Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
A Post-Post Office World
Even parts of government that look like a business never get run with the efficiency of a business. Just look at the post office. They buy commercials and tout their services the way private businesses do. They offer a service that customers want. But a real business can't get away with losing billions every year. (I guess in the era of bailouts, I should say *shouldn't* get away with it.) The post office lost $16 billion last year, despite having all sorts of advantages that most private businesses don't have. They have a near monopoly on first-class mail delivery. You want to deliver something to someone? You better not put it in their mailbox -- that's illegal. The U.S. Postal Service doesn't pay sales tax or property tax. They don't even pay parking tickets.
Price Versus Cost
Suppose you buy a gallon of gas for $3. How much did it cost you? You say, "Williams, that's a silly question. It cost $3." That's where you're mistaken, because there's a difference between price and cost. To prove that price and cost are not the same, consider the following. Suppose you live and work in New York City and routinely pay $15 for a haircut. Imagine you were told that there's a barber in Boise, Idaho, who can give you the identical haircut for just $5. Would you start going to the Boise barber? I'm betting you'd answer no because even though the price is cheaper, the cost is greater.
Kermit Gosnell and Abortion's Darkest Side
If abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell is found guilty of homicide, he will be unique among murderers-for-hire: He set his fees based on weight. "The bigger the baby, the more he charged," a grand jury explained. It recommended he be charged with eight counts of murder -- one patient, seven babies. Despite what amounted to a blackout at many media outlets until last week, you've probably now heard at least some of the details. According to the grand jury report, Gosnell's Philadelphia "clinic" was a filthy abattoir. It stunk of urine. Flea-ridden cats defecated freely, including in procedure rooms. Fetuses -- or, rather, parts of fetuses -- were all over the place, in jars, on shelves. The remains of 45 babies were found by authorities. Gosnell collected baby feet in jars.
Immigration Sophistry
Most laws are meant to stop people from doing something, and to penalize those who disregard those laws. More generally, laws are meant to protect the society from the law breakers. But our immigration laws are different. Here the whole focus is on the "plight" of those who have broken the laws, and on what can be done to lift the stigma and ease the pressures they feel, so that they can "come out of the shadows" and "normalize" their lives. Merely using the word "illegal" to describe their breaking the law is considered to be a sign of mean-spiritedness, if not racism. The Associated Press refuses to let their reporters refer to people who sneaked across the border into this country, in violation of American immigration laws, as "illegal immigrants."
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
Buying Insurance Based on Your Genetics
Robert Cooke-Deegan knows exactly how to scare insurance companies. When he discusses the results of his study, titled "Genetic Testing for Alzheimer's and Long-Term Care Insurance," with industry executives, they become "heated," he says. "They say that this could put them out of business!" What Cooke-Deegan and his fellow researchers discovered is that people who take a genetic test to find out if they have traits that lead to Alzheimer's are five times more likely to purchase long-term care insurance, which would cover most of their expenses if -- or in all probability when -- they need years of nursing home care. It's like taking out a million-dollar life insurance policy the day before you know that you're going to die. The stock market would call it "trading on insider information."
All Child Killers Are Not Equal
Everyone in America not living under a rock has heard of Adam Lanza. Kermit Gosnell? Not so much. The reason is obvious. Adam Lanza's rampage accrues to progressive ambitions of gun "control," or as those in California more than willing to sign a petition to outlaw guns and confiscate them from law-abiding citizens reveals, the attempt to toss the Second Amendment on the ash heap of history -- absent the "messy" amendment process outlined in the Constitution. Toward that end, progressives will use the corpses of 20 dead schoolchildren from Newtown as stage props, telling their fellow Americans that "something must be down now!" or we will all bear the burden of Adam Lanza's depravity. In short, you either buy into some progressive version of gun control, or you become accomplices to Adam Lanza's crime.
Of Churches, Guns and What We've Come To
The Wall Street Journal relates the sad saga of a Christian body riven by dissension at an awful moment for dissension among Christians. "Episcopalians along the South Carolina Coast," says the Journal, "are battling in court to determine which of two factions owns an estimated $500 million in church buildings, grounds and cemeteries, following an acrimonious split last year over social issues." Two-thirds of Episcopalians in the venerable Diocese of South Carolina (whose cathedral is at Charleston) have chosen reluctantly to stand apart from a national church structure they see as warping the Christian Gospel into a legal brief for political and social goals. There might have been room for discussion of various matters that fall under such a heading but for the longtime talent of the Catholic Church's legislative body (in which I serve as a lay deputy) for stifling objections to the new vision.
Is USC Another Left-Wing Seminary?
Last week, a USC student released 15 minutes of excerpts from videos he had made of his political science professor, Darry Sragow. Here is some of what the USC professor said to his students: "California Republicans [are] really stupid and racist." " ... Republicans are 82 percent white. Losers." "The Republican Party in California ... is the last vestige of angry old white people." "The Republicans are trying to prevent people of color and people of lower income from voting by requiring voter ID."
The World (America) Is Upside-Down, Part 2
Recently, I wrote a column arguing that the world is upside-down -- by which I meant "our" world, America. Today I offer more exhibits in support of my case that our culture is unraveling. I realize that in today's America, the notion that we should seek to preserve and promote the traditions, values and ideals that this country's founding generation mostly shared is considered not just passé but offensively wrongheaded. Yes, why would we want to perpetuate a once underlying consensus (and the Constitution formulated on it) that gave rise to the greatest nation in world history? Well, many don't, as they level further assaults on our Constitution, our liberty tradition and what used to be our shared values. We haven't just accepted as normal what was heretofore considered abnormal; we are, increasingly, embracing evil while calling it good and demonizing those who are still "clinging" to traditional values. Unless you buy into the self-destructive course much of our society has decided to pursue, unless you consent to the systematic dismantling of our core foundations, you are the problem.
Fact-Free Crusades
Amid all the heated, emotional advocacy of gun control, have you ever heard even one person present convincing hard evidence that tighter gun control laws have in fact reduced murders? Think about all the states, communities within states, as well as foreign countries, that have either tight gun control laws or loose or non-existent gun control laws. With so many variations and so many sources of evidence available, surely there would be some compelling evidence somewhere if tighter gun control laws actually reduced the murder rate. And if tighter gun control laws don't actually reduce the murder rate, then why are we being stampeded toward such laws after every shooting that gets media attention?
Britain's Hateful Politics
BELFAST, Northern Ireland -- The death of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has prompted reactions from Britain's far left that takes bad taste to new extremes. During its Top 40 music countdown Sunday night, BBC Radio 1 was "forced" to play a seven-second clip of "Ding Dong the Witch is Dead" from the 1939 film "The Wizard of Oz," because Thatcher haters had bought enough copies during a feverish online campaign to bump it to the top of the pop charts. It ultimately reached the number two spot, 5,000 sales short of the top position. If you think U.S. politics has become too corrosive, consider the British variety. Call it patty cake vs. cage fighting.
Progress Is Not Inevitable
To understand the magnitude of what Egyptian columnist Khalid Muntasir has done, it helps to get a taste of what most Egyptian and Arab media are like. In Egypt, expressions of vicious anti-Semitism are not just acceptable, they are commonplace. Mohammed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood leader and now president of Egypt, was famously captured on tape describing Jews as the "descendants of apes and pigs," as recently as 2010. This aroused not a flicker of controversy inside Egypt. In 2002, Egyptian state television, along with channels throughout the Arab world, ran a program giving credence to the infamous Czarist forgery, "The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion," a "document" that supposedly traces the Jewish conspiracy to rule the world and a durable standard of anti-Semitic ravings for a century. The most vile anti-Jewish (not just anti-Israeli) calumnies are circulated widely in the Arab press. Mein Kampf is a bestseller in the Palestinian territories, and Islamist supremacism blends with ethnic hatred throughout the Arab world to concoct a brew of overpowering anti-Semitic (and often anti-Christian) virulence.
Monday, April 15, 2013
Hollywood's Undying Love for Communist Angela Davis
A vicious totalitarian's legacy is whitewashed by some of the country's biggest celebrities.
The Predictable Liberal Assault on Ben Carson
Dr. Ben Carson stepped into the national spotlight recently when, as speaker at the National Prayer Breakfast, to an audience that included President Obama, he was openly critical of the President's approach to health care and his overall management of the nation's economy. Carson, who is director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital, is a hero to many. His life story, rising from a Detroit ghetto to a life of accomplishment and distinction, is a story of American ideals on steroids. Those ideals say that America is about merit not circumstance. Your life, your achievements are the result of what you do and how you live, not where you came from.
The Conceit of the Self-Annointed
There is a trial balloon, or at least a rumor, floating around that suggests there just might be a Hillary Clinton/Michelle Obama run for the White House in 2016. Some are actually referring to it as a dream ticket. More like a nightmare. But I am willing to make book it doesn't happen. Anyone who actually believes Mrs. Obama would play second fiddle to the honky bitch probably thinks that if that idea doesn't pan out, Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny might consider making a run for the White House. At least those two seem to like each other. Even at this late date, there are conservative pundits who insist that Barack Obama is brilliant. In trying to figure out where people get that wacky idea, I have concluded it's because they, too, attended an Ivy League college. There's nothing like snobbism to make people turn a blind eye to reality. So even though Obama announced that there are 57 states in the Union, informed us that Austrians speak Austrian, that "corps" is pronounced "corpse," that the federal government doesn't have a spending problem and that a $17 trillion debt is nothing to get excited about, they continue to insist he's a genius.
Obama's Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay
It's a pity North Korea's Kim Jong Un had to spoil the party this week. Rockers at the White House should not have had to listen to disturbing news stories about rattling sabers and missile launches. Here's a satellite photograph that East Room party-goers should study, for at least five minutes. The astute reader will see in this image of the Korean peninsula by night some very interesting things. There is a sharp line between the lighted portions and the darkened portions of Korea. That line runs along the 38th Parallel of latitude. That was the Truce Line agreed to after years of bitter and contentious negotiations between North Korean and Chinese Communists and the UN. For, in those halcyon days, the United Nations was actually willing to use force to counter Communist aggression. In reality, it was the Americans who constituted the vast majority of UN forces engaged on the Korean peninsula between 1950 and 1953.
King's 'Letter' and the Law
In his "Letter from Birmingham Jail," written behind bars 50 years ago this week, Martin Luther King invokes God 15 times and mentions the words "Christ" or "Christian" 21 times. But he refers to "law" 41 times -- more than both of them combined -- and thereby hangs a lesson. King was a Baptist minister and a scholar of theology. He had come to Birmingham with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to head a nonviolent protest against the city's rigid segregation, and he wasn't the only pastor jailed for disregarding a ban on civil rights demonstrations. In an open letter to the local paper, a group of white religious leaders had publicly criticized the sit-ins, warning that such "extreme measures" -- which were "led in part by outsiders" -- were apt to "incite ... hatred and violence." King read the ministers' statement after he was arrested. "Letter from Birmingham Jail" was his response.
Lead, Follow, or ...
In the '60s a battle cry of anti-war (and anti-Lyndon Johnson) college students was "Lead, follow or get out of the way;" a concept that morphed into lyrics for Bob Dylan's anthem, "The Times They are a'Changin.'" >Come Congressmen, Senators Please heed the call. Don't stand in the doorway Don't block up the hall ... President Obama has tried his version of leading -- which has been mostly attempting to bully Congressional Republicans into submission. It hasn't worked.
Extra Care Required in Crafting Immigration Reform
"Without legislative language," Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy declared in a statement March 20, "there is nothing for the Judiciary Committee to consider this week at our markup." The subject of the statement was immigration legislation, and his irritation was understandable. "For months, I have urged the president to send his proposal for comprehensive immigration reform to the Senate," Leahy noted. He might have added that the White House, with access to the expertise and experience of the Justice and Homeland Security Departments, could easily have come up with a draft.