Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Dark Night
By now the script should be familiar. A bombing or a mass shooting occurs and the media immediately look for a simple cause. Invariably, they turn to talk radio or some other conservative pit of "intolerance." Within recent memory are tragedies like the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, the 1999 massacre at Columbine, the 2007 Virginia Tech shootings and the 2011 shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and others in Tucson. Some politicians and liberal interest groups have sought to link these and other violent incidents to the far right. There have also been incidents when some conservatives have tried to blame other tragedies on "liberals" "secularists" and abortion. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote on his blog that the "hate-mongers" Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck contributed to the Giffords shooting, despite later reports that the shooter, Jared Lee Loughner, had never listened to their programs. The discovery that Loughner liked "The Communist Manifesto" and "Mein Kampf" forced media types to quickly abandon that smear, but not retract their comments. They're running the same play again.
Centennial of a Free Mind Fighting for Free Markets
Milton Friedman pioneered the path to prosperity
Missing the Point About Aurora
Public discussion and debate about the Aurora, Colo., horror has missed the point. With numbing predictability, liberal opinion leaders in the press have focused on gun laws as the potential solution for such atrocities, while conservatives have responded that maniacs will find ways to kill people and therefore, nothing can be done about rampage shootings. Others have speculated that our excessively violent entertainments are tipping borderline types into spasms of real violence. I'm no fan of degraded entertainment, yet I suspect that saturation media coverage of these events is probably more culpable. But surely a more fruitful avenue of inquiry concerns our utterly dysfunctional mental health system. We don't know much about the killer in Colorado yet, but in many cases of rampage shootings, family members, colleagues or teachers saw signs of trouble before the eruption of violence. Family reports of disturbing behavior are often not enough because too many state laws require that a person be "imminently dangerous" before he can be involuntarily committed -- even for a short time. Thus, we have failed utterly to protect those in dire need of treatment and also placed society at increased risk from the minority of mentally ill people who are dangerous.
News Versus Propaganda
Since so many in the media cannot resist turning every tragedy into a political talking point, it was perhaps inevitable that (1) someone would try to link the shooting rampage at the Batman movie in Colorado to the Tea Party, and that (2) some would try to make it a reason to impose more gun control laws. Too many people in the media cannot seem to tell the difference between reporting the news and creating propaganda. NBC News apparently could not resist doctoring the transcript of the conversation between George Zimmerman and the police after the Trayvon Martin shooting. Now ABC News took the fact that the man arrested for the shooting in Colorado was named James Holmes to broadcast to the world the fact that there is a James Holmes who is a member of the Tea Party in Colorado.
Bad People Do Bad Things
I have been struggling, all weekend, to try and understand what happened in Aurora, Colorado. There are some 315 million of us in America and I suspect all but a very few have been trying to do the same thing. Here's what I do know. I do know this should not be seen as an opportunity to make political points for or against gun control. Many have done this and they should be ashamed of themselves.
Dodd-Frank: Dangerous Dead End
It's been two years since President Obama signed the Wall Street-reform bill that has come to be known as Dodd-Frank. So has it succeeded in creating "safer and more modern rules of the road for the financial industry," as Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner claims? Good question. To a large extent, we really can't answer, even though a full 24 months has elapsed since Dodd-Frank became law. Why? Because many of the rules remain unwritten, creating tremendous uncertainty among affected firms and consumers. Dodd-Frank didn't so much create new rules as create the institutions that would set up the rules. And most of those rules don't yet exist. According to Jonathan Macey of Yale Law School, "Dodd-Frank is not directed at people. It is an outline directed at bureaucrats and it instructs them to make still more regulations and to create more bureaucracies." In essence, Congress punted. Lawmakers outsourced their constitutional duties -- and on an important issue that affects millions of people.
Should Biden Drop Obama From the Ticket?
As a rule, the guy running for president chooses a running mate he thinks will help him win a specific swing state, which explains Kennedy picking Johnson. Sometimes he picks someone whom, he hopes, will energize the electorate, which explains McCain picking Palin. But, nearly always, he selects a person nobody really wants to see wind up as president. After all, when some guy is just a heartbeat from the Oval Office, you don't want to have millions of people hoping you have a heart attack. And that explains why such nonentities as Spiro Agnew, Dan Quayle, Al Gore and Joe Biden, have all held the office. It also helps if your laddy-in-waiting is the sort of goof who refers to putting out the hit order on Osama bin Laden as the height of courage and audacity. If butt-kissing were an Olympic event, that's the sort of thing that could earn Joe Biden a gold medal in London this summer.
How the Marriage Gap Favors Obama
Men and women differ in countless ways, from their interest in sports to their views on gun control to how rare they prefer their hamburgers. It's no revelation that there are discrepancies in their voting habits too: Democratic candidates tend to get more support from women voters, Republicans do better among men. This is the vaunted "gender gap," which has been a staple of presidential campaign coverage for at least three decades. For some reason the notion took hold early on that this divergence would be a boon for liberals. "The gender gap is the Grand Canyon of American politics," exulted Democratic strategist Ann Lewis in 1983. "It is wide, it is deep, and it is beautiful." But that was wishful thinking: Of the last eight presidential elections, Democrats have won only three. The gender gap is real; it just doesn't affect much.
Booming North Dakota City Shows Wisdom of Markets
This is a tale of two cities. No, not Dickens' phlegmatic London and passionate Paris. Nor the two neighborhoods Charles Murray contrasted in his recent bestseller "Coming Apart" -- prosperous but isolated Belmont (actually, Mitt Romney's home for decades) and needy and disorganized Fishtown. These two cities have names you may not recognize but which you have probably read about in the last few years: Fremont and Williston. Fremont, Calif., is the southernmost city in California's East Bay, just around the corner from (well, a few freeway exits away from) Silicon Valley. It's not as upscale as Palo Alto or Cupertino but has its own distinctions. It was the site of the NUMMI plant where General Motors and Toyota collaborated for years but which closed in April 2010. It's the site of the California School for the Deaf.
Romney's Sister Souljah Moment
Back in 1992, a 28-year-old black hip-hop singer/writer who called herself Sister Souljah garnered a great deal of publicity when she said, "Black people kill Black people every day; why not have a week and kill white people?" Bill Clinton, who was then running for president, did himself a world of good when he repudiated her statement and, by extension, Jesse Jackson, for including her in his Rainbow Coalition. It was that easy for Clinton to reassure white voters by distancing himself from a pair of black racists, even though he would quickly resume his symbiotic relationship with Jackson once he was safely ensconced in the White House.
From The Comedy Store
Joe Biden gave a speech to the NAACP convention. He planned to thank them for agreeing to college football playoffs, and then he was reminded he wasn't addressing the NCAA. So he threw away his speech and paid tribute to Dale Earnhardt.
Of, for & by the Government
The professional political class (of which I am a dues-paying member) has made it clear that they believe Barack Obama is a world-class campaigner and Mitt Romney steps on his tongue with some regularity. I have bought into this theory if only because (a) I think a sitting President deserves the benefit of the doubt, and (b) I think that Obamas biggest critics are, at a minimum, a little nutty. I have changed my mind. And this might put me into the "a little nutty" column, but I no longer care.
Reagan Praised Entrepreneurs - Obama Trashes Them
Does anybody remember, back in the depths of the recession of 1981-82, how President Ronald Reagan kept his chin up and exhorted American businesses to work hard and produce an economic recovery? Reagan had a program of tax cuts, limited domestic spending, deregulation and a strong defense aimed at overturning Soviet communism. He argued in speech after speech that his domestic plan would produce higher economic growth and lower unemployment, and that prosperity would generate the resources to fund a strong national security. Cynics proliferated. But Reagan stayed with it, praising free enterprise and entrepreneurs. And eventually, sunny skies replaced gloomy clouds. "Morning in America" appeared in 1983-84. But here's the key point: When Reagan praised our capitalist system and the businesses inside it, he provided a *psychological* lift to accompany his fiscal program. That was leadership.
A Different Slice Of Miami Vice
Network television is a pretty dreary place in the summer time. It's somehow the perfect time for Hollywood executives to throw millions of dollars at ever-dumber sexualized content. It's hard to tell what offends more, the raunch or the sheer stupidity of it all. The network calling itself "the CW" is barely noticed at any time of the year, if quality were a determinant. So instead they seem to be competing for some kind of Nobel Sleaze Prize this summer with a Miami-based "reality" show called "The Catalina." Hotel owner Nathan Lieberman developed the show simply to promote bookings at his own hotel. That is how pedestrian our "entertainment" media have become. Illogical, too: Lieberman told one interviewer his audience is too young to book rooms with him. "The CW is a good fit for us because their demographic is very young. Even though at The Catalina the rates aren't inexpensive enough for the spring-break-type crowd, eventually they will grow up and have memories of the place they would like to visit again."
Flash Points
GEORGETOWN, S.C. -- Taking a dozen grandchildren on vacation means that we buy cereal by the ton and milk in multiple gallons. I was in the cereal aisle, squinting at the list of ingredients on a brightly colored box of "high-fiber multigrain something," when a fellow shopper put the question to me: "So, Col. North, what's the 'October surprise' for this election?" I almost said, "High-fructose corn syrup" -- the ingredient I had been instructed to avoid -- but settled instead for this: "Syria. Bashar Assad is likely to go down before we go to the polls, and that will change everything in the Middle East." My response seemed to satisfy my interlocutor, but on reflection, it didn't suit me. That's because the first "October surprise" in a presidential campaign I recall affected me personally. It was 1968. Richard Nixon vs. Vice President Hubert Humphrey. Nixon had campaigned on a promise to end the war in Vietnam, and I was a newly minted U.S. Marine infantry second lieutenant with orders sending me to the widely unpopular fight shortly after the election.
TSA: Training Sky-bound Illegal Aliens
When it comes to soldiers, breast-feeding moms, toddlers and grannies, the Transportation Security Administration is not just hands-on, it's hands-all-over. But when it comes to illegal alien pilot trainees, our homeland security bureaucracy's policy is still stuck in pre-9/11 mode: Hands off, blinders on. This week, the U.S. Government Accountability Office released a report on the airline security agency's "process for ensuring (that) foreign flight students do not pose a security risk." In short, there isn't much of a "process" at all when it comes to checking the immigration status of flight school students. While the GAO report may be new, the documented lapses are part of the same old, same old refusal to profile foreign flight risks for fear of offending and inconveniencing politically correct special interests.
Has Obama Awakened Mitt's Inner Sleeping Giant?
Someone recently asked me what campaign advice I would give Mitt Romney if I were in his inner circle. Let me respond. First, let me say that though I have been concerned that Romney has not been aggressive enough to date, we have begun to see a different side of him in the past few days. In response to Obama's indefensibly derogatory statements about business, Romney bolted out of his chair and delivered a spirited defense of entrepreneurship and the American spirit. It was an exceedingly welcome and gratifying development and one that I hope signals a new chapter in his unfolding campaign. Perhaps Romney is more of a counterpuncher than a puncher, but I would respectfully urge him not to wait anymore for Obama to draw first blood. He needs to take the offense and keep Obama so busy defending his abysmal record on so many fronts that he doesn't have time to administer his ad hominem and disgraceful attacks on Romney's experience with Bain Capital, his alleged outsourcing or his rightly earned wealth -- not to mention spurious, despicable charges that he's a felon.
Trashing Achievements
There was a time, within living memory, when the achievements of others were not only admired but were often taken as an inspiration for imitation of the same qualities that had served these achievers well, even if we were not in the same field of endeavor and were not expecting to achieve on the same scale. The perseverance of Thomas Edison, as he tried scores of materials for the filament of the light bulb he was inventing; the dedication of Abraham Lincoln as he studied law on his own while struggling to make a living -- these were things young people were taught to admire, even if they had no intention of becoming inventors or lawyers, much less President of the United States. Somewhere along the way, all that changed. Today, the very concept of achievement is de-emphasized and sometimes attacked. Following in the footsteps of Barack Obama, Professor Elizabeth Warren of Harvard has made the downgrading of high achievers the centerpiece of her election campaign against Senator Scott Brown.
Did the State Make You Great?
"If you've got a business -- you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen." -- Barack Obama, Roanoke, Va., July 13 WASHINGTON -- And who might that somebody else be? Government, says Obama. It built the roads you drive on. It provided the teacher who inspired you. It "created the Internet." It represents the embodiment of "we're in this together" social solidarity that, in Obama's view, is the essential origin of individual and national achievement.