Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Monday, July 1, 2013
Arab Summer: Egypt
An American teacher guilty of nothing more than wanting to help school children in Egypt learn English was stabbed to death while watching a demonstration against Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi.
Same-Sex Marriage Is War on Religion
The Book of Proverbs, part of biblical canon, once a vital part of American culture, tells us: "Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall." It's this haughty spirit, this pride that precedes destruction, that lies behind the Supreme Court's decision last week to bury the Defense of Marriage Act. DOMA defined marriage, for purposes of federal law, as traditional marriage -- the union of man and woman.
Voting Rights and the Chains of Memory
Like everything else in our polarized age, reaction to the Supreme Court's 5-4 ruling in *Shelby County v. Holder* divided sharply along political lines. The court held Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional, effectively lifting the burden on certain states to get federal approval before making any change to their election procedures. Predictably, conservatives and liberals clashed over whether the majority opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts got the constitutional law right. But I was struck less by the legal arguments than by the angry denial on the left, especially among minorities, that the ingrained racial disenfranchisement the Voting Rights Act was enacted to eradicate is dead and buried. The defeat of Jim Crow is one of the great progressive triumphs of American history. But to hear the outraged critics, you'd think the court had just thrown the door open to a revival of poll taxes and literacy tests. Worse, you'd think white Americans were eager to revive them.
Finding Angel
We had just had our second dog, Duke, put to sleep a few months earlier. He had been a Maltese, just like our earlier Sammy. I had put my foot down. No more dogs, I told my wife. There was just too much grief involved in losing them. But that's an easier vow to make than to keep if you love dogs. So Yvonne and I had begun to talk about what kind of dog to get in the unlikely event that I ever changed my mind. As usual, she said it would have to be small and white just like the other two. I insisted that it would have to be female.
No Standard
"For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh." -- Genesis 2:24, NIV The problem for people who believe in an Authority higher even than the Constitution is that in our increasingly secular and indifferent society it has become more difficult to persuade those who do not subscribe to an immutable standard to accept that view. It is nearly impossible to restrain a people intent on throwing off any and all restraints. History is full of examples of empires that collapsed from within before they were conquered from without.
At Gettysburg, Choices Mattered
WASHINGTON -- In the 1780s, the son of a farmer in south-central Pennsylvania purchased from his father 116 acres where two roads intersected. He laid out 210 lots for a town he named for himself. He was James Gettys. What happened when two armies collided there 150 years ago was, some might argue, not the most important battle in American history or even in the Civil War. The 1777 defeat of the British at Saratoga won French support for the American Revolution. The Battle of Antietam (Sept. 17, 1862) enabled Abraham Lincoln to redefine the war by issuing the Emancipation Proclamation. The Battle of Midway sealed Japan's fate.
Sunday, June 30, 2013
Why Liberals Like Affirmative Action
The Supreme Court punted on the University of Texas affirmative action case the other day. But the issue won't seem to go away -- except in California. California? Yes, California. Although seen as a bastion of liberalism in the public mind, the state passed proposition 209, banning affirmative action, 17 years ago. So what happened?
Saturday, June 29, 2013
Bernanke's Bumpy Ride -- Investors Beware
No matter how many monetary officials try to sugarcoat it with damage control, the fact remains that the Ben Bernanke Fed wants to end its quantitative-easing bond-buying operations over the next year. That was Bernanke's statement at his last press conference, and I've seen nothing to contradict it. As everyone knows, stocks and bonds collapsed right after Bernanke let the cat out of the bag. Fortunately, markets have stabilized since then. But my hunch is that unless the economy really falls back into a quasi-recession, the Fed is going to go ahead and end its bond purchases.
Dani Dayan: Messenger from Judea and Samaria
Dani Dayan is an Israeli envoy who visited Washington recently. He came as a representative of the Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria. Dani Dayan wants to open up a dialog with Americans, both at the official level and at the grassroots level. He says Israel's settlers are "here to stay." Most Americans have not been to Judea and Samaria and are therefore not familiar with its geography, resources, and topography. The Judean hills are crucial for strategic reasons.
Does the Beggar on the Street Have a Moral Claim on My Earnings?
Does inequality by itself create moral claims and obligations? If so, is income inequality the most important kind of inequality? Or, is inequality of IQ, attractiveness, life expectancy or social status more important? ... When we use terms like "obligation" and "claim" we are using the language of individualism. But almost no one on the left who writes about inequality believes in individualism. They're all collectivists. What they really believe in is collective decision-making. ... The left is intellectually bankrupt. It has been that way for almost a half century.
Why I Can't Be God
I have come to the realization that I am not cut out to be God. I mention that because there was actually a time when I thought I could handle the job. I'm not just bragging. I just figured that if I'd been in charge, I would have prevented the Holocaust, I would have given Stalin and Mao heart attacks in their 20s, I would have done away with cancer and Alzheimer's, I would kept the temperature in the low 70s year round here in the San Fernando Valley and I'd have steered Juan Williams into a different line of work. But I have come to the conclusion that I lack the prerequisite of patience. I can't tell you how many times if I had the power, I would have scrubbed the human race and started over from scratch. I'd probably have let dogs and elephants run things. Clearly, leaving people in charge is a big mistake. Especially when you look around the world and you see people like Kim Jong Un, Vladimir Putin, the Castro brothers, Bashar al-Assad, Asif Ali Zardari, Hamid Karzai, Xi Jinping, Mohamed Morsi, Mahmoud Abbas, Robert Mugabe, the mullahs of Iran and Barack Obama, running things.
From The Comedy Store
Bill Clinton hailed the Supreme Court striking down the Defense of Marriage Act as unconstitutional. It's a bit ironic. Bill Clinton was the president who signed the Defense of Marriage Act into law, but to be fair to Bill, he was against his own marriage.
Friday, June 28, 2013
Polygamists: The More the Marry-er
Twenty-four hours after erupting in celebration, the Left still woke up this morning to 50 states whose marriage laws are completely unchanged. To the casual observer, it must have seemed from all the media coverage of the Supreme Court's decisions that natural marriage had gasped its last breath. But for all the arms raised in victory, the reality is that Ted Olson and David Boies didn't get from the Supreme Court what they so desperately wanted: a sweeping declaration that same-sex "marriage" is legal across America. The iconic photos of rainbow banners and kissing couples, splashed across the front pages of major newspapers, only tell part of the story.
The Incredible Shrinking Presidency
The President is in Africa on a perfectly meaningless goodwill trip to somewhere and somewhere else while back here in Our Nation's Capital it was one of the most important weeks in the history of the Republic. On Tuesday the U.S. Supreme Court announced its ruling on a case involving the Voting Rights Act -- that part of the act that required nine states to get U.S. Justice Department permission to make just about any changes to voting.
Erasing the 'Faces of Global Terrorism'
The FBI takes down photos of wanted terrorists to avoid giving offense.
Medicare by the Scary Numbers
Even before the latest Medicare trustees report came out at the end of May, the White House spin masters had already crafted a story to go with it. Medicare's finances have improved, we're being told. The trust fund will last longer. The unfunded liability is lower. One of the reasons is said to be ObamaCare. The core of the new health reform doesn't kick in until next year, but already it's improving things for seniors?
Consensus on Race in the High Court
The Supreme Court waited until its last week in session to hand down three of its most controversial decisions: two involving race and a third involving gay marriage. While the court delivered closely split decisions on two of the cases, what was perhaps most surprising was the near unanimity in a case involving affirmative action at The University of Texas. Unlike the ideological divide that continues over the issue of gay marriage and whether the most punitive provisions of the Voting Rights Act remain necessary nearly a half-century after the law was initially enacted, the justices' decision in Fisher v. University of Texas suggests they share the public's general suspicion of race-based preferences in college admissions.
Another White House Play Date With Muslim Jihad
Forget Paula Deen. There are far more dangerous bigots and poisonous haters spoiling the American landscape. They cook up violent rhetoric and murderous plots against our troops, our citizens and our allies 24/7. And they have direct access to the White House. Earlier this week, the indefatigable Investigative Project on Terrorism blew the whistle on the Obama administration's latest flirtation with Muslim jihad. Sheikh Abdullah bin Bayyah bragged on his website that he had met with Team Obama on June 13. IPT reported that bin Bayyah was invited by National Security Council official Gayle Smith "to learn from you and we need to be looking for new mechanisms to communicate with you and the Association of Muslim Scholars."
Political Right Must Summon Moral Courage to Fight Back
The totalitarian political left proves every day its relentless determination to complete President Obama's stated goal of fundamentally transforming this country. The political right can either wake up to this reality and unite in promoting a better vision or stand by and watch its children's future disintegrate. The left criticizes the right for its alleged partisanship, extremism, intolerance and angst, when the left dwarfs the right in all these characteristics. Contrary to leftist propaganda, mainstream conservatives haven't grown more strident or extreme -- unless you define extremists as those who are valiantly trying to preserve America's greatness and prevent the left from steamrolling its agenda against the will of the people.
Nationalized Gay Marriage, Now Inevitable
WASHINGTON -- Under the Defense of Marriage Act, the federal government does not recognize same-sex marriages even in states that have legalized it. This week, the Supreme Court ruled DOMA unconstitutional. There are two possible grounds, distinct and in some ways contradictory, for doing so. The curious thing about the court's DOMA decision is that it contains both rationales. The first is federalism. Marriage is the province of the states. Each state decides who is married and who is not. The federal government may not intrude. It must therefore recognize gay marriage where it has been legalized.