Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Beware the Brokered Convention!
Politico is a journal subscribed to by none but political junkies, and most of those are liberal. So, when this serious publication starts talking about a brokered convention for the GOP in Tampa next August, Beware! General Dwight D. Eisenhower won a first-ballot nomination in 1952. But there had been a prolonged and bitter floor fight over convention rules. Supporters of conservative Sen. Robert A. Taft ("Mr. Republican") charged that they had been unfairly denied delegates by Ike's manipulative Eastern Establishment backers. Had Ike not been the odds-on favorite to sweep the nation after twenty years of Democratic Party rule, the Republicans might well have remained angrier at each other than at their rivals.
Splitting at the Seams: Re-Building Communities
Yesterday on BreakPoint, I talked about Charles Murray's controversial new book Coming Apart. Murray makes the convincing case that since the 1960s, there has been a growing and frightening cultural divide between middle-to-upper class communities and working-class communities. Where marriage rates and religious attendance in the upper-class communities have slid a little over the past four decades, they've absolutely plummeted in working-class communities.
Qur'an Burning Rage in Afghanistan
The United States embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan is on lockdown and violent protests are spreading throughout the nation. The impetus for the unrest was the burning of Muslim holy books at a NATO military base on Monday. The books, including Qur'ans, had been removed from a detention center library adjoining Bagram air base, 40 miles north of Kabul, because they were being used by Afghan detainees to disseminate "extremist" messages. While that fact is being left largely untold by the Obama administration and our mainstream media, Washington is now offering repeated apologies.
Two Miscast Candidates for the GOP
WASHINGTON -- The Midwest begins on the western slopes of the Allegheny Mountains, around Rick Santorum's Pittsburgh, birthplace of the Ohio River, the original highway into the Midwest. Pittsburgh fueled the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794, an early eruption of Western resentment of the overbearing East, which taxed the whiskey that Westerners made from their grain. Santorum the Midwesterner, after victories in Iowa, Minnesota and Missouri, is waging more of his political capital on the region.
Jeremy Lin: Achievement Trumps Identity Politics
Jeremy Lin is the New York Knicks basketball sensation whose so far brief but amazing performance on the court has set the world on fire in a mere month. Most NBA superstars are not 23-year-old Harvard-graduates. And they are rarely devout Christian, second-generation Taiwanese-Americans. The fact that Lin is an anomaly has guaranteed both sensationalism and controversy, at least some of it politically incorrect. Take professional boxer Floyd Mayweather's recent remark that "Jeremy Lin is a good player but all the hype is because he's Asian. Black players do what he does every night and don't get the same praise."
Foster Friess' Joke
WASHINGTON -- There is another horripilation on the campaign trail. Someone has told a joke that has roused the virtue police. I am speaking of the virtue police who are working for the grim forces of political correctitude. They do not find the joke very funny. The jokester is a supporter of Rick Santorum, and now he too is on the hot seat for it. Late last week, his supporter, the amiable Foster Friess, perpetrated the joke. It went like this: "You know, back in my days, they'd use Bayer aspirin for contraceptives," the easygoing multi-millionaire philanthropist told MSNBC. "The gals put it between their knees, and it wasn't that costly." Kaboom -- all hell broke loose. According to the Washington Post, "the remark outraged women's groups and many others."
Politicians Fiddle While Fiscal Crisis Looms
Imagine this family budget: Last year, you earned $24,700. But you spent $37,900, incurring $13,300 in debt, and you were already $153,500 in debt. So you say, "I promise I'll spend $300 less this year!" Anyone can see that your cutback is pathetic and that you need to spend much less. Yet if you add eight zeroes, that's America's budget.
Whitney's Death Should Be a Lesson
Another tremendously talented American who had riches and fame beyond most people's dreams has killed herself with drugs. Whitney Houston's life was wrecked and cut tragically short at 48 because she became mired in the self-destructive hell of drug use. In the late 1970s my birth brother was living in L.A. and working as a writer on "Laverne & Shirley," the number one-rated TV show in the country. It was pretty heady stuff for a 21-year-old kid from Ohio.
Greece's Problems Are Far From Over
After 13 hours of overnight talks ending Tuesday morning at 5 a.m., euro zone finance ministers put together the latest rescue package for Greece. "We have reached a far-reaching agreement on Greece's new program and private sector involvement that would lead to a significant debt reduction for Greece...to secure Greece's future in the euro area," said Jean-Claude Juncker, who chairs the euro-group of finance ministers. It is a future emblazoned by one over-arching reality: the relinquishment of national sovereignty is the ultimate price that must be paid by any EU nation that cannot meet its debt obligations.
Math Matters
If one manages to graduate from high school without the rudiments of algebra, geometry and trigonometry, there are certain relatively high-paying careers probably off-limits for life -- such as careers in architecture, chemistry, computer programming, engineering, medicine and certain technical fields. For example, one might meet all of the physical requirements to be a fighter pilot, but he's grounded if he doesn't have enough math to understand physics, aerodynamics and navigation. Mathematical ability helps provide the disciplined structure that helps people to think, speak and write more clearly. In general, mathematics is an excellent foundation and prerequisite for study in all areas of science and engineering. So where do U.S. youngsters stand in math?
Coming Apart: The Growing Cultural Divide
Charles Murray, whose book Losing Ground redefined the debate about welfare and the underclass thirty years ago, has a new book, Coming Apart. The book is about the increasingly cultural divide among white Americans. Coming Apart is controversial and has many critics, both on the left and on the right. But it has ignited a long-overdue discussion about the link between cultural decline and the American Dream.
The Illegitimacy Rate and Us
Oh, have we got problems as a country and as a people -- not all of them connected with Iranian nuclear ambitions, the eurozone crisis and Mitt Romney's inner feelings about family dogs on the family station wagon roof. News that the U.S. illegitimacy rate is 51 percent for births to women aged 20 to 30 stuns less by means of the trend's sheer novelty than through the implications -- none desirable -- for a whole lot of things.
Department of Education: Catholic Schools Beat Public Schools
When two schools meet in a basketball game, the winner is indisputable. One team outscores the other. The same is true in certain types of academic competition. When students take standardized national tests, students from some schools outscore students from others. In the most recent round of National Assessment of Educational Progress tests, which are administered by the U.S. Department of Education, the winners were indeed indisputable. Catholic schools thrashed public schools.
The Bill Press Hate Machine
Bill Press has a new book out called "The Obama Hate Machine." To read the blurbs, you might wonder if Press thinks no one should be allowed to criticize the president. Here's Nancy Pelosi touting the book: "In a poisoned political climate, negative personal attacks on President Obama must have no place in our public discourse." What's next? A mandate forbidding inappropriate free speech? These tolerant liberals are out of control.
Contraceptive Failure
A month ago, the Obama administration said religious organizations will have to pay for health insurance policies that cover contraception and sterilization, even if they consider those practices immoral. Two weeks ago, responding to widespread complaints that its edict violated freedom of conscience, the administration unveiled a "new policy," under which religious organizations will have to pay for health insurance policies that cover contraception and sterilization, even if they consider those practices immoral.
The 'Fairness' Fraud
During a recent Fox News Channel debate about the Obama administration's tax policies, Democrat Bob Beckel raised the issue of "fairness." He pointed out that a child born to a poor woman in the Bronx enters the world with far worse prospects than a child born to an affluent couple in Connecticut. No one can deny that. The relevant question, however, is: How does allowing politicians to take more money in taxes from successful people, to squander in ways that will improve their own reelection prospects, make anything more "fair" for others?
Chris Matthews' 'Strategizing'
My longtime friend Chris Matthews was at Ford's Theater in Washington recently. He appeared to have maligned his own Catholic Church by saying that many of the new converts to Catholicism are motivated by anti-gay bigotry. But he went further, alleging that conservatives have a "Southern Strategy." Chris is struggling with the truth. He is determined to jam his size 11 foot into the glass slipper of liberal orthodoxy. And it just won't fit.
The High Priests of Eco-Destruction
Rick Santorum is right. Pushing back against Democrats' attempts to frame him as a religious menace, the GOP presidential candidate forcefully turned the tables on the White House: "When it comes to the management of the Earth, they are the anti-science ones." Scrutiny of the White House anti-science brigade couldn't come at a better time (which is why Santorum's detractors prefer to froth at the mouth about comments he made four years ago on the existence of Satan). It's not just big-ticket scandals like the stimulus-subsidized Solyndra bankruptcy or the Keystone pipeline debacle bedeviling America. In every corner of the Obama administration, the radical green machinery is hard at work -- destroying jobs, shredding truth and sacrificing our economic well-being at the altar of environmentalism.
Mr. Right Eludes the GOP
"If we could just take a little bit from each of them." I've lost track of how many people I have heard say some version of this in the last couple of months. The "each of them" refers to the final four combatants for the Republican nomination. You could take Newt Gingrich's verbal dexterity, encyclopedic grasp of politics and techno-optimism. Add in Rick Santorum's authenticity and religious conviction. Combine that with the essence of Ron Paul's principled passion for liberty and limited government. Stir vigorously and then pour into the handsome, squeaky-clean vessel of Mitt Romney (while keeping his business acumen and analytical skill). And voila, you'd have the perfect candidate.
Academic Hypocrisy
It is fascinating to see people accusing others of things that they themselves are doing, especially when their own sins are worse. Academics love to say that businesses are not paying enough to people who work for them. But where in business are there people who are paid absolutely nothing for strenuous work that involves risks to their health? In academia, that situation is common. It is called college football. How often have you watched a big-time college football game without seeing someone limping off the field or being carried off the field? College athletes are not to be paid because this is an "amateur" sport. But football coaches are not only paid, they are often paid higher salaries than the presidents of their own universities. Some make over a million dollars a year. Academics also like to accuse businesses of consumer fraud. There is indeed fraud in business, as in every other aspect of human life -- including academia. When my academic career began, half a century ago, I read up on the academic market and discovered that there was a chronic over-supply of people trained to be historians. There were not nearly enough academic posts available for people who had spent years acquiring Ph.D.s in history, and the few openings that there were for new Ph.D.s paid the kind of salaries you could get for doing work requiring a lot less education. My own pay as a beginning instructor in economics was not high but it was certainly higher than that for beginning historians. Now, 50 years later, there is a long feature article in the February 17th issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education on the chronic over-supply of historians. Worse yet, leading university history departments are resisting demands that they keep track of what happens to their students after they get their Ph.D.s -- and inform prospective Ph.D.s of what the market is like. If any business operated this way, selling customers something that was very costly in time and money, and which the sellers knew in advance was almost certain to disappoint their expectations, academics would be bursting with indignation -- and demanding full disclosure to the customers, if not criminal prosecutions. But The Chronicle of Higher Education reports "faculty resistance" to collecting and publishing information on what happens to a university's history Ph.D.s after they leave the ivy-covered walls with high hopes and low prospects. At a number of big-name universities -- Northwestern, Brown and the University of North Carolina's flagship campus at Chapel Hill -- at least one-fourth of their 2010 history Ph.D.s are either unemployed or their fate is unknown. At Brown University, for example, 38 percent of their 2010 Ph.D.s are in that category, compared to only 25 percent who have tenure-track appointments. For people not familiar with academia, a tenure-track appointment does not mean that the appointee has tenure, but only that the job is one where a tenure decision will have to be made at some point under the "up or out system." At leading universities, far more are put out than move up. There are also faculty appointments that are strictly for the time being -- lecturers, adjunct professors or visiting professors. Half the 2010 Ph.D.s from Duke University and the University of Pennsylvania have these kinds of appointments, which essentially lead nowhere. They are sometimes called "gypsy faculty." Finally, there are Ph.D.s who are on postdoctoral fellowships, often at the expense of the taxpayers. They are paid to continue on campus, essentially as students, after getting their doctorates. More than one-fourth of the 2010 Ph.D.s from Rutgers, Johns Hopkins and Harvard are in this category. At least these universities release such statistics. A history professor at Rutgers University who has studied such things says: "If you look at some of the numbers published on department Web sites, they range from dishonest to incompetent." But apparently many academics are too busy pursuing moral crusades in society at large to look into such things on their own ivy-covered campuses. Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His website is www.tsowell.com. To find out more about Thomas Sowell and read features by other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2012 CREATORS.COM