Right Opinion

Barack Obama: The Black Jimmy Carter

On Sept. 16, ex-president Jimmy Carter excoriated opponents of President Barack Obama as racists. "I think people who [attack] Obama have been influenced to a major degree by a belief that he should not be president because he happens to be African-American," Carter blathered. Obama's spokespeople quickly backed away from Carter's statements; Obama went so far as to remind David Letterman that he was black before the presidential election, and that the American public had elected him anyway. The fact is this: the American public is not racist. In fact, we're downright evenhanded -- we elect incompetents of all color to high office. We don't just elect Jimmy Carter president -- we elect the black Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama. Obama resembles Carter in virtually every way. Carter handed over the Panama Canal, built by the United States, to leftist dictator Omar Torrijos; Obama is currently in the process of handing over Honduras to leftist would-be dictator Manuel Zelaya, and he has already kowtowed to Venezuelan leftist dictator Hugo Chavez, Nicaraguan communist dictator Daniel Ortega and Cuban communist dictator Fidel Castro.

End the Coarsening of Civic Discourse

As the town hall meetings on health care started in early August, the Democratic Party's talking points accused the attending citizens of being "demonstrators hired by K Street lobbyists." Then they started calling them a "mob." Getting into the spirit of his party, Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called those who oppose Obamacare "evil." Then House Democratic Majority Leader Steny Hoyer called the dissenters "un-American." For good measure, Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused them of being Nazis. Former Democratic President Jimmy Carter followed with the assertion that "racism" motivates President Barack Obama's health care opponents. The culmination -- so far -- of this cataract of calumnies was voiced by Pelosi, who, after calling her opposition Nazis, audaciously and chillingly implied that their rhetoric might cause an assassination (as she alleged conservative homophobic rhetoric did in the 1970s): "I have concerns about some of the language that is being used, because I saw this myself in the late '70s in San Francisco. This kind of rhetoric was very frightening."

Going to Fox II

When I announced last week that I was leaving ABC for Fox, some readers complained about my "bias." I replied: "Every reporter has political beliefs. The difference is that I am upfront about mine." Look at today's burning issue: President Obama's pledge to redesign 15 percent of the economy. Virtually every reporter calls his health care plan "reform." But dictionaries define reform as "improvement." So before they present any evidence, reporters pronounce Obama's plan an improvement. Isn't that bias? The New York Times took its bias to an absurd length. Its page-one story on the big anti-big-government rally in Washington, D.C., referred to "protests that began with an opposition to health care. ..." Apparently, in the Times reporter's and editors' view, opponents of the Obama health care plan oppose health care itself. (The online article was later changed.)

Uncertain Trumpet

"Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed." --A. Lincoln Thanks to Bob Woodward, the Washington Post's ever-open drop for leaked documents, the American people have the benefit of the latest report and recommendations from the commanding general of NATO forces in Afghanistan. The front-page headline sums up the 66-page analysis from the general and its stark conclusion: "McChrystal: More Forces or 'Mission Failure' " Talk about a feeling of deja vu: The grim picture painted by General Stanley McChrystal sounds much like the one that faced the previous commander-in-chief in Iraq back in 2006, when defeat seemed not only in prospect but already in process. That president and commander-in-chief had a choice: (a) accept defeat, which would of course be called an orderly withdrawal, or (b) stake all on a new strategy and new troops to carry it out with no guarantee of success.

Border Patrol Will Increase Goal for Miles of Border Secured

U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the agency in the Department of Homeland Security that is responsible for securing the nation's land borders, says it will increase its goal for the number of border miles it will have under "effective control" in fiscal year 2010, CBP Director of Media Relations Lloyd Easterling told me this week. The goal will be increased from the previously set mark of 815 to at least 894, the number of miles the Border Patrol says is under "effective control" as of now. At the same time, the Border Patrol will carry out a plan to reduce the number of agents deployed on the U.S.-Mexico border by 384. According to DHS, its measure of "border miles under effective control" applies to the entire 8,607 miles for which the Border Patrol is responsible. This includes almost 2,000 miles on the U.S.-Mexico border, about 4,000 miles on the U.S.-Canada border (not counting the Alaska-Canada border) and sectors of coastline in the Gulf of Mexico, Florida, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Obama Lets Sphere of Influence Trump Sphere of Security

When it came to acting on behalf of peace in the 21st century, the Obama administration weighed "sphere of influence" against "sphere of security" and came down solidly on the side of the Russian czars. I am referring to the administration's refusal to deploy long-range defensive ground-based interceptor (GBI) missiles in Poland. For an administration that insistently congratulates itself on "smart diplomacy," this is a shortsighted decision that sets back 21st century collective defense (sphere of security) at least five critical years and likely longer. Moreover, President Barack Obama's personal announcement of the policy decision was disastrously timed, an utter tin ear to grand history. Just three weeks ago, on Sept. 1, Poland's president Lech Kaczynski demanded an apology from Russia for the "stab in the back" that occurred Sept. 17, 1939, when Russian tanks invaded eastern Poland and began linking up with Nazi panzers attacking from the west. On Sept. 17, 2009, free Poland (liberated 20 years ago from the dungeon of Kremlin tyranny) took another knife, as the Obama administration dumped the GBI deployment in favor of pursuing its befogged "reset" of relations with Vladimir Putin's Russia. Little wonder Poles have dissed the decision. The White House decision also damaged relations with the Czech Republic, which had agreed to host an anti-ballistic missile (ABM) radar as part of the defensive system. Recall in 1938 in Munich, the West sold out Czechoslovakia in an attempt to "reset" diplomacy with Adolf Hitler.

Irving Kristol's Clear Thinking

"I am so nostalgic." That's the phrase I associate most with Irving Kristol, who died last week at the age of 89. What piqued Irving's nostalgia, at an American Enterprise Institute conference I worked on in 1992, was old-fashioned censorship. In the good old days, he explained, local communities were able to determine their own standards without inviting lawsuits from the ACLU and overwrought invocations of "Fahrenheit 451." In fact, hanging a "Banned in Boston" banner in a bookstore window, he explained, was the surest way to sell that book in New York. Local censorship, tethered to common sense and grounded in community norms, gave communities a say in how they would live. It made the world a more diverse, sane place. I'm not doing the argument justice, but what captured my attention was the calm, reasoned and even folksy way -- for a New York Jewish intellectual -- Kristol managed to slice through layers of liberal cant. I am a National Review guy, and William F. Buckley would be the first face etched on my American-conservative Mount Rushmore, but, aside from my father, no single person had a bigger impact on my political thinking than Kristol, whose funeral was Tuesday.

Liberalism Without Liberty

WASHINGTON -- Two Octobers ago, the Dalai Lama received the Congressional Gold Medal, one of America's highest civilian honors, in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol. Speaker Nancy Pelosi talked of a "special relationship between His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the United States." Said Sen. Mitch McConnell: "We have reached out in solidarity to the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan people, and the Chinese government needs to know that we will continue to do so." President George W. Bush urged Chinese leaders "to welcome the Dalai Lama to China. They will find this good man to be a man of peace and reconciliation." This October, on a scheduled visit to the United States, the Dalai Lama will not be welcomed at the White House. Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett was recently dispatched to Dharamsala -- the Dalai Lama's place of exile in northern India -- to gently deliver the message. The Tibetans took the news, as usual, nonviolently. "A lot of nations are adopting a policy of appeasement (toward China)," observed Samdhong Rinpoche, prime minister of Tibet's government-in-exile. "I understand why Obama is not meeting with the Dalai Lama before his Chinese trip. It is common sense. Obama should not irritate the Chinese leadership."

Choosing The Right College

There is so much for high school seniors and their parents to know about colleges that they not only need to get a lot of information but also need to make sure it is the right kind of information. A number of college guides have useful information but, unfortunately, the best-known and most pretentious of these guides -- "America's Best Colleges"-- is grossly misleading. There is no such thing as a "best" college, any more than there is any such thing as a "best" wife or a "best" husband. Who would be best for a particular person depends on that person. Would we not consider it absurd if someone collected statistics on people and then used those statistics to rank individuals according to who would make the "best" wife or husband? Yet that is the approach "America's Best Colleges" is based on.

Irreplaceable Irving

Irving Kristol, who passed away last week at the age of 89, was like everyone's favorite uncle -- if the uncle were a transformative intellectual of empyrean stature. He was both a warm and approachable human being and a penetrating social critic. He was, in a very American way, a practical man, and his approach to ideas was always firmly and refreshingly reality-based. Irving Kristol was born in New York in 1920, so it was inevitable that he would become, for a short time at least, a socialist. But even as a young socialist, Kristol was skeptical about the principal animating sentiment of the left: a belief in man's perfectibility. As early as 1944, Kristol wrote of his preference for "moral realism," which "foresees no new virtues" and is "interested in human beings as it finds them, content with the possibilities and limitations that are always with us." It was a Madisonian frame of mind and it would take him by degrees to the right. Though the term "neoconservative" has come to be associated with a muscular foreign policy (when it is not a thinly veiled codeword for Jew), it began in the 1960s as a disparaging term for those liberals, led by Kristol and a few others, who were bent on doing something that made other liberals acutely uncomfortable: test whether their theories worked in the real world.

Seems Like Old Times

For those who like their fashions retro, these are the good old days -- all over again. Especially if you liked the look of the 1930s. Fashion doesn't apply just to clothes but to ideas, including those about foreign policy. And now appeasement is in again. Naturally, it's called something else now, for appeasement acquired a bad reputation in the Thirties. These days it's being marketed under a new brand name, realism. And it can be worn with accessories like isolationism to complete the ensemble. Together, they produce a whole, not-so-new attitude toward threats from abroad. Mainly, let's ignore them. As in: Why be beastly to the Russians by setting up a missile defense system on what Moscow used to consider its turf -- eastern Europe -- and may still? Let's call the whole thing off. The current regime in Russia, which brings to mind many a past regime in Russia, can only be delighted as this administration goes back to the old sphere-of-influence division of the continent. So delighted it will reciprocate, and cooperate in pressing the Iranians not to develop their nuclear weapon and the means to deliver it. And all will end happily. Or maybe just end.

Obama At Odds With Majority but Undeterred

While I couldn't bring myself to watch President Barack Obama's 1,000th-1,004th health care propaganda spiels on the Sunday shows, I did read some transcripts and watch a few video highlights. What is it about this guy's personality that compels him to keep beating his head against the wall? Why does he keep doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result? The more Obama stumps for socialized medicine the less popular it becomes. Yet Obama keeps going back to the well, apparently believing that if he just explains it one more time -- or maybe 10 more times -- to the ignorant masses, his wards will finally come around to his way of thinking. On the one hand, it seems that Obama truly believes that the majority of people are as sick as he is of America and reject many of its founding principles. After all, during his formative years and beyond, he was always surrounded by those -- family and mentors -- who had bones to pick with America and its "exploitive" capitalistic economy. To say that most of his role models were outright Marxists is hardly inflammatory hyperbole.

The Joys of Failure

You know -- you must -- you can't help it -- aren't you alive?! -- that the marketplace isn't perfect. Haven't we all been told often enough, amid the political chatter concerning how to crack down on Wall Street? Bad, bad bankers whose pay should be regulated and selfish brokers -- not to mention negligent directors of corporations -- are among the current targets. John Maynard Keynes is the new op-ed page superhero. Michael Moore has another documentary out about the ills of capitalism. The agitprop director Oliver Stone is springing Gordon Gekko from prison, where his escapades in Stone's 1987 movie "Wall Street" landed him. In the new Gekko movie, we'll relearn that capitalism and human values are a mismatch. Not much is new here. Americans have been banging bankers around as long as there have been things such as banks. Any letdown in the functioning of the economy ignites reproaches and calls for enhanced oversight by those who understand keenly that the marketplace isn't perfect.

War Through Weakness

When I was a kid, there was a bully in our neighborhood. He never picked on kids his own size and certainly not on anyone larger. Rather, he punched, pushed and kicked kids smaller and weaker than himself, especially those who refused to respond to his threats. Stirred by his adversaries' impotent responses, the bully felt free to slug anyone he fancied. Most kids tried to avoid him, thinking their demonstration of weakness might protect them from being hit. It never did. Having set themselves up as easy targets, the bully went after these kids first. This lesson learned early in life has served me well as a citizen of the United States. It is why some choose to arm themselves, install alarm systems on their homes, own large dogs and learn self-defense. During the Reagan years, in matters of foreign policy, self-defense was known as "peace through strength." And it worked. America's strength and the assurance held by much the world that we were willing to use our muscle against threats served to deter those who might have wanted a piece of us. Now we are faced with an administration that believes pandering, appeasement (as Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty bravely called it) and negotiation can change the nature of dictators with dark souls. That "strategy" will be on display again this week when President Obama speaks to the United Nations and talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Bullies like Abbas, and the people he represents, love to negotiate with the West because it weakens us and bolsters their spirit. We give and they take without giving anything in return. The Middle East is a textbook example of failed negotiations between unequals.

Pornography and You

No one wants to talk about America's growing addiction to pornography. Certainly not me, but I do quite often because I know it is one of the greatest evils of our day. Like a toxic plague, pornography usage is sweeping our nation and destroying our humanity. Tragically, the largest demographic consuming internet pornography is children between the ages of 12 and 17. As deadly as pornography is to the innocence and development of our children, it has a stranglehold on millions of men too. Walk by any magazine stand and you’ll see that although porn is difficult to avoid on the internet, “dirty magazines” are still a much sought-after commodity by adult males. While in the airport recently my heart broke at the site of so many men who spend time between flights thumbing through the pages of “soft porn” publications like Playboy. And for crying out loud, they shamelessly do so in their tidy suits in the plain site of everyone. It will probably shock many of you to hear that these “gentlemen’s magazines” have for years featured photos, cartoons and illustrations of children in sexual situations, including association with adults, animals, and sexual assault. So much for “soft porn”.

The Underdogs

It is a good reflection on Americans that they tend to be on the side of the underdog. But it is often hard to tell who is in fact the underdog, or why. Many years ago, there was a big, lumbering catcher named Ernie Lombardi whose slowness afoot was legendary. Someone once said that not only was Ernie Lombardi the slowest man who ever played major league baseball, whoever was second slowest was probably a lot faster runner than Ernie Lombardi. When Lombardi came to bat, infielders played back on the outfield grass. That gave them more range in getting to balls that Lombardi hit. They could snare line-drives that would otherwise be base hits. With ground balls, they could easily throw to first base from the outfield grass and get the slow-moving Lombardi out. Despite all that, Ernie Lombardi had a lifetime batting average of .306 and even led the league in batting a couple of years. But many people said that, if Lombardi had had just average speed, he could have been a .400 hitter. One day, as a teenager sitting in the Polo Grounds, the stadium where the then New York Giants played, I was privileged to watch a historic event. Ernie Lombardi laid down a bunt!

Strangers to Dissent, Liberals Try to Stifle It

It is an interesting phenomenon that the response of the left half of our political spectrum to criticism and argument is often to try to shut it down. Thus President Obama in his Sept. 9 speech to a joint session of Congress told us to stop "bickering," as if principled objections to major changes in public policy were just childish obstinacy, and chastised his critics for telling "lies," employing "scare tactics" and playing "games." Unlike his predecessor, he sought to use the prestige of his office to shut criticism down. Now, no one likes criticism very much, and most politicians would prefer to have their colleagues and constituents meekly and gratefully agree with them on pretty much everything. And yes, Rep. Joe Wilson did seem to have broken the rules and standards of decorum of the House (though not of the British House of Commons) when he shouted, "You lie!" in the middle of Obama's speech. But none of this justifies the charges, passed off as cool-headed analysis, that Obama's critics are motivated by racism. There are plenty of non-racist reasons to oppose (or to support) the Democrats' health care proposals.

Taking No Right Turns

Where Does the South End?

Dear Old Friend, It was wholly a pleasure to hear your theory about where the South ends, probably because any theory about the South will get a conversation going around dinner tables, at barber shops, in graduate seminars on Southern history, and just about anywhere else in these talkative latitudes. Your theory is that the South ends where the last monument to the Confederate soldier can be seen. This would mean that Bentonville, up in the far northwest corner of Arkansas, and known far and wide as the capital of Wal-Mart, qualifies as Southern. This might comes as a surprise, or even an unwarranted claim, to folks in Arkansas farther south, who think of the northwestern corner of the state as Midwestern. Or at least Oklahoman.

Democrats' Quest for Balance in 2009

Democrats seem to have shifted their thinking on a number of issues since President Obama took the oath of office. Figure some Dems have more faith in government with a like-minded man at the helm, and besides, circumstances have changed. But also figure that some Democrats were just looking for sore spots -- and their anti-Bush rhetoric was based not on principle, but raw opportunism. When Obama picked Eric Shinseki to head the Department of Veterans Affairs, the left applauded because they liked the contrast with President George W. Bush. Shinseki was their hero because he had told Congress that the Bush administration should send "several hundred thousand" U.S. troops to Iraq in 2003. Bush, Democrats used to argue, should have listened to the generals -- by which they meant Shinseki, not the other generals who suggested lower troop numbers -- and put smart military strategy before politics. Now there is a push among top military personnel to increase the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan beyond the 68,000 planned by the end of the year. Funny. You don't hear many Democrats demanding now that Obama put aside politics and give top brass the extra troops they say they need to succeed in Afghanistan.