Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
The Smithsonian Murders Art
The National Portrait Gallery, part of the federally funded Smithsonian Institution, is presenting an exhibition that does exactly the opposite of what true art does. When I studied English at Princeton, I had the good fortune to be taught by a series of scholars who in their lectures and precepts drove home the point that art, whether it be in literary or other form, must ultimately be measured by its capacity to make better human beings.
Making Parks Decent Again
America is filled with parks that are filthy, dangerous and badly maintained. The governments in charge plead: We can't help it. Our budgets have been slashed. We don't have enough money! Bryant Park, in midtown Manhattan, was once such an unsavory place. But now it's nice. What changed? Dan Biederman essentially privatized the park.
The Great American Funk
I suppose it is to be expected that the Great Recession should be accompanied by a sweeping national pessimism in which our purported leaders and commentators express historic despair, while the people and corporations mope about, convinced that the sun will not come up tomorrow. Such an intensity of self-loathing and lack of confidence has not been heard since the French contemplated their disgraced future in June 1940 when they annihilated their nation, and the great light that was France, by surrendering to the Germans.
The Littlest Victims of Obamacare
It's time for America's youth to buckle up and take a rough ride on Reality Highway. For the past two years, President Obama has promised our children the moon, stars, rainbows, unicorns and universal health care for all. But the White House Santa's cradle-to-grave entitlement mandates are a spectacularly predictable bust. Don't take it from me. Take it from Obamacare's own biggest cheerleaders.
They Just Don't Get It
On Tuesday, the U.S. Senate rejected a ban on earmarks, the addenda to bills that allow congressmen and senators to steer federal cash toward pet projects in their states and districts. The vote wasn't even close. The ban was defeated 56-39. "We have put in place the most dramatic reform of this appropriations process since I've served in Congress," whined Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Majority Whip and Appropriations Committee member. "There is full disclosure in my office of every single request for an appropriation."
Minimum Wage, Maximum Folly
How about this: The law of gravity is applicable to the behavior of falling objects on the U.S. mainland but not applicable on our Pacific Ocean territories Samoa and Northern Mariana Islands. You say, "Williams, that's lunacy! Laws are applicable everywhere; that's why they call it a law."
FBI Wins a GWOT Battle in Portland
He repeatedly insisted he wanted to kill Americans. Bloody carnage was his explicit goal, and a crowd of 12,000 Oregonians in downtown Portland provided the human targets. His targets -- men, women and children -- gathered in the city's Pioneer Courthouse Square last Friday to light a public Christmas tree. Attacking this infidel ceremony, with its hint of pagan tree worship, would give his murderous act iconic stature. Militant Islamists around the globe would appreciate the religious symbolism.
A WikiLeaks Wake-up Call
Washington is reeling from the latest WikiLeaks document dump. The foreign policy wonks insist that there are few, if any, major surprises. "Much of what we've seen thus far," opined Richard N. Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, "confirms more than it informs." And, in the end, what these documents confirm is that President Obama's foreign policy is a mess. Even if you're supportive of Obama's foreign policy efforts, the WikiLeaks dump is a bigger deal than the know-it-alls are suggesting. It's one thing to believe something as a generality; it's another to dispel plausible deniability for all concerned.
Naked Truth: Are Travelers Happy to Bare All in the Name of Homeland Security?
According to the Transportation Security Administration, Americans have no problem with the new airport screening procedures. So they should stop complaining. That self-contradictory reassurance, which would be unnecessary if it were true, seemed slightly more plausible after chaos failed to ensue from protests by Thanksgiving travelers who refused to walk through the TSA's full-body scanners last week. But there are reasons to question the TSA's portrait of placid passengers happily baring all for the sake of homeland security.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Those Whom the God Would Destroy ...
As life in the 21st century gets loopier and loopier, the truly deranged come out of the woodwork, passing themselves off as benefactors of mankind, candidates for sainthood, etc. Maybe -- who knows -- candidates for another Pulitzer Prize: something The New York Times hardly needs, but self-inflicted moral grandeur can do odd things to you.
The Myth of the Experts
"How do I know if I'm doing everything right?" she asked. "Maybe I do need a pro. I don't want to make any huge mistakes." A new mom, my friend found herself drowning in marketing materials from unsolicited experts of every kind. It started even before her daughter was born, Doulas, childbirth educators, lactation consultants, parenting coaches, home organizers and child experts -- my friend thinks she doesn't stand a chance if she doesn't read/use all of them.
Another Mysteriously Motivated Attack
A couple of weeks ago, on the occasion of the annual hajj, in which 2.5 million Muslim pilgrims fulfill their obligation to travel to Mecca, prominent Muslim clerics from Asia, Africa, and Europe, along with the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, Indonesia, Turkey, Afghanistan, and Iraq denounced violence in the name of Islam and issued a manifesto, signed by all, declaring that "murder of innocents is never justified and violates the teachings of Islam."
Needed: A Part-Time Congress
The finding by the bipartisan House Ethics Committee that Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) is guilty of financial misconduct and the conviction of former Texas Republican Rep. Tom DeLay by a jury in Austin, Texas on charges of political money laundering brings a question: Are we getting the Congress we're paying for?
Desperate Libs Ratchet Up Extremist Label
With the advent of the tea party movement and President Obama's recent "shellacking," the left's long-established effort to marginalize mainstream conservative Americans as fringe extremists has reached a new stage of desperation. For at least the past half-century, the dominant media culture has portrayed minority liberalism as mainstream and conservatives as shrill malcontents. From the time I started paying attention to politics as a young kid, liberals have been demonizing conservatives as reactionary throwback Neanderthal knuckle-dragging, warmongering extremists.
Want to Raise a Good Person? Stop Nurturing Your Child's Self-Esteem
By now, most people (with the exception of many psychotherapists) recognize that the self-esteem movement officially launched by California in 1986 has been at best silly and at worst injurious to society, despite whatever small benefit it may have had to some individuals. The movement was begun by California Assemblyman John Vasconcellos. As The New York Times reported, "Mr. Vasconcellos, a 53-year-old Democrat, is described by an aide as 'the most radical humanist in the Legislature.'"
You Can Stop Paying for Al Gore's Mistake
In Greece earlier this month, Al Gore made a startling admission: "First-generation ethanol, I think, was a mistake." Unfortunately, Americans have Gore to thank for ethanol subsidies. In 1994, then-Vice President Gore ended a 50-50 tie in the Senate by voting in favor of an ethanol tax credit that added almost $5 billion to the federal deficit last year. And that number doesn't factor the many ways in which corn-based ethanol mandates drive up the price of food and livestock feed.
Can Republicans Talk?
The biggest battle in the lame duck session of Congress may well be over whether or not to extend the Bush administration's tax cuts, which are scheduled to expire in January. The fact that this decision has been left until late in the eleventh hour, even though the expiration date has been known for years, tells us a lot about the utter irresponsibility of Congress. Neither businesses nor individuals nor the Internal Revenue Service will know what to do until this issue is resolved. In a stalled economy, we do not need this prolonged uncertainty that can paralyze both consumer spending and investment spending.
Monday, November 29, 2010
For Tottering States, Bankruptcy Could Be the Answer
We won't be able to say we weren't warned. Continued huge federal budget deficits will eventually mean huge increases in government borrowing costs, Erskine Bowles, co-chairman of Barack Obama's deficit reduction commission, predicted this month. "The markets will come. They will be swift, and they will be severe, and this country will never be the same." Bowles is talking about what the business press calls bond market vigilantes. People with capital are currently willing to loan money to the federal government, by buying U.S. bonds at low interest rates. That's because interest rates are generally low and because Treasury bonds are regarded as the safest investment in the world.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
A 50-Year Anniversary
When I was a little kid, this in my single-digit years, I used to love the Saturday Evening Post when its cover would be a Norman Rockwell painting. The minute I'd see one, I race to find Elmer and Belle because I knew they loved the covers as much as I did and we'd ooh and aah over the wonderful brilliance of my favorite painter of all time.
Comic Thriller: Cult of Expertise
WASHINGTON -- An eminent Harvard law professor, James Thayer (1831-1902), argued that although the judicial function is "merely that of fixing the outside border of reasonable legislative action," this still gives courts "a great and stately jurisdiction." While patrolling that jurisdiction today, Supreme Court justices may be playing the video game "Postal 2," whose rich menu of simulated mayhem provoked California's Legislature to pass a problematic law. During the oral argument about whether the law restricting children's access to violent video games violates First Amendment guarantees of free expression, the lawyer representing game manufacturers urged the court to remember America's history of moral panics, which he said included one in the early 1950s about comic books. Really? Yes, and the episode remains instructive.