Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Thursday, January 17, 2013
The War Between the Amendments
The horrific Newtown, Conn., mass shooting has unleashed a frenzy to pass new gun-control legislation. But the war over restricting firearms is not just between liberals and conservatives; it also pits the first two amendments to the U.S. Constitution against each other. Apparently, in the sequential thinking of James Madison and the Founding Fathers, the right to free expression and the guarantee to own arms were the two most important personal liberties. But now these two cherished rights seem to be at odds with each other and have caused bitter exchanges between interpreters of the Constitution. Many liberals believe there is no need to own semi-automatic assault rifles, magazines that hold more than 10 bullets, or even semi-automatic handguns. They argue that hunters and sportsmen don't need such rapid-firing guns to kill their game -- and that slower-firing revolvers and pump- or bolt-action rifles are sufficient for home protection.
The Hagel Case
WASHINGTON -- Former senator Chuck Hagel is a suave, energetic, spirited fellow. He is intelligent, and from his early youth apparently patriotic and undoubtedly courageous. He showed that in Vietnam. Hagel has been a Republican senator and an accomplished businessman. Now he is President Barack Obama's nominee for secretary of defense. Because he is President Obama's nominee for secretary of defense he is attracting dutiful scrutiny, and that is all to the good. This is not your ordinary presidency. In domestic policy and foreign policy President Obama is showing every indication of attempting to be an epochal president (with four million fewer votes for his second term than for his first). That is to say, he poses a distinct break from Ronald Reagan's model of government and even from Franklin Roosevelt's. In the economy he seems to be resurrecting the welfare state on the model of France or perhaps Spain. In foreign policy he famously promises to "lead from behind," as illogical as that sounds. In both areas his exemplars are sure losers, but his party and his partisans seem not to have noticed.
Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition
My title refers to the title of a popular song during World War II. Today, as we know, both pieces of advice are frowned upon in left-wing circles. The irony is that at the very same time that Obama and his favorite Munchkins are doing their level best to disarm Americans, the same crowd is gift-wrapping 20 F-16 fighter jets and sending them to the Muslim Brotherhood, the folks running the show in Egypt. Now a sane person might wonder why liberals trust our sworn enemies more than they do law-abiding American citizens. But once you begin asking liberals to make sense, you might as well start expecting dogs to write sonnets and horses to compose concertos. One would think that with the two houses of Congress brimming over with Jews, Obama would have to tread carefully in the Middle East. But, as you may have noticed, he has found that he can ignore the likes of Lautenberg, Schumer, Waxman, Boxer and Franken, with impunity. Otherwise, there's no way on earth he would have even considered nominating Chuck Hagel to be his next Secretary of Defense. Hagel, who was an undistinguished Republican senator from Nebraska is the only sort of Republican Obama likes; namely, the sort who supported him in 2008 and again in 2012.
An Imperial President
One definition of "imperial" on dictionary.com is, "of the nature or rank of an emperor or supreme ruler." At his news conference Monday, a petulant, threatening and confrontational President Obama spoke like an emperor or supreme ruler. All that was missing was a scepter, a crown and a robe trimmed in ermine. This president exceeds even Bill Clinton in his ability to evade, prevaricate and dissemble. I didn't think that possible. Not only did he supply long answers to relatively easy questions, but much of what he said bore no relation to reality.
Ivory-tower Obama Can't Abide Views He Doesn't Share
To judge from his surly demeanor and defiant words at his press conference on Monday, Barack Obama begins his second term with a strategy to defeat and humiliate Republicans rather than a strategy to govern. His point blank refusal to negotiate over the debt ceiling was clearly designed to make the House Republicans look bad. But Obama knows very well that negotiations usually accompany legislation to increase the government's debt limit. As Gordon Gray of the conservative American Action Network points out, most of the 17 increases in the debt ceiling over the last 20 years have been part of broader measures. Working out what will be in those measures is a matter for negotiation between the legislative and executive branches. That's because the Constitution gives Congress the power to incur debt and the president the power to veto.
Some Questions for Hagel
WASHINGTON -- Senate hearings on the nomination of Chuck Hagel to be defense secretary will be a distinctive Washington entertainment, a donnybrook without drama. He should be confirmed: Presidents are due substantial deference in selecting Cabinet members because they administer presidential policies and, unlike judicial appointments, they leave when their nominators do. Hagel will be confirmed because Sen. Chuck Schumer, after hesitating theatrically enough to propitiate supporters of Israel, of whom there are many among his New York constituents, will not oppose Hagel. Opposition would end Schumer's hope to make the nation nostalgic for Harry Reid by succeeding him as Senate Democratic leader. Still, the hearings will be sound and fury signifying renewed interest in national security policy, which can be illuminated by Hagel addressing questions like these...
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
Obama Ignores the Rational Answer
What do Al Hunt of Bloomberg News, David Gregory of "Meet the Press" and President Obama have in common -- besides their liberal politics? They all send their kids to Sidwell Friends School. With campuses in Washington, D.C. and Bethesda, Md., the highly selective private school is where the Clintons and the Gores sent their kids, along with Joe Biden's grandchildren. It's also where the local 1 Percenters and the government-media elites who can afford to shell out about $32 grand a year send their children to be indoctrinated -- excuse me, educated -- and to be safe.
The Edges vs. the Middle
The conventional wisdom among the geniuses who are paid to tell us what to think about and how to think about it has been that the National Rifle Association's Wayne LaPierre had lost his mind when he proclaimed, after the tragedy in Connecticut, that the way to stop a bad guy with a guy is with a good guy with a gun. LaPierre went on to suggest that schools hire armed guards to protect the children against some nut showing up with a weapon and an agenda. The popular press and the social elite went bat -- well, they disagreed.
UC Irvine's 'Islam Awareness Week': A CAIR Convention
The latest example of the Muslim Brotherhood's unsettling influence on U.S. campuses.
Where Was Secretary Clinton on 9/11/12?
Next week, four months after terrorists killed four Americans in Benghazi, Libya, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will finally testify in congressional committees about what happened that day. Since Sept. 11, the Defense Department has released a timeline of that day, the Senate Homeland Security Committee has released a report, and a State Department "Accountability Review Board" set up by Clinton herself has published its own analysis. But the composite story derived from these sources raises more questions about Clinton's role on 9/11/12 than it answers. In fact, these sources cite no action at all personally taken by Clinton.
Are Guns the Problem?
When I attended primary and secondary school -- during the 1940s and '50s -- one didn't hear of the kind of shooting mayhem that's become routine today. Why? It surely wasn't because of strict firearm laws. My replica of the 1902 Sears mail-order catalog shows 35 pages of firearm advertisements. People just sent in their money, and a firearm was shipped. Dr. John Lott, author of "More Guns, Less Crime," reports that until the 1960s, some New York City public high schools had shooting clubs where students competed in citywide shooting contests for university scholarships. They carried their rifles to school on the subways and, upon arrival, turned them over to their homeroom teacher or the gym coach and retrieved their rifles after school for target practice. Virginia's rural areas had a long tradition of high-school students going hunting in the morning before school and sometimes storing their rifles in the trunks of their cars that were parked on school grounds. Often a youngster's 12th or 14th birthday present was a shiny new .22-caliber rifle, given to him by his father.
First, the Bad News
We in the media rarely lie to you. But that leaves plenty of room to take things wildly out of context. That's where most big scare stories come from, like recent headlines about GM foods. GM means "genetically modified," which means scientists add genes, altering the plant's DNA, in this case to make the crop resistant to pests. Last week, Poland joined seven other European countries in banning cultivation of GM foods. The politicians acted because headlines screamed about how GM foods caused huge tumors in rats. The pictures of the rats are scary. Some have tumors the size of tennis balls.
Time to Grow Up, GOP
It's hard for a lot of people, particularly on the right, to recognize that the conservative movement's problems are mostly problems of success. The Republican Party's problems are much more recognizable as the problems of failure, including the failure to recognize the limits of that movement's success. American conservatism began as a kind of intellectual hobbyist's group with little hope of changing the broader society. Albert Jay Nock, the cape-wearing libertarian intellectual -- he called himself a "philosophical anarchist" -- who inspired a very young William F. Buckley Jr., argued that political change was impossible because the masses were rubes, goons, fools or sheep, victims of the eternal tendency of the powerful to exploit the powerless.
Magazine Limits Could Endanger Victims Instead of Saving Them
A limit on magazine capacity is emerging as a leading contender for the something that supposedly must be done in response to last month's massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. A ban on "large-capacity ammunition feeding devices" is one of the new gun restrictions approved by the New York legislature this week and one of the measures President Obama wants Congress to enact. The rationale for such limits is that mass murderers need "large-capacity" magazines, while law-abiding citizens don't. Both premises are questionable, and so is the notion that politicians should be the arbiters of necessity under the Second Amendment. The problem with letting legislators decide what gun owners need is immediately apparent when we ask what qualifies as a "large-capacity" magazine. Under current New York law and under the federal limit that expired in 2004 (which Obama wants Congress to reinstate), more than 10 rounds is "large." This week, the New York legislature redefined "large" as more than seven rounds.
Economic Freedom on the Wane
"Land of the free." It's right there in our national anthem. As well it should be -- the personal liberties we enjoy are the envy of many around the world. Freedom is no accident. It requires constant vigilance. It takes economic liberty, an area where the United States has begun to slip quite a bit lately. How would you say the United States compares to other nations? There's no need to guess. We can pinpoint it exactly by using an annual guide known as the Index of Economic Freedom. Top three, you think? Top five? Nope. Last year at this time came the news that the United States had dropped to 10th place. Now, the 2013 index is out, and we can see that the United States hasn't budged from that spot.
The Media's Favorite Fake Republicans
The Republican Party is desperately in need of some good advice. It needs to return to Ronald Reagan conservatism and give America a two-party system, not a tinny echo of Obama. But our liberal media keep desperately inviting fake Republicans to offer advice to the GOP. They want to create a new Republican Party, one that rejects the principles of the man who championed freedom. Exhibit A: New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The Jan. 14 Washington Post insisted on the front page: "Bloomberg wants change in the GOP." Post reporter Jason Horowitz noted, "America's most prominent and deep pocketed advocate for gun control would rather rehabilitate Republicans than oust them." What? Republicans are criminals in need of rehabilitation? The analogies get worse. Supporting the Bill of Rights is like supporting ... segregation and slavery. Democrats don't like Bloomberg trying to reform Republicans instead of defeat them, reported Horowitz. But "Bloomberg counters that just as Democrats were once the party of slavery and segregation, the pro-gun GOP is now ripe for moderation."
Prop-a-palooza: The Use and Abuse of Kiddie Human Shields
The president of the United States will release a binder full of new gun-control executive orders on Wednesday. Instead of standing alone, bearing full responsibility for the imperial actions he is about to take, President Obama will surround himself with an audience of kids who wrote to him after the Newtown, Conn., school massacre. This is the most cynical in Beltway theatrical staging -- a feckless attempt to invoke "For the Children" immunity by hiding behind them. What has happened to the deliberative process in this country? Public debate in Washington has deteriorated into Sesame Street sing-alongs. We are already inundated with logical fallacies: argumentum ad populum (it's popular, therefore it's true); argumentum ad nauseam (if you repeat it often enough, it'll become truth); argumentum ad hominem (sabotage the person, sabotage the truth); and argumentum ad verecundiam (if my favorite authority says it's true, it's true).
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Obama's Three Years of Budget Failure
The president demonizes Republicans over the debt ceiling while leading the nation into the abyss.
And First Prize for Gall Goes to ... Barack Obama!
Here's the really nice thing about being president of the United States: You can hold a press conference, make any cockeyed statement you like and glare down all critics, inasmuch as you're King of the Microphone. You can, that is, if you're a certain kind of president. Let's say, theoretically, you're a president like Barack Obama, who, standing before the media on Monday, declared up to be down, red to be green and wolves to resemble sweet little lamb-y pies. With four more years to run in his engagement with the American people, Obama may yet startle us by representing up to be up, red to be red and wolves to have large teeth. We should not hold our breath. The likelier strategy would be to assume our present president incapable of anything resembling straight talk about his varied strategies, or, where capable of it, unwilling to indulge his hearers.
The Atheist Response to Sandy Hook
Last week the New York Times published an opinion piece that offered atheism's response to the evil/tragedy in which 20 children and six adults were murdered at the Sandy Hook elementary school in Connecticut. What prompted Susan Jacoby to write her piece was a colleague telling her that atheism "has nothing to offer when people are suffering." She wrote the piece, "The Blessings of Atheism" ("It is Here and It is Now!" screams the subhead) to prove her colleague wrong by offering a consoling atheist alternative to religion's consoling belief in an afterlife. Atheists cannot believe that there is any existence other than this life. But, Jacoby insists, atheists can still offer consolation to people who lose loved ones, such as the parents whose children were murdered at Sandy Hook.