Columns ‹ Opinion
Worshiping Superheroes
Warner Brothers studio has proudly announced that for the first time, Batman (to be played by Ben Affleck) would be teamed with his fellow comic book icon, Superman (played by Englishman Henry Cavill). The last Superman movie, Man of Steel, struck many critics—including me—as a misguided dud, but still made $650 million worldwide.
In fact, comic book...
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Will Unbending Stubbornness Bring Political Success?
My wife Dr. Diane Medved is a psychologist and author of best-selling books on marriage and divorce, and she asks a crucial question about the current image of the Republican Party.
If you got involved with someone who was chronically angry, contentious, uncompromising and self-righteous, would you consider that individual a good bet for marriage? How well...
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Denying Demographic Reality
In debates over rebuilding the GOP, prominent voices in talk radio and elsewhere dismiss efforts to seek support among non-white voters. “We won great victories in the past without ever getting a majority of Hispanics,” they say. This ignores demographic reality: for their triumphs in 1984 and 1988, Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush faced an...
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Tolerance, Health and Fascism
I cannot count the number of times I heard liberal professors and liberal writers quote the phrase: “When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.”
The phrase is brilliant. There is actually no threat to America of fascism coming from the right. The essence of the American right, after all, is less government;...
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Is Obama the worst president ever?
“If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.” — President Obama, Aug. 11, 2009
So said President Obama again and again through 2009 and 2010 as he sold Obamacare to the country. He promised. He put his personal integrity on the line. His word.
How many UPS employees voted for the president in 2008 and again in 2012?...
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America’s Shame
The use of chemical weapons against hundreds if not thousands of civilians in Syria and the burning of scores of Christian churches in Egypt raises the central question of our time: Will America stand by and allow pure evil to kill thousands on the basis of ethnic and religious identification?
This month’s thousands will be next month’s tens of thousands,...
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The Key to Conservative Unity
As Washington approaches another budgetary crisis, Republicans face the threat of crippling splits in conservative ranks. This is unnecessary, given broad GOP agreement on an agenda for the future: reduced federal spending, less regulation, tax simplification and a reduction in rates, defense of the unborn, strong national defense, plus roll-back of Obamacare...
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Chief Justice John Marshall on Federal Power
“We admit, as all must admit, that the powers of the Government are limited, and that its limits are not to be transcended. But we think the sound construction of the Constitution must allow to the national legislature that discretion with respect to the means by which the powers it confers are to be carried into execution which will enable that body to...
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Dogs, Strangers and God
A few weeks ago a human-interest story from South Africa was reported internationally.
As described in the Wall Street Journal this past Friday:
“On Aug. 4, Graham and Sheryl Anley, while yachting off the coast of South Africa, hit a reef, capsizing their boat. As the boat threatened to sink and they scrambled to get off, Sheryl’s safety line...
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Till Duck Do Us Part
‘Till Duck Do Us Part”: That was the title of the most-talked-about television show in America last week. Was it a revamped version of Looney Tunes? An offering from Animal Planet? No. It was the season opener of America’s favorite TV family show, featuring the women of the extended Robertson clan organizing a formal wedding for the heads of the family,...
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Too Early for Predictions, But….
Chris Matthews has already declared a winner in the fight for the GOP presidential nomination, announcing: “I predict the hard right is going to take over the Republican Party in 2016 and that the nomination is going to Rand Paul.” This ignores history: since the birth of the GOP, Republicans nominated candidates from the party’s broad center 36 of 39...
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The Downside of Odd, Original Names
A Tennessee judge exceeded her authority by blocking a mother’s desire to name her baby boy, “Messiah.” But it’s easy to sympathize with a general discomfort with the current mania for odd, attention-getting, non-traditional names. Led by Hollywood celebrities who have imposed monikers like—yes—“Moxie Crimefighter,” “Pilot Inspektor,”...
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A campaign for the ages: SteynForSenate.com
It would be difficult for a non-citizen to run for and win a seat in the United States Senate, but there’s at least an argument that he or she is eligible to do so, and there is one candidate who could just pull it off.
Article I, Section 3 of the United States Constitution has three paragraphs. The third provides that “No person shall be a senator...
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Taxation that Punishes the Poor
While expressing compassion for America’s poor, leaders of the left do nothing about two cruel, rapidly rising taxes that fall disproportionately on the destitute. Tobacco taxes have gone up more dramatically than any other form of taxation, and statistics indicate poor people are vastly more likely to smoke cigarettes than the middle class.
At the same...
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Don’t Give Obama What He Wants
As Republican leaders seek consensus on a strategy to block Obamacare, some insist that partial government shutdowns in 1995 and ’96 weren’t disasters for the GOP—despite the sweeping Clinton re-election victory that followed those confrontations. But the current president embraces the conventional wisdom that voters blamed Republicans for shutdowns last...
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The Left Vs. the Redskins
The online magazine Slate announced last week that it will never again refer to the Washington’s National Football League team, the Redskins, by its name.
The name, according to Slate, offends American Indians, and therefore should be dropped. And until such time, Slate will never mention it. It will become, in effect, the R-word.
The article, to its...
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