Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Friday, December 28, 2012
Don't Tread on Six-Toed Cats
One of my New Year's resolutions is to work harder to persuade ideological friends and foes alike that the way to reduce partisanship and maximize happiness in America is to embrace federalism -- the view that we should push as many decisions as possible to the lowest local level feasible. Federalism reduces partisanship by shrinking the importance of the federal government. It increases happiness by maximizing the number of people who get to live the way they want to live. Unfortunately, proponents of federalism tend to start the conversation with the really big issues: gay marriage, drugs, guns, abortion, etc. I'm for making all of those things local issues wherever possible, too. But, admittedly, those questions are complicated or emotionally freighted. Some questions do cut to the heart of what it means to be an American.
Obama vs. America's Fiscal Health
The reason President Obama and Republicans can't come to an agreement on the fiscal cliff negotiations is that they don't share the same goals. This is also the key to understanding why President Obama appears far less worried about going over the cliff. Republicans are focused on restoring the nation's financial health by promoting economic growth and reducing our horrendous deficits and debt. President Obama's primary aim is to complete his project of fundamentally transforming America. I ask you loyal Democrats to please consider these things. Obama has demonstrated almost no concern for our crushing debt or deficits -- at least not since calling President George W. Bush unpatriotic for presiding over deficits and debt dramatically smaller than his own.
The Obama Culture Arrives
The year 2012 was a depressing time for people who are already pessimistic about the state of our common culture. Conversely, the re-election of Barack Obama, in large measure made possible by the heavy financial support of Hollywood, projects the optimism of the cultural Left. They anticipate increased blue-state voting patterns in favor of gay "marriage," legalized pot, gun regulations, and what next? Legalized prostitution? Euthanasia subsidized by Obamacare? So let's just line up the cultural winners of Obama's America, where the only impediments to progress are those who believe in religion, manners and "family values." Winner: Seth MacFarlane, the creator of the sick "Family Guy" cartoon and other Fox animated smutcoms on Sunday nights. He'll mock anything to shock the viewer, from portraying Jesus as a lying drunk, to joking Ronald Reagan was gay, even to making fun of domestic violence. Tinseltown loves this man. He guest-hosted "Saturday Night Live" in their season debut, was named host of the 2013 Academy Awards telecast and ABC's Barbara Walters named him one of the year's 10 "Most Fascinating People."
Leadership Jobs Open
Who wants a fantastic job? Unemployment is high, so there ought to be many candidates. The job is leader of the Republican Party. As leader, you will be the spokesman for a philosophy of smaller government, more individual liberty, fiscal responsibility, free markets and budget cuts. You will speak up for the traditional family and strong community organizations. On one hand, you stand for keeping taxes low on the very richest Americans. On the other, you're for cutting programs that are broadly popular. Congratulations. What are you for that Americans support? That's what is so great about this job. It requires creativity. A sizable percentage of your caucus will balk at any increases in taxes ever on anyone -- even on those earning more than $1 million per year -- as John Boehner just discovered. So you'll have to seek balanced budgets exclusively by cutting spending. This will further confirm the public image of you as Scrooge.
Thursday, December 27, 2012
After the Disaster: American Rebirth or Interment?
America is now in a time that in some ways resembles the 1850s, when freedom-loving people, attentive to political and cultural trends, saw a great crisis coming. After the Mexican-American War, as Southern slaveholders and their political allies sought to extend the realm of slavery into the West and tip the nation's political and cultural balance to the advantage of slaveholders, many believed liberty was at risk. In the wake of the Dred Scott decision -- in which the Supreme Court argued that the federal government could not prohibit slavery in the territories because enslaved human beings were a form of property protected by the Fifth Amendment -- Abraham Lincoln, then a Senate candidate, explained his own understanding of the coming crisis.
The Door-Opener to America
WASHINGTON -- At the end of this year in which election results reinserted immigration into the political conversation, remember that 2012 is the 150th anniversary of "the first comprehensive immigration law." This is how the Homestead Act of 1862 is described by Blake Bell, historian at the Homestead National Monument of America near Beatrice, Neb., one of the National Park Service's many educational jewels that make the NPS one of just two government institutions (the other is the U.S. Marine Band) that should be exempt from any budget cuts, for all eternity. In 1862, the grim year of Shiloh and Fredericksburg, Congress would have been forgiven for concentrating only on preventing national dismemberment. Instead, while defiantly continuing construction of the Capitol dome, Congress continued nation-building. It passed the Pacific Railroad Act to provide for the movement of people and goods to and from the new lands in the West, the Morrill Act to build land-grant colleges emphasizing agriculture, and, most important, the Homestead Act, whose provisions were as simple as the problem it addressed was stark.
RG III Gets 'Uncle Tom' Treatment
To a black ESPN sports analyst, this is *the* critical question: Is Robert Griffin III, aka RG III, the black rookie sensation Washington Redskins quarterback, "a brother, or is he a cornball brother?" What has RG III done or said to raise a suspicion about his bona fides as a black person? More importantly, what does this have to do with appreciating -- or choosing not to appreciate -- Griffin as an athlete? Turns out RG III fancies himself as a quarterback who happens to be black -- as opposed to a black quarterback. When asked for the millionth time about his status as a "black quarterback," Griffin responded: "I don't play too much into the color game, because I don't want to be the best African-American quarterback, I want to be the best quarterback." And, when asked at a press conference about Martin Luther King Jr., RG III said: "For me, you don't ever want to be defined by the color of your skin. You want to be defined by your work ethic, the person that you are, your character, your personality. That's what I've tried to go out and do. I am an African-American in America. That will never change. But I don't have to be defined by that." Holy color-blindness!
Those Endless, Onerous Presidential Campaigns
Whatever else the New Year brings, at least it won't be a presidential election or any of the primaries, caucuses, or conventions leading up to it. Which is more than OK with me. American presidential campaigns have grown excruciatingly overlong, and I look forward to a respite from the obsessive political coverage, the ginned-up gaffes and controversies, the rush to dissect each twitch in public opinion, the avalanche of dishonest advertising and disingenuous "fact-checking." Of course not everyone agrees, especially in the press corps. "We all have our peculiar tastes," George F. Will once wrote. "Some people like Popsicles. Others like gothic novels. I like politicians." Peculiar is right. I won't say I've *never* met a politician I liked -- two or three I've even admired -- but on the whole I tend to agree with Tom Dobbs, the character played by Robin Williams in the 2006 movie "Man of the Year." A TV entertainer who runs for president on a lark, Dobbs tells his audience: "Politicians are a lot like diapers; they should be changed frequently, and for the same reason."
Churchill and Company
Washington -- The year 2012 is about to expire. It was a blank in my judgment -- poof and it is gone. We have the same sorry vacuity in the White House, bereft of knowing how to run the government. Just now he is off to Hawaii to loll in the sun, having left behind questions as to how to avoid our "fiscal cliff." Yes, he wants to raise taxes on the top two percent, but how do we reduce the deficit and finish off the tax bill? He has headed for the beach -- and practically no one remarks on the amateurism of it. The president is a poseur. Not much more can be said for the rest of the leadership in Washington, in Congress, in the media, strutting down the halls of government. As year chases year, I have come to the conclusion that this whole town is abundant with poseurs or worse. The blandness of the Washington and New York City scenes is maddening to anyone familiar with American history, a history filled with great figures.
Kwanzaa: Holiday Brought to You By the FBI
Is it just me, or does Kwanzaa seem to come earlier and earlier each year? And let's face it, Kwanzaa's gotten way too commercialized. A few years ago, I suspended my annual Kwanzaa column because my triumph over this fake holiday seemed complete. The only people still celebrating Kwanzaa were presidential-statement writers and white female public school teachers. But it seems to be creeping back. A few weeks ago, House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., complained about having to stick around Washington for fiscal cliff negotiations by accusing Republicans of not caring about "families" coming together to bond during Kwanzaa. The private schools have picked up this PC nonsense from the public schools. (Soon, no one will know anything.) It is a fact that Kwanzaa was invented in 1966 by a black radical FBI stooge, Ron Karenga -- aka Dr. Maulana Karenga -- founder of United Slaves, a violent nationalist rival to the Black Panthers. He was also a dupe of the FBI.
Vietnam Plus-50
HANOI, Vietnam -- It has been 50 years since President John F. Kennedy ordered U.S. "advisers" to South Vietnam to help battle the communist North and 37 years since the end of that divisive war and the country's unification under Communism. Today, Vietnam is fighting a war with itself. A local TV program reminds a visitor of Chinese propaganda "operas" circa 1970. Performers, some wearing military garb with a backdrop of missiles and an American B-52 bomber going down in flames, commemorate the 1972 Christmas bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong ordered by President Richard Nixon. Banners and posters in the streets reinforce the government's history lesson. Younger people, who substantially outnumber the old guard, seem mostly indifferent to these messages, because few lived through the war. An American official tells me just 4 percent of the population belongs to the Communist Party.
2012: When Dreams Died
The year 2012 saw the triumph of cold reality over pie-in-the-sky dreams. Barack Obama in 2008 won an election on an upbeat message of change in the hope that the first black president would mark a redemptive moment in American history. Four years later, the fantasies are gone. In continuing dismal economic times, Obama ran for re-election neither on his first-term achievements -- Obamacare, bailouts, financial stimuli and Keynesian mega-deficits -- nor on more utopian promises. Instead, Obama's campaign systematically reduced his rival, Wall Street financier Mitt Romney, to a conniving, felonious financial pirate who did dastardly things, from letting the uninsured die to putting his pet dog Seamus in a cage on top of the family car.
Two Kinds of Crazy
This is a column about two different subjects. One is the slaughter of innocents in Newtown, Connecticut, the other the so-called fiscal cliff. Both have been on my mind, but not for the reasons repeated ad nauseam by the people in my profession -- who make me ashamed to be one of the people in my profession. First Newtown. I am somewhat familiar with the town because I have an acquaintance who owns a house there. It is a picture postcard type of town, that has doubtlessly been shattered, perhaps irreparably, by the kind of evil that remains as alive as it is unexplainable. The only columnist who came close to explaining the kind of insanity that prompts someone to shoot little children was Mark Steyn, who perceptively recognized that such madness is an "exercise in hyper-narcissism." As someone from a family with more than its fair share of mental illness, I can attest that such hyper-narcissism, or more simply, being completely involved in an entire universe of one's own making, is the primary ingredient for deranged thinking.
Obama's Numbers Went Down, but Romney Never Inspired Voters to Vote
In combing through the results of the 2012 election -- apparently finally complete, nearly two months after the fact -- I continue to find many similarities between 2012 and 2004, and one enormous difference. Both of the elections involved incumbent presidents with approval ratings hovering around or just under 50 percent facing challengers who were rich men from Massachusetts (though one made his money and the other married it). In both cases, the challenger and his campaign seemed confident he was going to win -- and had reasonable grounds to believe so. In both elections, the incumbent started running a barrage of negative ads defining the challenger in the spring. And in both elections, the incumbent had at least one spotty debate performance.
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
State-Run Broadcasting Pushes for Taxes
A "serious" proposal is one that has a reasonable expectation of resolving a conflict. Anyone studying Speaker Boehner's Plan B proposal knows it wasn't serious. Why are so many defending it and bemoaning its defeat? It tells you an awful lot about the dishonest nature of politics in America today. Republicans -- fiscally conservative Republicans -- have argued since forever that tax increases diminish economic growth. For the past two years, they have argued that increasing taxes on the "wealthy" would wreak havoc on our fragile (at best) economy. In fact, three studies have confirmed that this "millionaires tax," now endorsed by Plan B Boehner, would cost America 700,000 jobs, an unmitigated disaster.
The Left Bullies the NRA
On Christmas Eve, seven people were shot in the city of Chicago. The media made little mention of the shootings, since they're now routine in Chicago -- the city has seen some 500 shootings in 2012 alone. The vast majority of the shooters are black, and the vast majority of the victims are black. Many of the victims are under the age of 18: Anton Sanders, 15, shot on Jan. 20; Deshun Winfert, 15, shot on Feb. 5; Damion Rolle, 14, shot on Feb. 21; George Howard and Albert Guyton, both 15, shot on Feb. 27 and Feb. 28; the list goes on. A few are under age 10. You've never heard of any of them. But when an evil white person with a history of mental instability shoots up a school, killing 20 children, most of whom were white, the media is suddenly concerned with gun control.
Middle East Democracy
Here's the first paragraph of my last year's column "Democracy Is Impossible": "After Moammar Gadhafi's downfall as Libya's tyrannical ruler, politicians and 'experts' in the U.S. and elsewhere, including French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe, are saying that his death marked the end of 42 years of tyranny and the beginning of democracy in Libya. Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., said Gadhafi's death represented an opportunity for Libya to make a peaceful and responsible transition to democracy. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said, 'Now it is time for Libya's Transitional National Council to show the world that it will respect the rights of all Libyans (and) guide the nation to democracy.' German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that 'Libya must now quickly make further determined steps in the direction of democracy.'" It's good to have hope, but if we're going to be realistic, there's little chance for Middle East emergence of what we in the West call democracy.
Charity Begins With Wealth Creation
Charity -- helping people who have trouble helping themselves -- is a good thing two times over. It's good for the beneficiary and good for the donor, too. Stephen Post's fine book, "The Hidden Gifts of Helping," reveals that 76 percent of Americans say that helping others is what makes them most happy. Giving money makes us feel good, and helping face-to-face is even better. People say it makes them feel physically healthier. They sleep better. Private charity is unquestioningly better than government efforts to help people. Government squanders money. Charities sometime squander money, too, but they usually don't. Proof of the superiority of private over government efforts is everywhere. Catholic charities do a better job educating children than government -- for much less money. New York City's government left Central Park a dangerous mess. Then a private charity rescued it. But while charity is important, let's not overlook something more important: Before we can help anyone, we first need something to give. Production precedes donation. Advocates of big government forget this.
A Year-End Smorgasbord
If you're anything like me, please accept my condolences. God knows it's not easy being us. For one thing, you can't stop seeking logical reasons for everything that happens even though you know that the search will, far more often than not, end fruitlessly. Our tombstones could read: "Finally, a logical conclusion." For instance, when I'm mailing out one of my books, unless it's "Liberals: America's Termites," I have to make a trip to the Post Office. That's because only "Termites," at 11 ounces, is light enough to deposit in a mail box. In case it's escaped your notice, you are not allowed to mail a stamped package weighing in excess of 13 ounces. I always assumed this rule came about because of Ted Kaczynski, a Harvard grad who came to be known as the Unabomber when, between 1978 and 1995, he mailed out 16 bombs that killed three people and maimed 23 others. But inasmuch as he was arrested in 1996 and the Post Office didn't lower the limit from 16 ounces until 2007, it either means my assumption was incorrect or, more likely, that it took a federal agency all that time to cut through the red tape.