Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Why the UK Is Ditching Socialized Medicine
There is more than a little irony attached to the Obama administration's determination to pursue socialist, EU-style "solutions" to America's problems, even as the European Union is coming to grips with the bitter realities such socialism produces. And while Greece and its financial problems receive some media coverage in the United States, there is a much bigger story flying under the mainstream media radar: in Britain, Prime Minister David Cameron has introduced a bill seeking to partially privatize the National Health Service (NHS). Why? Because the British government is "hoping to avoid a Greek-style financial meltdown."
Black (Liberal) History Month
Black History Month honors the achievements of African Americans throughout history and that is a good thing. Unfortunately, a reliance on family and faith, which allowed many African Americans to survive the horrors of Reconstruction, racial injustice and violent acts of discrimination, has become a casualty of the modern welfare state, which has contributed to the destruction of family cohesion, supplanted faith in God with faith in government and fashioned many African-Americans into a Democratic voting bloc that has not improved the lot of the impoverished among them.
If You're Ever Murdered, Here's an Idea
I'd like to offer a simple proposal that, if enacted, could generate a great deal of a most precious resource: moral clarity. It concerns the death penalty. Opponents of capital punishment for murderers argue that the state has no right to take a murderer's life. Apparently, one fact that abolitionists forget or overlook is that the state is acting on behalf of the murdered person and the murdered person's family, not only on behalf of society.
Some Light Bulbs Are Duds
When I heard Newt Gingrich seriously suggest that America, a nation perched on the edge of economic collapse because of Obama's sending our debt soaring from $10 trillion to $16 trillion, should consider setting up a colony on the moon -- and, furthermore, granting statehood when the colony population reached 13,000 -- it occurred to me that "lunacy" is a word derived from Luna, a Roman deity who personified the moon. When people insist that Gingrich would make a great president, they generally emphasize how many ideas he generates on a daily, sometimes hourly, basis. What they overlook is that a great many of his brainstorms are all wet.
Prudence Is Key to Reversing Obama's 'Soft Despotism'
Many Republican House members, and the bloggers and tea partiers who cheered their victory in gaining a majority in November 2010, seem to be seething with discontent and eager for confrontation. They believe, reasonably, that that victory represented a repudiation of the vast expansion of government by the Obama Democrats. They want to see those policies reversed, and pronto. And if the dilatory Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and the all-campaign-no-governance President Obama want a confrontation, so much the better.
The Prophets
"A prophet is not without honor, except in his own country." Many of us have read these words of Jesus. We have many, many present day examples of this. And not just in church matters. It might even apply in dealing with Iran.
Reasons to Like (and Honor) Ike
WASHINGTON -- Two coming developments, one dismal and one excellent, pertain to America's memory of a great man. One of several oversight panels soon will consider a proposed memorial to Dwight Eisenhower. The proposal is an exhibitionistic triumph of theory over function -- more a monument to its creator Frank Gehry, practitioner of architectural flamboyance, than to the most underrated president. Fortunately, on Tuesday comes Jean Edward Smith's biography "Eisenhower in War and Peace," which demonstrates why the man's achievements merit a memorial better than the proposed one.
Rationing Our Rights
They said it would never lead to rationing. But rationing is already here. Under the latest assault by the Obama administration, they are rationing our rights. Tens of millions of Catholics -- and tens of millions of the rest of us -- are having our religious liberty crushed by the latest health care mandate from HHS. The legislation that President Obama signed with a flourish in 2010 was supported by not a single Republican. The election of 2010 resulted in a massive electoral "shellacking," the president's own word, that cost the Democrats their majority in the House and serious losses in thousands of state legislative contests. Ignoring all that, they advance.
For Dems, No One 'Plays by the Same Rules'
When President Barack Obama released his $3.8 trillion budget on Monday he reiterated a familiar theme that has become the centerpiece of his re-election strategy. "We built this budget around the idea that our country has always done best when everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share and everyone plays by the same rules," he said. With all due respect to the president, everyone "playing by the same rules" is completely at odds with the prevailing ethos of the Democratic Party.
The Divided States of America
It only makes sense to divide the United States along political lines. I'm not saying it would be easy, but it's pretty obvious that the nation is growing increasingly polarized with roughly half the population favoring a huge federal government that oversees everything from smoking to nutrition, while the other half believes that the federal government has gone from being a necessary evil with the emphasis on necessary to one that is increasingly evil.
A Nation of Takers
Americans pride themselves on being a self-reliant people. We know that the freedom to make our own fortune sets us apart from many other nations. It's what has drawn generations of immigrants to our shores -- men and women risking their lives to live a life in which they, not the government, are in charge. But with each passing year, that portrait flies more and more in the face of reality. The numbers plainly show that we are becoming a people dependent not on ourselves, but on government. We are evolving into a nation of takers, not givers.
From The Comedy Store
The Chicago Auto Show got underway with Ford's new Mustang Shelby showing off its six hundred and fifty horsepower engine. In only one way is the car environmentally correct. The Shelby doesn't run on gas, it runs on ground-up Chevy Volts.
Conservatives Must Remain United
A strong move is on to demonize and marginalize social conservatives, a move that originates from the political left but is being aided by some on the right, a move that is based on assumptions that better describe the leftist accusers than they do their targets. Obama, by rewriting the Bush rules to protect health care providers who objected on moral grounds to abortion, has breached his repeated promise to preserve them and has dealt a significant blow to religious liberties, yet he is painting people of faith as the extremists.
Shocked and Surprised
WASHINGTON -- Twenty-three years ago this week, Iran's self-appointed supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, broadcast a religious edict declaring that author Salman Rushdie and his publishers were "hereby sentenced to death." The fatwa also called for "all the intrepid Muslims in the world" to "execute them quickly, wherever they find them." The U.S. State Department acknowledged the proclamation and issued a statement "condemning this threat in the strongest possible terms." Rushdie, then living in London, did the sensible thing; he went into hiding and rarely has been seen in public since.
Taxing Medical Progress to Death
Two years ago this month, as public debate over Obamacare raged, former President Bill Clinton rushed to the hospital because of a heart condition. He immediately underwent a procedure to place two stents in one of his coronary arteries. It was a timely reminder about the dangers of stifling private-sector medical innovation. No one listened. Stents don't grow on trees. They were not created, developed, marketed or sold by government bureaucrats and lawmakers. One of the nation's top stent manufacturers, Boston Scientific, warned at the time that Obamacare's punitive medical device tax would lead to worker losses and research cuts. The 2.3 percent excise tax, the company said, "would be very damaging to Boston Scientific, and the medical device industry as a whole. In a nutshell, it would raise costs and lead to significant job losses. It does not address the quality of care but the political scorecard of savings."
Raiding Social Security
Extending the payroll tax cut -- as the GOP leadership has now agreed with Democrats to do -- may be good politics, but it is lousy policy. For the average household with earnings of $49,445 a year (about the median), keeping individual payroll taxes at 4.2 percent as opposed to 6.2 percent will mean about a thousand dollars more in their wallets this year. And generally speaking, letting people keep more of their own money to spend and invest as they choose is a good thing, both for individuals and the economy as a whole.
The Great Obama Kowtow
Wikipedia defines "kowtow" as "kneeling and bowing so low as to have one's head touching the ground. ... (Chinese history scholar) Immanuel (Hsu) describes the 'full kowtow' as 'three kneelings and nine knockings of the head on the ground.'" Wikipedia adds that, "In modern times, usage of the kowtow has become much reduced." Have they been watching the Obama administration? This week, the U.S. welcomed Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping -- widely assumed to be the next leader of the Communist Party, the army and accordingly, of China. Xi will officially take power in the autumn of this year, just about the time that we have a free election to determine our next leader.
Empty Buildings: NYC Kicks Churches Out of Schools
It's no secret that Christianity has been unwelcome in public schools for a long time. But recently New York City's government took an unprecedented step by forcing around 60 churches to vacate sanctuaries they pay to use. Why? Because Monday through Friday, those sanctuaries also happen to be classrooms. This deadline was set back in December, when the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of the 2nd Circuit's decision upholding the City's crass discrimination against communities of faith. New York at this time is the only major city in the nation to ban religious services in its school buildings. But this precedent does not bode well for what may happen in other cities.
Overreach: Obamacare vs. the Constitution
WASHINGTON -- Give him points for cleverness. President Obama's birth control "accommodation" was as politically successful as it was morally meaningless. It was nothing but an accounting trick that still forces Catholic (and other religious) institutions to provide medical insurance that guarantees free birth control, tubal ligation and morning-after abortifacients -- all of which violate church doctrine on the sanctity of life. The trick is that these birth control/abortion services will supposedly be provided independently and free of charge by the religious institution's insurance company. But this changes none of the moral calculus. Holy Cross Hospital, for example, is still required by law to engage an insurance company that is required by law to provide these doctrinally proscribed services to all Holy Cross employees.