Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Marketing Dependency
The Food Stamp President ramps up efforts to break down self-sufficiency ethics among the poor.
Colbert's Campus Coddlers
On July 9, Washington Post media reporter Paul Farhi composed a puff piece to honor Stephen Colbert, "fake news" commentator and satirical fake conservative. It turns out Colbert is becoming an "obsession in academia," with a new collegiate submersion in "Truthinessology." Let us agree that he can be very funny. Let's also agree that his satire being taken seriously by academia says something about the state of academia. It also says something about those in the press who agree. Farhi winked in his story that this obsession is a problem, but then unfurled a long list of academic tributes. Parents are now paying tens of thousands of dollars each year for their children to skateboard around boring old Aristotle and Locke and instead immerse themselves in the study of smirking liberal TV wise-crackers.
Obama's Interior Department Still Going Rogue
The Obama administration's loathsome cowboy, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, won't take no for an answer. He's been smacked down repeatedly by federal courts for imposing a draconian, junk science-based moratorium on the oil and gas industry. Yet, the job-killing zealot and his boss just introduced another ruinous offshore drilling ban two weeks ago. The White House rationale for the renewed crackdown? Because we said so. Thomas Pyle of the D.C.-based Institute for Energy Research reports that the Salazar scheme "reinstitutes a 30-year moratorium on offshore energy exploration that will keep our most promising resources locked away until long after President Obama begins plans for his presidential library." Instead of working to enhance our energy independence and free up abundant natural resources, the Obama administration has worked tirelessly to close off access to nearly 86 billion barrels of oil on America's Outer Continental Shelf alone.
Tilting at the UN Windmill
Those of us who believe the United States would be best served by pulling out of the United Nations and starting up a more morally and politically serious clubhouse for morally and politically serious nations are often accused of tilting at windmills. The phrase "tilting at windmills" was inspired by Cervantes' novel "Don Quixote," and it means to fight something that doesn't really deserve to be fought. Quixote mistook the windmills of the Spanish countryside for ravenous giants and set out to vanquish them. ("Tilting" is a jousting expression, in case you didn't know). Well, let's review some recent evidence.
Do the Right Thing
Former FBI Director Louis Freeh has now issued his final report on the scandal at Penn State University, but the question remains: How could so many decent people fail to act when presented with an eyewitness account of sexual abuse of a child? Jerry Sandusky, assistant coach at Penn State for 32 years, was convicted in June of 45 counts of child sex abuse. For at least 15 years, Sandusky used his position at Penn State to prey on victims, setting up a charitable foundation that recruited at-risk boys, many of whom he would abuse on campus and on team road trips as well as at his home. But Sandusky's colleagues and supervisors turned a blind eye to what should have been suspicious behavior. Worse, they did nothing to try to protect the actual victims when a then-graduate assistant in the program, Mike McQueary, told them he'd seen Sandusky abusing a child in a campus locker room. In the Freeh report's words, university officials demonstrated "total disregard for the safety and welfare of the victims."
House Repeal of Obamacare Is Way More Than Symbolic
So what about the GOP House vote to repeal that legislative monstrosity that masquerades under the misleading title of "Affordable Care Act"? Was the vote more than symbolic? Will the vote have any impact on the presidential and congressional races? What about the GOP proposals to replace Obamacare? A host presented those three questions, and I'd like to address them more thoroughly than the time permitted on television. I don't believe that the GOP repeal vote was merely symbolic, even though everyone knows that the obstructionist Democratic Senate, which hasn't produced a budget for more than 1,100 days, will reject it out of hand. The House vote to repeal, which included 5 Democratic votes, helps to frame a critically important issue in the 2012 presidential and congressional campaigns, which is also true of the House's passage of "cut, cap and balance" and Rep. Paul Ryan's budget plan, "The Path to Prosperity."
A Proud Moment
Mitt Romney delivered one of the best speeches of the year at the NAACP meeting in Houston. It made me proud to watch him. Romney was wise to accept the invitation -- though, God knows, the temptation to decline must have been tremendous. The NAACP hasn't exactly covered itself in glory over the past few years. In 2000, the organization ran dishonest and disgraceful television and radio ads suggesting that George W. Bush had been somehow indifferent to the horrible lynching of James Byrd in Texas. More recently, the group -- theoretically dedicated to the best interests of black Americans -- has joined teachers unions in attempting to block charter schools and has condemned the tea party movement as racist.
The Islamist Ascendancy
WASHINGTON -- Post-revolutionary Libya appears to have elected a relatively moderate pro-Western government. Good news, but tentative because Libya is less a country than an oil well with a long beach and myriad tribes. Popular allegiance to a central national authority is weak. Even if the government of Mahmoud Jibril is able to rein in the militias and establish a functioning democracy, it will be the Arab Spring exception. Consider: Tunisia and Morocco, the most Westernized of all Arab countries, elected Islamist governments. Moderate, to be sure, but Islamist still. Egypt, the largest and most influential, has experienced an Islamist sweep. The Muslim Brotherhood didn't just win the presidency. It won nearly half the seats in parliament, while more openly radical Islamists won 25 percent. Combined, they command more than 70 percent of parliament -- enough to control the writing of a constitution (which is why the generals hastily dissolved parliament).
The Stossel Solution
In order to get the correct answer to anything, one must ask the right question. That is what former ABC News and current Fox News TV host John Stossel does on his weekly program. If ever there was "must see-TV," this is it. Stossel's show on Saturday, June 30 was a classic. It was called "Government, Incorporated" and focused on what private industry can do less expensively and more efficiently than government. After watching it, I wondered why this isn't happening. Why does inefficient, costly and unresponsive government continue to grow while the people and companies that could do the work much better are regulated and taxed to death? In part it's because politicians speak only in poll-tested sound bites and rarely focus on what works. It isn't as if we don't have a history that can teach us. We know what works, but politicians too often prefer the issue to the solution. That's where Stossel comes in.
Minimum-Wage Laws Are Costly for the Unemployed
Congress enacted the first federal minimum wage in 1938. A provision of the Fair Labor Standards Act, it covered about 6 million workers and set a wage floor of 25 cents per hour. It also cost a lot people their jobs. The Labor Department reported that as many as 50,000 employees, mostly poor Southern blacks, were thrown out of work within two weeks of the law's taking effect. In the months that followed, the carnage spread. "African Americans in the tobacco industry were particularly hard hit," wrote David Bernstein in his 2001 history of labor regulations and black employment. "In Wilson, N.C., for example, machines replaced two thousand African American tobacco stemmers in 1939." The economic pain inflicted by that first minimum wage law hasn't stopped Washington from repeating the same folly over and over. In the 74 years since the lowest hourly wage at which most Americans could lawfully be hired was set at 25 cents -- the equivalent in purchasing power of about $4 today -- Congress has raised the amount 22 times. The federal minimum wage is currently $7.25 an hour, and a push is underway to raise it yet again.
The World Is Changing Minute by Minute
We are witnessing a seismic shift in global affairs. The shake-up is a perfect storm of political, demographic and technological change that will soon make the world as we have known it for the last 30 years almost unrecognizable. Since the mid-1980s there have been a number of accepted global constants. The European Union was assumed to have evolved beyond the nation-state as it ended the cycle of militarism and renounced free-market capitalism. With its strong euro, soft power and nonaligned foreign policy, the EU was praised as a utopian sort of foil to the overarmed U.S. with its ailing dollar. Germany, ostracized after losing two world wars and struggling with the guilt of the Holocaust, as penance was to be permanently submerged in European alliances, as its economic power was always expected to prop up the eurozone experiment.
Fast and Furious Is Not a D.C. Law Firm
Most Americans don't care about whether Attorney General Eric Holder is hiding Fast and Furious documents because they don't understand the story. Until someone can tell us otherwise, there is only one explanation for why President Obama's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives gave thousands of guns to Mexican drug dealers: It put guns in their hands to strengthen liberals' argument for gun control. Precisely because this is such a jaw-dropping accusation -- criminality at the highest level of government to score a political point -- Republicans refuse to make it.
There You Go Again
There you go again, Mr. Obama -- again and again and again, engaging in class warfare. Trying to make voters think Mitt Romney cares more about the offshore bank accounts of the wealthy than the pocketbooks of the middle class. Proving for the umpteenth time that you know nothing about economics, how wealth and jobs are created or why businesses and rich people are moving themselves or their money overseas to escape the taxes you think aren't high enough. "There you go again, Mr. Obama." That's what my father would have said to the president's latest dumb idea to punish rich and successful Americans by raising their taxes.
The Invincible Lie: Part II
Nothing produces more of a sense of the futility of facts than seeing someone in the mass media repeating some notion that has been refuted innumerable times over the years. On July 9th, on CNN's program "The Situation Room" with Wolf Blitzer, commentator Gloria Borger discussed President Obama's plan to continue the temporary extension of the tax rates established under the Bush administration -- except for the top brackets, where Obama wanted the tax rates raised. Ms. Borger said, "if you're going to lower the tax rates, where are you going to get the money from?" First of all, nobody is talking about lowering the tax rates. They are talking about whether or not to continue the existing tax rates, which are set to expire after a temporary extension. And Obama is talking about raising the tax rate on higher income earners.
The Mind of Your Basic Hollywood Liberal
Richard Kind is a funny, talented actor. I had the pleasure of working with him when I did a cameo on the show "Spin City," where Kind co-starred. He was thoughtful and helpful on set, even though I was a dreaded non-lefty. Fast forward to this year's White House Correspondents' dinner. Pleased to be invited, Kind gave an interview to The Hollywood Reporter. After praising President Barack Obama as "the smartest man in the room," Kind offered his opinion on what issue he "cares most about": "The disparity between the ultra-rich and the next level is as disgraceful as anything that has gone on in our history. Now maybe some of them can control my life, my career, my employment, but I have to tell you something is wrong. I don't know how it got wrong, but something is wrong." "The next level"? What does that even mean? "As disgraceful as anything that has gone on in our history?" Right up there with slavery, the World War II relocation camps for Americans of Japanese descent and the fact that the race-hustling Rev. Al Sharpton has a television show on MSNB-Hee Haw?
Broke-Ifornia
This week, the city of San Bernardino, Calif., went bankrupt. It followed hot on the heels of Vallejo and Stockton, Calif. And they'll be followed, no doubt, by Los Angeles -- and then, shortly after that, by California. Let's take a look at the numbers. San Bernardino has an annual budget of $258 million; it is running a budget deficit of $45 million. Where does that money go? To the unions, largely. About three-quarters of the general fund goes to personnel; 78 percent of that 75 percent goes to public safety employees, the most lucratively compensated of all government workers. The city retirement fund amounts to 13 percent of the general fund. San Bernardino, like most other California cities, is heavily taxed. The average wage-earner makes about $30,000 per year, and the city suffers from nearly 17 percent unemployment.
A Potpourri of Grievances
If you have decided along the way that I despise liberals, it merely proves that you've been paying attention. I don't just think they're misguided or that they have a different take on the issues than I have, I believe they are evil. I believe that if they had their way, America would be a third world nation. I think they lie, partly out of habit and partly because they know that the equally evil media will aid and abet them by providing cover and by churning out propaganda. For instance, when some flabby-brained weasel like Barbara Boxer, Joe Biden or Nancy Pelosi, claims that Republicans don't care about the plight of old people and would love to just push them off the edges of cliffs, the way they illustrated conservative objections to ObamaCare in their TV ads, does anyone take them seriously? Even their fellow left-wingers must know better, but they belong to a cult that demands total fealty. Catholics will doubt the Pope's infallibility sooner than liberals will doubt Obama's. On the Left, you either fall into line or you stand condemned for heresy.
An Islamist President Coming to Town
Obama invites a man to Washington who has pledged to seek the release of Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman from U.S. custody.
The Coming Election and My Life Jacket
WHITEFISH POINT, Mich. -- I have just cleared the "Soo" locks of Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, passing from the lower Great Lakes to Lake Superior. In fact, I am now anchored just off a beautiful lighthouse on Lake Superior. Yes, you have guessed correctly. I am in a boat, a cruise ship, in fact, known as the "Yorktown," possibly in honor of the famed battle that ended our War for Independence, though possibly for some other achievement. I shall not hazard the question to our extremely busy captain. He has enough on his mind, and I am told these waters are treacherous. My life jacket is never far away. This is the first American Spectator cruise undertaken with National Review. The editors and writers at the National Review are old hands at conducting cruises, and so I am watching them closely for instruction and wise counsel. How is a landlubber like me to conduct myself on a cruise? When do I put on my life jacket? Do I wear it at meals? When do we abandon ship? When do I speak? John Miller, the national correspondent for NR, and Jay Nordlinger, a senior editor for NR, are sage mentors and very knowledgeable speakers. Along with them are AmSpec writers Grover Norquist, John Wohlstetter, and John Fund, whom AmSpec shares with NR. Giving even more heft to our discussions of politics is George Gilder, an expert on practically everything.
A Muddled Outlook for Olympics-Ready London
LONDON -- The best view of London's Olympic Park is from the picture windows at the top floor of the John Lewis department store in the vast Westfield Stratford mall five miles east of the Tower of London. It's not the London tourists usually see. Westfield Stratford is an upscale American-style mall, and the sleek Olympic Park structures have nothing of the historic patina of the Tower of London or the Houses of Parliament. This is a reminder that most Brits, like most Europeans, live not in tourist-thronged historic centers but in far-flung suburbs. They live in freestanding houses, drive cars most places and shop at malls, like most Americans. Only they aren't shopping quite as they used to. John Lewis, like other London stores, is full of "sale" signs and deep discounts. Britain is at the brink of recession and trembling lest the collapse of the euro plunge its European trading partners into economic chaos.