Right Opinion

Eight Reasons Not to Be Optimistic About Egypt

From the moment the Tahrir Square demonstrations against Hosni Mubarak began, optimism has dominated American reporting and commentary on what is being called the Egyptian revolution. I fervently hope I am wrong, but I find it hard to share this dominant view, even as I identify with all those Egyptians and other Arabs who yearn for freedom.

Hate and Violence From the Left; It's Not Right

How much longer can the Democratic Party, the mainstream media and other leftists successfully maintain the ruse that intolerance, hatred and the propensity for violence mainly come from the right in this country? The lie is getting old. The left's ideas continue to fail in the real world, and the majority of the people reject them, which is why their proponents so often disguise their true intentions. Partially because they can't prevail on a level playing field, they use whatever means they can to advance their agenda. One of those means is to pre-emptively strike their political opponents by falsely condemning them for behavior that they -- leftists -- actually engage in. It's called "projection."

A Sense of Place

That most Southern of phrases, "a sense of place," came up at a gathering the other evening. It elicited only a quizzical expression from one of the guests, who seemed to think it referred to her neighborhood. Of course she had a sense of place. Why, she'd lived there for eight years. And before that? A succession of places, all of which she left vague. I was at a loss. I so often am. About so many things. Among them, how do you explain a sense of place to someone so unburdened (and unblessed) by one?

Trying to Make Sense of Liberals

It's probably no surprise that nearly all of my Jewish friends and relatives long ago washed their hands of me. They simply couldn't fathom how I, who grew up as most of them did, in the home of Russian-Jewish immigrants, could have turned out to be a conservative. Some of them are still so angry about it that I'm convinced that they would reverse the circumcision if they could. For my part, I find it equally mystifying that people who were lucky enough to have been born in America can be as ungrateful as they are. Whether it's Spike Lee claiming we're the most violent nation in the history of the world, Barack Obama insisting that there's nothing exceptional about America or some Muslim tinhorn like Mahmud Ahmadinejad calling us the Great Satan, these ingrates are prepared to give them a heart-felt "Amen!"

Voting for the National Interest, Not Self-Interest

It's a question that puzzles most liberals and bothers some conservatives. Why are so many modest-income white voters rejecting the Obama Democrats' policies of economic redistribution and embracing the small-government policies of the tea party movement? It's not supposed to work out that way, say the political scientists and New Deal historians. Politics is supposed to be about who gets how much when, and people with modest incomes should be eager to take as much from the rich as they can get.

Letting the Cream Rise

WASHINGTON -- For Princetonians, the senior thesis is a high hurdle before graduation. For Wendy Kopp, class of 1989, it became a career devoted to transforming primary and secondary education. What began as an idea for a teacher corps for hard-to-staff schools, urban and rural, became Teach for America. At first it was merely a leavening ingredient in education; it has become a template for transformation. Back then, Kopp's generation was stigmatized by journalistic sociology as "the 'me' generation" composed of materialists eager to be recruited into careers of quick self-enrichment. She thought the problem was not her peers but the recruiters. So she became one.

The Cheesehead Rubicon

In 2008, 56 percent of Wisconsin voters supported Barack Obama for president. In 2009, Wisconsin's Democratic governor and Democratic Legislature passed legislation that raised taxes and fees by about $1.2 billion over three years. State lawmakers approved the bill on the very day it was introduced, with no public hearing. Remember that. In 2011, the tables have turned. The Assembly has 60 Republicans to 38 Democrats, and the state Senate is weighted 19 Repubs to 14 Dems. GOP Gov. Scott Walker has inherited a budget shortfall that is expected to grow to $3.6 billion over the next two-year budget. He has presented a budget-repair plan that would require most public employees to pay 5.8 percent of their salaries toward their (very generous by private standards) pensions and pay 12.6 percent of their health care premiums. The state is broke, Walker argues, and by essentially cutting workers' compensation by 7 percent, he hopes to avoid layoffs.

From The Comedy Store

Arizona sheriffs demanded that Homeland Security build a border fence in Arizona. A fence can be partially successful. California's twenty-foot high border fence hasn't stopped illegal aliens from reaching U.S. soil but it's left them slightly winded.

Madness in Madison and Elsewhere

There are many lessons to be learned from the demonstrations in Madison, Wisconsin. First and foremost, workers in the public sector should never have been allowed to unionize. Once that happened, it was inevitable that civil servants would wind up being better-paid and better-pensioned than the folks in the private sector. That's because they got to wind up negotiating with politicians who had nothing to lose by giving in to union demands. It's only in the private sector that the difference between resisting unreasonable demands or caving in is often the difference between a company's making a profit or going out of business.

Hate-A-Rama: The Vulgar, Sexist, Racist, Homophobic Rage of the Left

Barack Obama's new era of civility was over before it began. You wouldn't know it from reading The New York Times, watching Katie Couric or listening to the Democratic manners police. But America has been overrun by foul-mouthed, fist-clenching wildebeests. Yes, the tea party movement is responsible -- for sending these liberal goons into an insane rage, that is. After enduring two years of false smears as sexist, racist, homophobic barbarians, it is grassroots conservatives and taxpayer advocates who have been ceaselessly subjected to rhetorical projectile vomit. It is Obama's rank-and-file "community organizers" on the streets fomenting the hate against their political enemies. Not the other way around.

Rubicon: A River in Wisconsin

WASHINGTON -- The magnificent turmoil now gripping statehouses in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana and soon others marks an epic political moment. The nation faces a fiscal crisis of historic proportions and, remarkably, our muddled, gridlocked, allegedly broken politics have yielded singular clarity. At the federal level, President Obama's budget makes clear that Democrats are determined to do nothing about the debt crisis, while House Republicans have announced that beyond their proposed cuts in discretionary spending, their April budget will actually propose real entitlement reform. Simultaneously, in Wisconsin and other states, Republican governors are taking on unsustainable, fiscally ruinous pension and health care obligations, while Democrats are full-throated in support of the public-employee unions crying, "Hell no."

The Anti-Reform Party

It's hard to imagine the level of outrage that would be flowing in the direction of the Republican Party today if Republicans had behaved the way the Democrats have over the past week. Who can doubt that The New York Times, Nancy Pelosi, and the rest of the left-wing choir would be chorusing "anti-democratic," "obstructionist," and "radical"? In early 2009, when the Democrats were triumphant in Washington, President Obama dismissed Republican objections to his stimulus bill (now estimated, by the way, to have cost $821 billion -- $34 billion more than initially projected) with a pithy "We won." Elections have consequences, he explained, and there were limits to his openness to ideas from the defeated opposition.

Not Wrestling Girls

It's so easy to look at teenagers in general today and sigh. They're more than a bit lazy, a bit spoiled and more than a bit morally compromised. Two teenagers made national news. One showed common decency and sportsmanship, two virtues seemingly uncommon in that generation. Hope is restored. Sixteen-year-old wrestler Joel Northrup faced a dilemma when he was scheduled to wrestle Cassy Herkelman, one of only two girls to make it to the state tournament. Even though he entered with a 35-4 record, Northrup forfeited rather than violate his religious principles.

Prepare for an Economic Meltdown

In 2006, I examined a series of surveys we conducted nationwide and then predicted a collapse of the housing market. Plenty others followed with similar forecasts and postmortems over the following months and years. But my column was among the first. I've made predictions about other slowdowns in the American economy. I've been mostly correct, although in 2010, I suggested that the stock market ultimately would plunge. Turned out that it climbed instead of descending. The fact is that it's easier to predict the weather next month than to get an accurate read on the future of the stock market.

Throwing in the Towel on the Constitution

Article 2 of the U.S. Constitution requires that each new president take the following oath: "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." President Obama announced this week that he will violate that oath.

The King vs. the Geek

"If you want to send a message," Samuel Goldwyn famously told his screenwriters, "go to Western Union." He was determined that his movies would be about entertainment, not politics. Now you would have better luck trying to send a message by Pony Express, since the telegram has gone the way of buggy whips and high-button shoes. But via cell phone, e-mail or Twitter, the old movie mogul's point is still a valid caution. The movies nominated for the Academy Awards on Sunday are mostly about entertainment -- hot buttered popcorn, not hot-button politics. Two of the leading contenders for best picture, "The Social Network" and "The King's Speech," say more about changing mores and manners than about the price of oil or how to rein in out-of-control government spending. The revolution in how we communicate with one another is told in the stories of two men separated by nearly a century, one a college kid and the other a king, both flawed but triumphant in confrontation with the world.

Dark Days for Solar Power

Obama-Inspired Chaos

WASHINGTON -- According to Hillary Clinton, "the safety and well-being of Americans has to be our highest priority." Oh, really? That comment, proffered by our secretary of state Tuesday, is overshadowed by the serious jeopardy U.S. citizens now encounter thanks to the ideological blindness and national security incompetence of the Obama administration. Since 2011 began, more than 20 Americans have been injured, killed or gone missing in the midst of violence in Lebanon, Tunisia, Iran, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Libya, Mexico and the Indian Ocean. American citizens are being held by government authorities in Iran, Yemen and Pakistan -- and by pirates in Somalia. Our State Department says it is "concerned."

Obama Not Just Above the Law; He Is the Law

President Obama's brazenly calculated move to unilaterally abandon the federal Defense of Marriage Act showcases his attitude that he is above the law. DOMA defines marriage as "only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife" for purposes of all federal laws, rules and regulations (Section 3). It specifies that no state shall be required to honor laws of other states that treat same-sex relationships as legal marriages -- effectively carving out an exception to the Constitution's full faith and credit clause (Section 2).

The Arab Revolt

It isn't T.E. Lawrence's revolt in the desert, leading a hodgepodge of Arab tribes across the desert in the Arab revolt against the Turks in the World War, Act I. That was the stuff of which legend was made. And myth. This time the Arabs are rebelling against their own hodgepodge of kings, dictators, autocrats, demagogues and all of the above. The crumbling old pillars of the region, long rotten from within, are falling one by one. Or at least trembling.