Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Friday, March 15, 2013
Who Would Follow Our Example on Keystone?
While many have long seen America as the global bad boy, everybody likes Canada. If Uncle Sam tucks his pack of Marlboros under his T-shirt sleeve and plays by his own rules, the Canadian moose -- or whatever their Uncle Sam equivalent is -- always wears his blue blazer and school tie and does his chores without being asked. Canada is a global citizen, a good neighbor, a northern Puerto Rico with an EU sensibility that earns its gold stars from the United Nations every day. This fact should have relevance below the 49th parallel. Right now, we're all waiting for President Obama to decide on whether the Keystone pipeline can go forward. The pipeline would take oil from the tar sands of northern Alberta and deliver it to refineries in the U.S. It would extend all the way down to ports in Texas.
Intellectuals and Race: Part IV
Among the many irrational ideas about racial and ethnic groups that have polarized societies over the centuries and around the world, few have been more irrational and counterproductive than the current dogmas of multiculturalism. Intellectuals who imagine that they are helping racial or ethnic groups that lag behind by redefining their lags out of existence with multicultural rhetoric are in fact leading them into a blind alley. Multiculturalism is a tempting quick fix for groups that lag by simply pronouncing their cultures to be equal, or "equally valid," in some vague and lofty sense. Cultural features are just different, not better or worse, according to this dogma.
GOP Must Launch Reality Offensive
How can anyone take President Obama seriously when he tells us our national debt is no big deal? Well, we have to take him seriously, because, unserious thinking or not, he has serious power, including the power to obstruct progress on reducing the debt. I'm not making this up, of course, which is too bad because it illustrates why it is so hard for Republicans to work with this man. He neither views the fiscal world from the same lens nor shares the goal of significant debt reduction. In an interview with ABC News' George Stephanopoulos, Obama said, "We don't have an immediate crisis in terms of debt. In fact, for the next 10 years, it's going to be in a sustainable place." Not only is that delusional on its face based on what we already know but there is no telling what kinds of financial strains his favorite monster, Obamacare, is going to have on the debt or what kinds of extraordinary circumstances might necessitate spending surges over the next decade.
Thursday, March 14, 2013
A Catholic Pope, Revisited
By the time you read this, the world's billion-plus Roman Catholics may have a new pope. And when the black smoke of Tuesday's indecisive first vote has turned to the white smoke of final decision, don't be surprised if the cardinals have chosen... a Catholic pope. After the election of Benedict XVI in 2005, I wrote that the cardinals had correctly ignored the desires of some people to install a wimpish equivocator willing bend with the winds of compromise. I believe the cardinals will show the same wisdom in 2013. In other words, the cardinals will choose someone who can remain faithful to his creed and his office, a true Catholic in all respects. Some dissidents think the Church needs to become relevant by embracing all modern codes of conduct, but the Church will remain relevant where it really counts only if it retains its core principles. When the world is in adrift in turmoil, the answer is not more turmoil.
Trouble in the Nanny State
Like the proverbial monkey typing for infinity and getting Shakespeare, Mayor Bloomberg's obsession with reforming New Yorkers' health has finally produced a brilliant ad campaign. Posters are popping up in subway stations and bus stops giving statistics about teen pregnancy that show cute little kids saying things like, "Honestly, Mom ... chances are he won't stay with you. What happens to me?" and "I'm twice as likely not to graduate high school because you had me as a teen." (Based on a recent CBS report, the kid could add, "Then again, I'm in the New York City public school system, so even if I graduate I won't be able to read.")
Detroit's Decline
Since the Motown sound went silent -- except on oldies stations -- and General Motors and Chrysler (but not Ford) required life support from Washington, there has been little to recommend Detroit, Mich., to visitors, much less its residents. The recent conviction of Kwame Kilpatrick, the former mayor of Detroit, on multiple charges, including racketeering, fraud and extortion, adds another insult to the city's injury, increasing its misery. During the mid-20th century, Detroit was a vibrant city with a population of almost 2 million. Today, it stands near ruin. The number of residents has now been estimated at just over 700,000. According to the Chicago Tribune, "The city has a crushing debt of $14 billion, and a budget deficit of as much as $327 million. The pay and benefit structure of public employees can't be sustained. ... The city could run out of cash in a matter of weeks." And yet the city's main courthouse reports having $280 million worth of uncollected fines and fees.
Knee-jerk Jerks
What is so astonishing about liberals is that they aren't just wrong occasionally or even wrong more often than not. What is truly amazing is that they are always wrong about everything. To grasp how remarkable that is, years ago, when quiz shows ruled the roost on TV, I had an uncle whose picture you would see if you looked up "ignorant" in the dictionary. One day, he announced that the shows were rigged. His conviction was based on his belief, as he put it, that "Nobody's that smart!" He refused to believe that anyone could know so much about boxing or science or Shakespeare.
From Affirmative Action to Diversity
Sometime in the new millennium, "global warming" evolved into "climate change." Amid growing controversies over the planet's past temperatures, Al Gore and other activists understood that human-induced "climate change" could better explain almost any weather extremity -- droughts or floods, too much heat or cold, hurricanes and tornadoes. Similar verbal gymnastics have gradually turned "affirmative action" into "diversity" -- a word ambiguous enough to avoid the innate contradictions of a liberal society affirming illiberal racial preferencing. In an increasingly multiracial society, it has grown hard to determine the racial ancestry of millions of minorities. Is someone who is ostensibly one-half Native American or African-American classified as a minority eligible for special consideration in hiring or college admission, while someone one-quarter or one-eighth is not? How exactly does affirmative action adjudicate our precise ethnic identities these days? These are not illiberal questions -- given Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren's past claims of being Native American to find advantage in her academic career.
The Art of Good Writing
WASHINGTON -- When asked to explain the brisk pace of his novels, Elmore Leonard said, "I leave out the parts that people skip." You will not want to skip anything in William Zinsser's short essays written for the American Scholar magazine's website and now collected in "The Writer Who Stayed," a book that begins with him wondering why "every year student writing is a little more disheveled." One answer is that too few have read Zinsser's earlier book "On Writing Well." His answer is: "People now get their information mainly from random images on a screen and from random messages in their ears, and it no longer occurs to them that writing is linear and sequential, sentence B must follow sentence A."
Intellectuals and Race: Part III
The desire of intellectuals for some grand theory that will explain complex patterns with some solitary and simple factor has produced many ideas that do not stand up under scrutiny, but which have nevertheless had widespread acceptance -- and sometimes catastrophic consequences -- in countries around the world. The theory of genetic determinism which dominated the early 20th century led to many harmful consequences, ranging from racial segregation and discrimination up to and including the Holocaust. The currently prevailing theory is that malice of one sort or another explains group differences in outcomes. Whether the lethal results of this theory would add up to as many murders as in the Holocaust is a question whose answer would require a detailed study of the history of lethal outbursts against groups hated for their success.
Senator Rand Paul Comes of Age
WASHINGTON -- When Senator Rand Paul took to the floor of the United States Senate the morning of March 6 he really -- as they say -- may have made a difference. It is a difference in our awareness of the issues facing the country. It is a difference in our perception of the man who is leading the country, President Barack Obama. It might even have been a difference in the direction the country will go. Will it continue on its melancholy path toward statism or will it follow the course of freedom as laid out by the Founding Fathers? Senator Paul rose ostensibly "to begin to filibuster John Brennan's nomination for the CIA." Yet he aimed higher. As he explained it in the Washington Post on March 10, "I wanted to sound an alarm bell from coast to coast. I wanted everybody to know that our Constitution is precious, and that no American should be killed by a drone without first being charged with a crime. As Americans, we have fought long and hard for the Bill of Rights. The idea that no person shall be held without due process, and that no person shall be held for a capital offense without being indicted, is a founding American principle and a basic right." Thus he filibustered for 13 hours, and his views redounded around the Internet, on Tweeter, on Facebook. Everywhere!
Cardinals Would Be Wise to Ignore Journalists' Advice
The College of Cardinals met in conclave on Tuesday to begin the process of electing a new pope. The cardinals have been getting plenty of advice from American journalists. The Catholic Church, they say, should open up the priesthood to women and allow priests to marry. It should abandon its ban on contraception and endorse same-sex marriage. It should stop being so dogmatic about its dogmas. As a non-Catholic, I don't presume to offer any advice. The church has managed to exist for nearly 2,000 without my counsel. But I do have some observations.
Women in Corporate America: Is this 2013 or 1953?
Is Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg really complaining -- in 2013 -- that "only" 14 percent of executive officers are female, that women earn 77 cents compared to a dollar earned by men, and that women hurt their own advancement by failing to "lean in" and become more assertive? Is this 2013 or 1953? In her new book, "Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead," Sandberg writes that "while women continue to outpace men in educational achievement," women over the last 10 years have "ceased making real progress" in the top ranks of "corporate America." That's quite an assertion -- especially since it isn't true.
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
Useful Idiots, Then and Now
On the 60th anniversary of Josef Stalin's death last week, the Associated Press reported that admirers of the Soviet dictator, one of history's bloodiest tyrants, were flocking to the Kremlin to venerate him as a great leader despite his ghastly record of repression. With polls showing a rise in Russians' admiration and nostalgia for Stalin, observed AP, "experts and politicians puzzled and despaired over his enduring popularity."
Obama's Nominee for Secretary of (Illegal Alien) Labor
The Beltway is buzzing over President Obama's likely nomination of Thomas E. Perez as the next head of the U.S. Department of Labor. But when Americans find out whom Perez has lobbied for most aggressively over the course of his extremist leftwing social justice career, they'll be wondering which country Obama's pick really plans to serve. Press accounts describe Perez, currently the assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's civil rights division, as a "tireless advocate of worker and civil rights." The son of immigrants from the Dominican Republic, Perez was a former special counsel for the late illegal alien amnesty champion Sen. Ted Kennedy.
64% of Schoolchildren Fed on Federal Subsidies
Not so long ago in this republic, most parents of school-age children would frequently visit grocery stores where they would use their own money to buy things like peanut butter and jelly, and bologna and cheese to make lunches for their kids to haul to school in brown paper bags. It was an American tradition. Now, like other great things about America, brown-bag lunches are being driven to extinction by politicians seeking inordinate government control over our lives.
Mourning 'Populist' Hugo Chavez
Our left-wing media's somber, mourning coverage of Venezuelan despot Hugo Chavez once again demonstrates the double standard journalists reserve for dictators. Seven years ago, the left's greatest South American hate object, Augusto Pinochet, passed away. Never mind how he used free-market reforms to modernize Chile. Never mind that after 15 years of rule, he allowed a national plebiscite to vote against him, and he stepped down peacefully. The left-wing outrage pulsed on the front pages. The Washington Post headline for Pinochet in 2006 was "A Dictator's Dark Legacy." Reporters Monte Reel and J.Y. Smith stated his government "murdered and tortured thousands during his repressive 17-year rule ... leaving a legacy of abuse that took successive governments years to catalogue." His death left "incomplete numerous court cases that had sought to bring him to justice." In other words, he was a right-wing dictator.
