Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Thursday, December 29, 2011
The New Old Europe
Nearly 10 years ago, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld provoked outrage by referring to "Old Europe." How dare he, snapped the French and Germans, call us "old" when the utopian European Union was all the rage, the new euro was soaring in value, and the United States was increasingly isolated under the Bush administration! Yet the more things change in Europe, the more they stay the same. The island of Britain usually is, and is not, a part of Europe -- carefully pulling out when things heat up, terrified that it will be pulled back in when things boil over. British Prime Minister David Cameron knows the old script well, as he adamantly and publicly insists that Great Britain is still a part of the crumbling European Union while privately assuming that it is not.
Judging, Properly
WASHINGTON -- The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is famously liberal and frequently reversed. Recently, however, a unanimous three-judge panel of this court did something right when it held that bone marrow donors can be compensated. In effect, it revised a law, the National Organ Transplant Act (NOTA) of 1984, because of a medical technique developed since then. Was this "judicial activism" -- judges acting as legislators, imposing social policies they prefer? Or was it proper judicial engagement -- performance of the judicial duty to ensure that the law is applied in conformity with the actual facts of the case? Herewith an example of a court's conscientious application of law in light of a pertinent change -- a technological change -- in a medical sphere the law regulates.
Republican Voters' Choices
No one seems to be really happy with this year's field of Republican candidates for that party's presidential nomination -- except perhaps the Democrats. The sudden rise, and equally sudden fall, of a succession of Republican front-runners is just one sign of the dissatisfaction of the Republican voters with this field of candidates. In this, as in many other aspects of life, we can only make our choice among the options actually available. So Republican voters who want to be realistic need to understand that they are going to end up with qualms and nagging doubts about whomever they pick this time.
Only One Candidate Is Right on the Two Most Important Issues
In the upcoming presidential election, two issues are more important than any others: repealing Obamacare and halting illegal immigration. If we fail at either one, the country will be changed permanently. Taxes can be raised and lowered. Regulations can be removed (though they rarely are). Attorneys general and Cabinet members can be fired. Laws can be repealed. Even Supreme Court justices eventually die. But capitulate on illegal immigration, and the entire country will have the electorate of California. There will be no turning back. Similarly, if Obamacare isn't repealed in the next few years, it never will be.
Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Bilderberg?
It seems that whenever I point out that a true conservative is not ever likely to win the presidency in a country that is only slightly right of the middle, I can count on hearing from people who regard RINOs as worse than Obama, worse than Pelosi, Reid and Waxman, and even worse than jihadists. They are sure to let me know that Ron Paul is the only true patriot in the running. When I point out that in 2008 when he was well-financed and only had to worry about McCain and Romney, Rep. Paul couldn't win a single Republican primary. How in the world did anyone think that he would ever win a presidential election when, for reasons I don't really understand, they permit Democrats to vote?
The Justice Department's Identity Problem
Is there, or should there ever be, a point when a state is no longer penalized for its discriminatory past? Not according to the Department of Justice, which last Friday rejected a South Carolina law that would have required voters show a valid photo ID before casting their ballots. Justice says the law discriminates against minorities. The Obama administration said, "South Carolina's law didn't meet the burden under the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which outlawed discriminatory practices preventing blacks from voting." Why South Carolina? Because, the Justice Department contends, it's tasked with approving voting changes in states that have failed in the past to protect the rights of blacks.
Perry May Still Be the Man to Take on Obama
WASHINGTON -- The year 2011 has drawn to an end, and as I look back, I see several of my predictions that appear pretty sound. President Barack Obama is dead in the water and will be beaten in 2012. I have made that prediction over and again this year and I think it will be borne out. Another observation I've made is that liberalism is dead. By the coming election, it will be the rare psephologist who fails to notice. Say, the occasional MSNBC political expert may still think liberalism is full of brag and bounce after the fall elections, as will the Sunday morning news know-it-alls. But after the Nov. 6 elections, with the Senate and the presidency added to the Republicans' trophy chest, I think my observation will be commonly accepted.
Norman Lear's Left-Wing Paranoia About 'The Right'
They're coming for your children! They're coming for the womenfolk! Then they're coming after you! Norman Lear, the famous television show producer, offered this hysterically paranoid assessment of the allegedly growing and presumably insidious power of "the right": "I want to suggest that we lefties start laying claim to what we see as 'sacred' and serve it up proudly to the religious right -- to the James Dobson, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Karl Rove ... hatemongers, sheathed in sanctity, and to the Koch brothers, the types that fund them and use them so effectively for their own political power-grabbing purposes. Over the past several decades, the power-grabbing right has built a powerful infrastructure -- radio and TV stations and networks. They've built think tanks, colleges and law schools."
The Gift of Giving
Of all the rituals that mark this season, none is more misguided than the complaints about how crass and mercenary the holidays have become. The laments begin early in November, when Santa starts showing up in TV commercials. They surge during the hyperactive shopping weekend that follows Thanksgiving. By the time Christmas (and Chanukah) are actually at hand, you'd have to be in a persistent vegetative state not to hear all the scolding about how the "reason for the season" has been lost amid the buy-one-get-one sales and the over-elaborate mall displays. Even Pope Benedict joined the chorus this year. In the homily he delivered on Christmas Eve, he deplored "the superficial glitter" of the season, urging the faithful not to confuse the "commercial celebration" Christmas has become with its "true joy and true light."
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Conservative Establishment Divided Against Itself
I've made a disturbing discovery: I am a member of the conservative "establishment." I feel like Michael Douglas at the end of "Falling Down": "I'm the bad guy?" Largely in response to the real and perceived excesses of the Bush years and the overreach of the Obama administration, the base has become more populist. In particular, the rank and file of the GOP and the conservative movement have become deeply disenchanted with what they see as the rubber-spined, foot-dragging quislings drinking from a trough of Chablis at some Georgetown party. The term "RINO" (Republican In Name Only) has become an epithet of ideological enforcement, spit out in much the same way Mao cursed "running dog capitalists."
The Year in Obama Scandals -- and Scandal Deniers
With 2011 drawing to a close, it is time to account. As an early-and-often chronicler of Chicago-on-the-Potomac, I am amazed at the stubborn and clingy persistence of President Barack Obama's snowblowers in the media. See no scandal, hear no scandal, speak no scandal. Dartmouth College professor Brendan Nyhan asserted in May -- while Operation Fast and Furious subpoenas were flying on Capitol Hill -- that "one of the least remarked upon aspects of the Obama presidency has been the lack of scandals." Conveniently, he defines scandal as a "widespread elite perception of wrongdoing."
2012: A Year of Media Savagery
For those Republican presidential candidates who eventually conclude there is no path to the nomination, there is consolation in the notion that they won't be the ones to face the brutal onslaught being prepared for the GOP king-of-the-mountain by team Obama and its army of "objective" media allies. This time around, the Obama machine cannot run on the fairy dust of hope and change. It cannot suggest after four years of dreadful executive-branch performance, that the promised one is on the horizon. Its only path to victory is the one that finds its opponents even more disliked. So it can be guaranteed that whoever wins the Republican contest will face one of the most scorching personal assaults the country has ever witnessed.
Virginia Must Change Its Election System
When I managed Pat Buchanan's presidential campaign in 1996, I learned that some states conducted fair and honest caucuses and primaries and that some did not. Iowa, historically the first caucus state, and New Hampshire, historically the first primary state, conducted their political business fairly. New York did not. Today Virginia's political system is beginning to resemble New York's in 1996. To get on the Republican primary ballot in New York that year, a candidate needed to submit signatures from 1,250 registered Republican voters in each of the state's 31 congressional districts or signatures from 5 percent of registered Republicans in a district if that number were less than 1,250.
Gullible Americans
National Transportation Safety Board Chairwoman Deborah Hersman has called for states to mandate a total ban on cellphone usage while driving. She has also encouraged electronics manufacturers -- via recommendations to the CTIA-The Wireless Association and the Consumer Electronics Association -- to develop features that "disable the functions of portable electronic devices within reach of the driver when a vehicle is in motion." That means she wants to be able to turn off your cellphone while you're driving. With very little evidence, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration claims that there were some 3,092 roadway fatalities last year that involved distracted drivers. Americans ought to totally reject Hersman's agenda. It's the camel's nose into the tent. Down the road, we might expect mandates against talking to passengers while driving or putting on lipstick. They may even mandate the shutdown of drive-in restaurants as a contributory factor to driver distraction through eating while driving. You say, "Come on, Williams, you're paranoid. There are already laws against distracted driving, and it would never come to that!" Let's look at some other camels' noses into tents.
'Things Happened': The Year's Highlights in Shifting Responsibility
In an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network last March, shortly before he announced that he was running for the Republican presidential nomination, Newt Gingrich reflected on his sins, which include cheating on his first two wives with women he would later marry. "At times of my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country," he said, "I worked far too hard, and ... things happened in my life that were not appropriate." You might have thought that Gingrich's serial adultery reflected a different sort of passion and that his inability to control it reflected poorly on his self-discipline, not to mention his truthfulness, his loyalty and the reliability of his promises. But how can you fault him for loving his country so much that he forgot he was married?
A Libertarian Year Ahead?
As 2011 draws to a close, I wonder: Is freedom winning? Did America become freer this year? Less free? How about the rest of the world? I'm a pessimist. I fear Thomas Jefferson was right when he said, "The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." That's what's happened. Bush and Obama doubled spending and increased regulation. Government's intrusiveness is always more, never less. The state grows, and freedom declines. But there were bright spots. We don't yet know what will become of what people call the Arab Spring. But this year, for the first time in my life, there was hope that masses of people in the Middle East will embrace liberalism -- in the original sense of people being left alone to pursue their own lives.
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Certain Prediction for 2012
According to the Mayan "long count" calendar, the final day on Earth is less than a year away, on Dec. 21, 2012. While we wait to see if that apocalypse occurs, a more reliable prediction includes an end of a different sort. The economic stimulus pipeline from Washington to the states is about to run dry. This means many governors can be expected to ask their legislatures, or voters, to raise taxes for "essential" programs. To government, all programs are "essential."
Random Thoughts
Random thoughts on the passing scene: Talk show host Dennis Miller said, "I don't dig polo. It's like miniature golf meets the Kentucky Derby." Nothing illustrates the superficiality of our times better than the enthusiasm for electric cars, because they are supposed to greatly reduce air pollution. But the electricity that ultimately powers these cars has to be generated somewhere -- and nearly half the electricity generated in this country is generated by burning coal.
A War Hero Is Vindicated -- Again
Seven long years after he allegedly committed "premeditated murder," Iraq war veteran Ilario Pantano, who gave up a comfortable life on Manhattan's Upper West Side to fight for his country following the September 11th attacks, has been thoroughly vindicated. Thus ends a saga highlighted by an unconscionable rush to judgement by the military, and the subsequent trashing of Mr. Pantano's reputation by leftists who never miss an opportunity to denigrate American soldiers based on nothing more than unproven allegations. By any reasonable measure, Mr. Pantano is an American patriot. A man born to poverty in New York's Hell's Kitchen, Pantano managed to win a partial scholarship to Horace Mann, one of the top private schools in the nation. Students from Horace Mann routinely qualify to attend some of the best colleges in the nation and Pantano was no exception. Yet he made himself an exception, putting off college to join the Marines to fight in the first Gulf War against Saddam Hussein.
Monday, December 26, 2011
Obama Succeeds Abroad When He Follows Bush, Clinton
The world usually turns out to work differently from what American presidents expected when they were campaigning. Franklin Roosevelt campaigned on domestic issues in 1932 and ran a more isolationist foreign policy for his first years in office than any of the Republican presidents elected in the 1920s. But he became aware of the threat that Adolf Hitler posed earlier than most, and changed course accordingly. George W. Bush called for a "humble" foreign policy when he was running in 2000. But the attacks of Sept. 11 utterly changed his priorities and policies.