David W. Obst's Journal

Why the Left Is Consumed With Hate Lacking worthy menaces to fight, it is driven to find a replacement for racism. Failing this, what is left? By Shelby Steele Sept. 23, 2018 1:19 p.m. ET Protesters outside Trump Tower in New York the day after Election Day 2016. Protesters outside Trump Tower in New York the day after Election Day 2016. PHOTO: LIGHTROCKET VIA GETTY IMAGES Even before President Trump’s election, hatred had begun to emerge on the American left—counterintuitively, as an assertion of guilelessness and moral superiority. At the Women’s March in Washington the weekend after Mr. Trump’s inauguration, the pop star Madonna said, “I have thought an awful lot of blowing up the White House.” Here hatred was a vanity, a braggadocio meant to signal her innocence of the sort of evil that, in her mind, the White House represented. (She later said the comment was “taken wildly out of context.”)

It’s uncanny how closely the Democrats are following the Anita Hill playbook as they try to “Anita” Brett Kavanaugh, looking to prevent his confirmation as a Supreme Court Justice. Like Hill, Kavanaugh accuser Christine Blasey Ford is a professor who made her accusation in the expectation of anonymity, never dreaming that newspapers from coast to coast would blazon her name across Page One. Hill had received assurances from a Democratic Senate Judiciary Committee staffer that, in all likelihood, Clarence Thomas would quietly withdraw his name from consideration, to spare himself and his family embarrassment. After all, Hill’s friend, administrative law judge Susan Hoerchner, had reportedly sprung a similar surprise on a fellow judge, with complete success, and it may well have been she who urged Hill to try the same tactic with Thomas. But there’s nothing leakier than a politician’s office, and Senate Democrats plainly considered Hill as a mere tool to derail Thomas’s confirmation with...

Pope Francis at Mass: Bishops must pray to overcome 'Great Accuser’  At Mass in the Casa Santa Marta on Tuesday, Pope Francis invites bishops to overcome the "Great Accuser", who seeks to create scandal, through prayer, humility, and nearness to God’s people. In his homily at Mass on Tuesday morning, Pope Francis said it seems the "Great Accuser" is attacking the bishops of the Catholic Church to create scandal. The Pope invited the bishops to remember three things in these troubled times: their strength lies in being men of prayer; they should have the humility to remember they are chosen by God; and they need to remain close to the people. He reflected on the day’s Gospel (Lk 6:12-19), in which Jesus spends the night in prayer before choosing the Twelve Apostles, whom the Pope called “the first bishops”. Men of prayer Pope Francis said bishops must first of all be men of prayer. Prayer, he said, “is a bishop’s consolation in difficult times,” since they kn...