
The federal government already takes advantage of taxpayers' money. The last thing it should do is stand by while fellow Americans do the same. Yesterday, Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn.) took the first step in cracking down on the abuse that's bleeding into the health care law months before the policy even takes effect! Under ObamaCare, Americans can apply for direct health care subsidies -- if they are in a certain income bracket. Earlier in the summer, Health and Human Services (HHS) announced that it wouldn't be setting up a system to verify those claims until late in 2015. In the meantime, anyone could apply for a health care subsidy and lie about his income just to get the federal benefits. It has been estimated that fraudulent applications could total tens of [billions of dollars](http://www.tennessean.com/article/20130913/NEWS02/309130130).
Abortion Support Undermines Obama's Moral Leadership
Whether we are talking about respect for a nation or for an individual, nothing undermines respect more than duplicity -- saying one thing and acting differently. I think it is a big reason why President Barack Obama's Tuesday speech to the nation, in which he attempted to explain why he has proposed military action in Syria, fell so flat.
From the Iraqi Pullout to the Disaster in Syria
Democrats jeered when John McCain told a New Hampshire audience during the 2008 presidential campaign that he would be glad to see US troops remain in Iraq for decades, even a century, once the war was over. "We've been in Japan for 60 years [and] in South Korea for 50 years," he said. A similar long-term stay in a postwar Iraq, buttressing allies and providing stability in a volatile region, would "be fine with me as long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed."
Sunday, September 15, 2013
Connecting the Dolts
Charles Dickens famously opened "A Tale of Two Cities" with "It was the best of times; it was the worst of times." If I were writing an updated version, I would announce it is the worst of times. Wherever you turn, you are confronted by journalists, politicians and just plain folks, who make you ashamed to be a member of the same species. These days, America is divided between the useful idiots who believe everything they read in the NY Times or hear from Obama and the useless idiots they elect to fill the seats in the House and Senate.
Why Do Liberals Believe What They Believe?
Do you know of any place you can go to find a rational, well-thought out economic argument for liberalism? I can't.
A Perfect Failure
WASHINGTON -- At 4 a.m. on Jan. 1, 1959, an hour when there never were commercial flights from Havana, David Atlee Phillips was lounging in a lawn chair there, sipping champagne after a New Year's Eve party, when a commercial aircraft flew low over his house. He surmised that dictator Fulgencio Batista was fleeing because Fidel Castro was arriving. He was right. Soon he, and many others, would be spectacularly wrong about Cuba. According to Jim Rasenberger's history of the Bay of Pigs invasion, "The Brilliant Disaster," Phillips was "a handsome 37-year-old former stage actor" who "had been something of a dilettante before joining the CIA." There, however, he was an expert. And in April 1960, he assured Richard Bissell, the CIA's invasion mastermind, that within six months radio propaganda would produce "the proper psychological climate" for the invasion to trigger a mass Cuban uprising against Castro.