David Keene
Columns by David Keene
Apprenticeship programs will spur economy
My father was the president of the Rockford, Illinois Labor Council when I was a kid. He was a machinist at a time when Rockford and Cincinnati were the centers of the nation's machine tool industry. I remember that many of those working as machinists in Rockford back then were Hungarian refugees; skilled machinists who had fled after Soviet tanks had put down their attempt to topple their Communist government in 1956. Published June 18, 2017
Alexandria attack shows conservatives must not stoop to liberals’ level
Conservatives will be tempted in the days ahead to blame the left's over the top anti-Republican, anti-Trump rhetoric for the shooting of Rep. Steve Scalise and the others wounded in Alexandria on Wednesday. It will be tempting both because leftist leaders have thrown all decency aside as they vent against those with whom they disagree and because in the hours following the shootings Twitter was awash with messages emanating from the progressive fever swamps celebrating the shootings because Republicans "deserve" whatever they get. Published June 15, 2017
Victor Gold obituary
Victor Gold died quietly last week. His passing was both unexpected and uncharacteristic for in his 88 years no one who knew him or encountered him would have expected him to do anything quietly. Vic was one of a kind; to say that he was passionate about life, his beliefs, football; his friends and life in general hardly begins to describe the man. Published June 8, 2017
Organized labor is in decline
My father was a toolmaker and union organizer who, for many years, headed the Rockford, Ill. Labor Council while my mother was serving five terms as head of the Women's Auxiliary of the United Auto Workers. Dad worked as a machinist and my mother as a waitress and clerk in a local jewelry store until my dad retired and joined a couple of buddies to buy a bar. Published May 24, 2017
Stephen Colbert got cheers for announcing Comey firing
CBS "Late Show" host Stephen Colbert, a major league anti-Trump media star, was taken aback when, upon hearing that FBI Director James Comey had been fired, his audience broke into cheers and wild applause. Published May 15, 2017
Extra security is a loss for liberty
It was 2001 not long after the twin towers had fallen and the nation's politicians were running scared. George W. Bush was in the White House and John Ashcroft was attorney general. Published May 11, 2017
Campus free speech must be protected
The traditional belief that free speech and unfettered debate underpin a free society is wounded and dying among many in this country. This is particularly true among the students and faculties at the nation's elite colleges and universities and within the ranks of the leftist "progressives" who dominate today's Democratic Party. Published May 8, 2017
Donald Trump still underestimated at 100 days in
Last week has to be counted as President Trump's best since his election and inauguration. It was a week that should have shocked his detractors who have been assuming as a matter of faith that whatever momentary fit of public madness catapulted him into the Oval Office has passed. Published May 1, 2017
Rob Quist socialist leanings make Montana victory unlikely
Fresh from special election defeats in Kansas and Georgia, Democratic professionals and activists alike are focusing on the election to fill Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke's Montana congressional seat as one more chance to chip away at the Republican majority in the House. Published April 25, 2017
Venezuela civil war may be imminent
As American public attention has been focusing on terror attacks in Paris, the crisis in Syria and the nuclear-armed lunatic running North Korea, Venezuela to our south is about to explode into violence and civil war with incalculable consequences in our own hemisphere. Published April 24, 2017
Woodrow Wilson legacy tainted by racism, attacks on Constitution
As a college undergraduate some decades ago, I was assigned an essay on the three most evil men of the 20th century. Adolf Hitler, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong were obvious choices, and most of my fellow students chose from that group. I agreed on Hitler and Lenin, but felt that Stalin and Mao were just additional manifestations of the evil Lenin embodied. My third choice was Woodrow Wilson, which upset my professor at the time, but which I stand by today. Published April 10, 2017
Susan Rice lies will haunt liberals
Most reasonable observers believed or at least hoped that the nation would finally be spared having to listen to the Clinton and Obama administrations' go-to liar after last November's election. In the normal course of events, National Security Advisor Susan Rice would have simply packed her bags and vanished into well-paid obscurity at a "progressive" university or think tank. But it was not to be. Published April 5, 2017
Russia scandal also may touch Democrats
Washington and the national media are all about double standards. It should come as no surprise to anyone that the sort of Russian "ties" used to condemn Republicans as possible agents of Moscow are dismissed as irrelevant when Democrats are revealed to have deeper, stronger and far more remunerative connections to Russian banks, oligarchs and institutions than any Republican currently being banished to the outer darkness by Democratic "progressives." Published March 28, 2017
Sanctuary state Maryland may be misguided
Maryland is quite a place. The state's voters elected a Republican governor in 2014, but control remains in the hands of the same "progressives" who enjoy veto-proof majorities in both houses of the legislature on most issues. They vote as if former Gov. and presidential wannabe Martin O'Malley is still ruling the roost in Annapolis. Published March 22, 2017
A gun-crime tool that works
President Trump threatened last week to send the "feds" in to clean up Chicago if the city doesn't do something to reduce the escalating murder rate that has made the gang-infested Windy City among the most dangerous metropolitan areas in the world. What the president doesn't seem to realize is that he has the tools to deal with the crisis without so drastic a step. Published January 30, 2017
Communities should decide if schools need guns
Members of the Senate committee grilling Betsy DeVos last week were shocked at her response to a question from Connecticut Democrat Chris Murphy. Mr. Murphy, an ardent supporter of gun control, asked the prospective secretary of education whether "guns have a place in or around schools." Published January 23, 2017
A taste for authentic liberalism
Nat Hentoff, who died Saturday at age 91, was a champion of a classical liberalism that is no longer in vogue. He believed, above all, in freedom, the individual and the free speech guarantees found in the First Amendment of our Bill of Rights. He was in many ways the conscience of the First Amendment at a time when everyone from the left to right at least professed to believe in the right of those they disagreed with to speak their piece. Published January 9, 2017
Confusing Vladimir Putin with the old Soviet threat
We seem prepared to believe any evil of Vladimir Putin's Russia, which has with its second-rate military establishment and failing economy somehow morphed in the minds of many Americans into a greater threat than the old Soviet Union. Published January 2, 2017
Campus radicals can be beaten by conservatives
The University of Wisconsin in Madison has always been a bit strange. I ought to know. I was there during the wave of radicalism that crested in the Sixties. Published December 26, 2016
‘Fake’ news has its moment in the sun
Scurrilous and "fake" news has been around since the penny tabloids of an earlier era when politicians actually subsidized newspapers and paid journalists to spread lies about their opponents to what they hoped was a credulous public. Published December 12, 2016
