Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Hitler and Health Care
WASHINGTON -- During live television coverage of the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago, novelist Gore Vidal famously called William F. Buckley a " crypto-Nazi." To which Buckley famously replied (in addition to other choice words), "Stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I'll sock you in the goddamn face and you'll stay plastered."
The Health Care Chaos
WASHINGTON -- Allow me a word of encouragement to our president. Mr. Obama, you are doing just fine. You wanted to set a new tone in Washington, and you have. You wanted an open debate on health care, and you have it. Admittedly, the tone is astoundingly rancorous, and not incidentally, your approval ratings continue to decline. Then, too, support for your health care reform is dropping, especially among independents. Yet I believe you can take heart. You have roused the interest of the American people in you, the Democratic Party, the Congress and health care. That is good news, at least for us conservatives. Again, you are doing fine. Ever-larger numbers of Americans are alarmed by you, your party, the Congress and your health care monstrosity. Mr. President, you are doing fine. Keep it up. Let me know if there is anything I can do to help.
Our Road to Oceania
In George Orwell's allegorical novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four," the picture of "Big Brother" appears constantly in the adoring media. Perceived enemies are everywhere -- supposedly plotting to undo the benevolent egalitarianism of Big Brother. Citizens assemble each morning to scream hatred for two minutes at pictures of the supposed public traitor Emmanuel Goldstein. The "Ministry of Truth" swears that the former official Goldstein is responsible for everything that goes wrong in Oceania.
Invasion by Immigration
PORTSTEWART, NORTHERN IRELAND -- The Daily Telegraph's headline is meant to shock, or at least get the attention of Europeans apathetic about the threat they face: "A Fifth of European Union Will Be Muslim by 2050." In a related article "Muslim Europe: the Demographic Time Bomb Transforming Our Continent," The Telegraph's lead sentence summarizes the problem: "Britain and the rest of the European Union are ignoring a demographic time bomb: a recent rush into the EU by migrants, including millions of Muslims, will change the continent beyond recognition over the next two decades, and almost no policymakers are talking about it."
Obama's Hoof-in-Mouth Disease
It's hard to know why President Obama said what he said at Tuesday's health-care town hall in New Hampshire. He actually stated: "If you think about it, UPS and FedEx are doing just fine. It's the Post Office that's always having problems." Oops. Freudian slip? Subliminally speaking, was the president inferring that private health insurers are doing just fine?
When Liberal Leaders Confront a Centrist Nation
There are more conservatives than Republicans and more Democrats than liberals. That's one of the asymmetries between the parties that helps to explain the particular political spot we're in. The numbers are fairly clear. In the 2008 exit poll, 34 percent of voters described themselves as conservatives and 32 percent as Republicans; 39 percent described themselves as Democrats but only 22 percent as liberals. It's been this way for a long time. The premise of John Kenneth Galbraith's "The Liberal Hour," published in 1960, was that conservative politicians wanted to identify themselves as liberals, as supporting Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, when it came time for elections.
Kathleen Parker: The Barry Lynn of the South
Just as the left pioneered "AstroTurf" protesters -- homeless people lured to demonstrations with the offer of a free T-shirt and a box lunch -- liberals have also specialized in producing fake "insiders" denouncing their alleged group. There were the "winter soldiers" -- fake Vietnam veterans claiming to have personally disemboweled babies in Vietnam. It took 30 years and the publication of the book "Stolen Valor" to establish that the bulk of them were utter frauds who had never seen combat -- some had never seen Vietnam. (Shockingly, to this day, the Wikipedia entry on the winter soldiers treats their phony war records as legitimate.)
Congress Jet-sets Further into the Red
First a confession: I've never flown on a private jet. I've never flown on a Gulfstream. Never flown on a private 737 "office in the sky." So it could be that I am missing the good reasons why the House padded the $636 billion defense budget by adding two additional C-37 Gulfstreams and two additional C-40s (the military version of a Boeing 737) -- even though the Department of Defense never requested the planes.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Big Business Goes Big for Health-Care Reform
"What disturbs Americans of all ideological persuasions is the fear that almost everything, not just government, is fixed or manipulated by some powerful hidden hand," Frank Rich wrote in Sunday's New York Times.
Life and Its Discontents
Good morning. What do you think your day holds in store for you? Marcus Aurelius knew, and told us -- right at the beginning of his Meditations, just after he'd finished thanking all those who had made him what he was: a well-educated, self-disciplined and effective Roman emperor. "Begin the day," he advised, "by saying to yourself, I shall meet with the busybody, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial."
"Brown Shirts" vs. Purple Shirts
Who are the real thugs? Democrats attack congressional town hall protesters as "Brown Shirts" -- likening taxpayer activists across the country to Hitler's storm troopers. But it's the Big Labor hoodlums clad in identical purple shirts -- the uniform of Service Employees International Union members -- who own the mob label.
Empower the Local Afghan Tribal Chiefs
I have talked with soldiers from Afghanistan -- both American and British, both in the ranks and field-grade officers -- in an effort at making sense of what we are doing there. The White House and Pentagon publicly say they are reassessing policy in Afghanistan. It is well that they should. So far, both means and goals are confused.
Who's Un-American?
It was Thursday, Feb. 12, 2009. Congress was planning to vote the next day on a so-called "stimulus" bill anticipated to cost $787 billion. The final text of the bill had not been published, so no one knew exactly what it would authorize the government to do. Ryan Byrnes and Edwin Mora of CNSNews.com went to the Capitol that day to ask representatives and senators a simple question: Would they read the final text of the stimulus bill in its entirety before voting on it?
A Hard Pill to Swallow
Last week, Christina Romer, chairwoman of the White House Counsel of Economic Advisers, suggested that we think of the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act as an extremely expensive course of antibiotics. "Suppose you go to your doctor for a strep throat," Romer said in a speech to the Economic Club of Washington, "and he or she prescribes an antibiotic."
Dogs Don't Care About Dogma
My wife and I took our dog to the neurologist the other day. Yes, the neurologist. For a dog. I'm sure it sounds extravagant, but Cosmo had been having unexplained seizures, so we took him in for an MRI and a spinal tap after a batch of the normal, cheaper tests. He's a handsome dog, but he's built like an old East German car. When he was barely a year old, he came up lame in his front right leg. The vets had to cut the bone in two, insert a long metal pin and then snap it all back in place. At the time, the surgeon suggested that we might avoid the expense by simply "returning" him to the animal shelter, which in canine terms would be like returning a dissident to North Korea.
Obama Loses his Diversionary Touch
President Barack Obama thinks of himself as a master political manipulator. And why shouldn't he? Since 2004, Obama has catapulted himself from unknown Senate candidate to occupant of the White House. And he has done so largely by mastering the art of diversion. When Republicans targeted Obama's association with Jeremiah Wright, Obama diverted Americans by making a vague and infantile speech about race. When Hillary Clinton raised Obama's inexperience in foreign policy, Obama diverted Americans by blabbing about "hope and change."
Politics and Blacks
President Barack Obama won an unprecedented 96 percent of the black vote. That's not much of a news story since blacks typically give their votes to the Democratic candidate. Blacks are probably the most politically loyal people in the nation and it is almost taken as gospel, at least among civil rights organizations and black and white liberals, that the only way black people can make socioeconomic progress is through the politics of race and special government programs. However, such a vision can be subjected to empirical evidence.
Strategic Twitter
Iran's Information Age demonstrators, exploiting the capabilities of the social networking and "micro-blogging" service Twitter, surprised then threatened Iran's tyrannical mullahs. Tehran's thugs in robes suddenly discovered they could not control information within Iran. Kicking out BBC reporters used to separate dissidents from the global megaphone, but no longer. Now that mobile phones are essentially small computers, instant Internet access is widely distributed. Men, women and children hold a global link with audio- and video-recording capability in their palm.
The Joyful Revolution
WASHINGTON -- Eunice Kennedy Shriver was a civil rights hero, and unique even in that select company. Most civil rights revolutions are made by rhetoric and law -- ignited by protest, summarized in memorable speeches and confirmed at bill signings. In founding the Special Olympics, Shriver led a revolution of sport and competition that forever changed the way Americans view people with intellectual disabilities, and the way that many of the intellectually disabled view themselves. It was America's most joyful civil rights movement -- a revolution of play.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
I Thought 'Dissent Is Patriotic'
Living in liberal Los Angeles, I am surrounded by people -- and bumper stickers -- I do not agree with.