December 12, 2016

Donald Trump is not a fascist

For months now, the Democrat-Progressive fever swamps have been using the word “fascist” in connection with Donald Trump and those who voted for him. It took Michael Kinsley to elevate this shoddy claim onto pages of the Washing...

February 21, 2016

Turning Against Trump

People who pride themselves on rational thinking know there are few feelings worse than being wrong about something, especially something that they made a big noise about at the time.  What helps lessen this intellectual humiliation is understan...

January 31, 2016

Conservatives need to remember the Constitution in 2016

The overriding message in the 2016 election should be just two words:  “The Constitution!”  After Obama’s Constitution-shredding governance, 2016 is America’s last chance to return the Constitution to its central in ...

February 16, 2015

Obama, Jon Stewart and Progressivism's Bodyguard of Lies

The traditional courtroom oath used to require the witness to state "I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God."  To emphasize God's role in this oath, the witness would place his ha...

March 5, 2012

Article Advocating 'After-Birth Abortion' Mugs Liberals with Reality

Conservatives were horrified when the Journal of Medical Ethics published an article advocating "after-birth abortion" for handicapped, or just inconvenient, babies.  They are correct that it is a disgusting piece of amoral analysis, but that is...

June 25, 2011

The Ideas Behind the Words

Back in my carefree liberal days, when I thought that "God's in her Heaven, Clinton's in the White House, and all's right with the world," I used to listen to Geoffrey Nunberg, a UC Berkeley linguist, on NPR.  I thought he was wonderful. Nunberg...

July 13, 2010

Sex and State Power

For many years, physicists have tried to find a unified theory of everything. They have faith that somewhere out there, there is a theory that will explain the physical properties of all things, without any exceptions. I'm not sure that dream will be...

November 1, 2009

Is Barack Obama Anti-American?

Everything has a fundamental essence, a quality that makes it uniquely itself. Take an orange, for example. It's not only a citrus fruit -- it's an orange-colored citrus fruit. Horticulturists can alter its size, its texture, its sweetness, and even ...

September 4, 2009

Teaching American kids that compassion for deadly enemies can be . . . deadly

Back in 1991, during the First Gulf War, the media was awash with profiles of American troops expressing sympathy for the pathetic Iraqi soldiers Saddam Hussein had placed in the desert opposite American tanks.  The stories definitely showed off...

August 8, 2009

Other People's Money

Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and CroniesBy Michelle MalkinRegnery Publishing Inc., 2009289 pp, plus 75 pages of supporting end notesThose of us paying attention before the election found it difficult to reconcile B...

June 24, 2009

How much information can the government demand from us?

When I was in law school, I went to a luncheon at which famed legal scholar Arthur Miller spoke.  His topic, still a fresh one back in the mid-1980s, was the amount of private information floating around in computers.  His target was Americ...

May 26, 2009

How to Talk to a Liberal If You Really Want to Change His Mind

Many of us have friends, family and colleagues who still cling to liberalism, and worship at the Obama altar. Usually, they are not bad people.  They're neither stupid nor pusillanimous -- they're just shockingly ill-informed, having received a ...

December 15, 2008

Selfish is as selfish does

I frequently bemoan the fact that my children are extraordinarily selfish, in a way that my peers and I weren't when we were their age.  This isn't just my own rose-colored memory looking back on my childhood perfections when compared to my...

October 13, 2008

Why Obama's socialism matters

For conservatives opposed to an Obama presidency, the last few days have brought the wonder of the smoking gun:  Obama really was a socialist.  Combine that hidden paper trail with his Ayers affiliation, and it's reasonable to believe that ...

October 4, 2008

Deregulation properly understood

I keep hearing from people (politically involved or not) that the current bubble popping loudly on Wall Street results from "Deregulation," which is, of course, deeply associated since Reagan's times with Republicans.  Certainly both O...

October 3, 2008

Romanticizing Obama

I think I have finally come to understand the reason Barack Obama appeals to many of his devoted followers despite his lack of accomplishment. The world of romance, not politics, must be our guide.Reading the most recent polls, I've been rather ...

June 11, 2008

Apparently I'm a 'racist'

The other night, while I was at a local comedy club, Robin Williams showed up unexpectedly and did his act, a mixture of old and new.  I've always liked Robin Williams, because I think his improvisational skills are unparalleled -- and he was at...

May 30, 2008

Are Conservatives Cutting off Their Noses to Spite Their Faces?

Perhaps because I'm a neocon, and not a dyed-in-the-wool, native-born conservative, I look at John McCain, with all his flaws, and still think that he's a pretty darn good candidate for our time.  More importantly, I think that Obama is a very d...

April 17, 2008

Root causes

One of the hallmarks of the Left is its fervent belief that, if poor people behave badly, the fault is not theirs, but instead it lies with "root causes."  For example, a word search in the New York Times for "root causes and crim...

March 26, 2008

Obama's Messiah Shtick

Messiah:  "One who is anticipated as, regarded as, or professes to be a savior or liberator."  American Heritage DictionarySchtick: "Yiddish slang meaning "gimmick" that has come to mean "someone's signature be...

December 21, 2007

Sharing the Christmas Spirit

Last week, I attended the "Winter Concert" at my children's public elementary school.  It was a very good concert.  The kids - all 75 of them - performed beautifully.  They remembered the words, sang in time and in tune, and ...

December 2, 2007

Two Different Worlds

As the family renegade, the one who turned right politically, I often find myself trying to argue against such forceful conclusory statements as "Bush is an idiot" or "the War in Iraq is a disaster." (In other words, the declarati...

October 27, 2007

Core Conservative Beliefs

I've recently read two articles (here and here) that have as their theme the fact that liberals, while currently riding the anti-War, anti-George Bush juggernaut, are defined by negativity and, in fact, offer no new ideas to replace the doctrines and...

September 28, 2007

Regressives

Language is anything but static, something for which we must be grateful.  It's the dynamism of the English language that, at the high end, gives us Chaucer, Shakespeare, Pope, Dickens, and at the low end, gives us the liveliness of slang and di...

June 30, 2007

Responsible adults

Some time ago, I had the honor of meeting a newly commissioned Marine Corps officer who was about to ship out to Afghanistan to take command of a unit there.  It turned out that this young man had recently graduated from an Ivy League school and...

June 8, 2007

D-Day as today's MSM might report it

The Combat Report website has produced a clever satire of the MSM's war reporting by posting to YouTube a sophisticated production, complete with appropriate graphics and news crawl at the bottom, of the way today's MSM might have covered D-Day. My f...

April 30, 2007

Marriage and Politics

It was only a matter of time before Democratic politicians (as opposed to just late night talk show hosts) began commenting on the fact that the leading Republican candidates have an awful lot of ex-wives floating around.  Although he's carefull...

March 6, 2007

Teaching children to learn

I volunteer for a music organization in which my son is involved. Recently, through a community outreach program, my son's group was augmented by some boys from economically disadvantaged backgrounds.  These boys are really nice kids. They have ...

February 14, 2007

Modern Love, American Style

In January, the New York Times proudly announced that, for the first time ever, the majority of American woman are not married ($link).  As it turned out, the paper's conclusions were a wee bit premature.  Sam Roberts, the article's author,...

January 23, 2007

Turns out small towns are smile towns

It took me a while to stumble across it, but it turns out that my thesis in "Small Towns are Smile Towns" -- that small towns are, indeed, friendly, connected places in which to live -- is absolutely correctly.  While I was out of town...

December 20, 2006

Ellison, Prager, and Swearing-in on the Koran

Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, announced that he would take his Congressional oath using a Koran, rather than a Bible.  This bit of news would have passed under the radar were it not for the fact that Dennis Prager wrote a ...

October 28, 2006

Economically flexible morality

Art, or things that pass for art, can be useful.  Otherwise, how can one explain the epiphany I had when watching 2004's Maria Full of Grace, a critically acclaimed movie about a teenager from Columbia who smuggles drugs into America. ...

October 10, 2006

Mark Foley is Not Important

One of the blessings about having come of age in the Watergate era is that I have no illusions about politicians.  Keeping in mind Lord Acton's handy—dandy dictum that "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely," I've always ha...

September 14, 2006

Where Never is Heard a Discouraging Word

I've been dismissive of Democratic charges that the Bush administration is suppressing dissent.  I think that I, in common with most people, define government suppression of dissent as a situation in which the government tortures, imprisons or k...

July 25, 2006

We are Already in a Religious War

Five days after 9/11, George Bush stated "This crusade, this war on terrorism is gonna take awhile. And the American people must be patient. I'm gonna be patient." America has been running from that speech ever since. It doesn't matter that George ...

July 4, 2006

Patriotism and Anti-patriotism

"I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country" —— Nathan Hale, upon his execution in 1776. "It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us —— that from these honored dead we ta...

May 9, 2006

Harry Potter and the War On Terror

Not too long ago, there was a lot of giggling on the right side of the blogosphere when it learned about a book called Why Mommy is a Democrat, which its publisher proudly boasts is "A Different Kind of Children's Book."  The book's point i...

May 7, 2006

What is the California Corrections Dept. Thinking?

The California Department of Corrections shipped twelve paroled high risk sex offenders to San Quentin on Thursday. The key word is paroled.  Since they're out of prison, while they'll be housed on the SQ grounds, they'll be free to co...

April 28, 2006

Small Towns are Smile Towns

There once was a time when movies celebrated peculiarly American traits, circumstances and settings. Small town America, as it appeared in the films until the Sixities generation seized the arts, was close to heaven on earth. Small Town Girl, a 1953 ...

March 31, 2006

Political Correctness and the Moral Development of Children

One of my children has been having some problems internalizing certain moral standards — a not uncommon problem in a young child. With a child like mine, who hasn't yet internalized abstract moral standards, it's not wrong to steal, it's just w...

January 23, 2006

Democrat Death Trip

It's a rare day lately when a commentator doesn't point out that the Democrats have become a party without a vision, unless you call being opposed to war a comprehensive party platform. This is unfair. The Democrats, or at least the dominant left win...

January 13, 2006

Emanations and Penumbras from the Alito Hearings

The Alito confirmation hearings have produced their iconic image of a loving wife dissolving into tears after hours of hearing her husband insinuated to be a racist, sexist troglodyte, and then finally defended by a decent man, Senator Lindsey Graham...

January 7, 2006

Hollywood: Manliness Attacked and Reappearing

As someone who annually revisits her Narnia books for the sheer pleasure of reading C.S. Lewis's glowing prose and visiting his magical land, I was very excited when I heard that The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was being turned into a movie. I w...

December 8, 2005

Confession of a Crypto-conservative Woman

This is my town: It's a small, affluent community in a very liberal part of a Blue State.  Houses are spacious and well—maintained.  Nature is beautiful and abundant.  Streets are clean and safe.  Children are everywhere, an...

November 19, 2005

Why the left fears Christmas

As the Christmas season nears, we can anticipate a flurry of news stories about townships here and cities there, all of which are trying their darndest to avoid the idea of Christmas. Some will substitute entirely nondenominational 'winter celebratio...