Free Republic

Well, the great battle of the ballots in the poll of 10 million voters, scattered throughout the forty-eight states of the Union, is now finished, and in the table below we record the figures received up to the hour of going to press. These figures are exactly as received from more than one in every five voters polled in our country—they are neither weighted, adjusted, nor interpreted. Never before in an experience covering more than a quarter of a century in taking polls have we received so many different varieties of criticism—praise from many and condemnation from many others—and yet...

We know that history holds many surprises. One doesn't expect to learn more about the secret history of of the Gulag than we already know from both Solzhenitsyn's "Gulag Acrcipelago" and Anne Applebaum's "Gulag: A history." This feat, however, is exactly what author Tim Tzouliadis has accomplished: the previously unknown story of the thousands of Americans who, during the Depression, sought employment and a better future in the "worker's paradise" built by the Bolsheviks. All kinds of Americans joined the exodus. Some of them were Communists or fellow-travelors but the majority were average Americans - skilled workers promised paid passage,...

Near the conclusion of Tuesday night’s second presidential “town-hall” style debate, a questioner from the audience asked each candidate what he would do if Iran attacked Israel. Both candidates gave somewhat vague replies, focusing on the traditionally close relationship between the United States and Israel. In any event, if Iran ever attacks Israel, other than through its Lebanon-based surrogate Hezbollah, it will be with nuclear-tipped missiles, in which case Israel will be obliterated before the United States can respond. The more pertinent question for the candidates is, “What will you do if and when Israel carries out a preemptive attack...

President Bush Wednesday promised that U.S. naval forces would deliver humanitarian aid to war-torn Georgia before his administration had received approval from Turkey, which controls naval access to the Black Sea, or the Pentagon had planned a seaborne operation, U.S. officials said Thursday. As of late Thursday, Ankara, a NATO ally, hadn't cleared any U.S. naval vessels to steam to Georgia through the Bosporus and the Dardanelles, the narrow straits that connect the Mediterranean and the Black Seas, the officials said. Under the 1936 Montreaux Convention, countries must notify Turkey before sending warships through the straits. Pentagon officials told McClatchy...

The U.S. House of Representatives is scheduled to debate two bills that could give the federal government unprecedented control over the way parents raise their children – even providing funds for state workers to come into homes and screen babies for emotional and developmental problems. The Pre-K Act (HR 3289) and the Education Begins at Home Act (HR 2343) are two bills geared toward military and families who fall below state poverty lines. The measures are said to be a way to prevent child abuse, close the achievement gap in education between poor and minority infants versus middle-class children and...

China lashes out at British press for comparing Beijing Olympics to 1936 Nazi Berlin GamesLast updated at 22:15pm on 26th March 2008 CommentsEx-British Cabinet Minister Michael Portillo has compared the Beijing Olympics to the 1936 Nazi Games China has lashed out at an editorial by an ex-British Cabinet Minister which likened the 2008 Beijing Olympics to the 1936 Games in Nazi Germany.  Michael Portillo invoked the use of the Olympics as a "showcase for Nazism" in the article published in the Sunday Times. However China's Foreign Ministry called the article "an insult to the Chinese people, and an insult to...

In 1936, The International Olympic Committee(IOC) put on one of the saddest propaganda displays in human history. They did this on behalf of a crazy despot who would go on to execute millions of people for not measuring up to the standards of an Aryan Superman master race. The 1936 Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany, served as a great coming out party for international fascism. It was a form of warfare before the first shots of WW II were ever fired. With Leni Riefenstahl panning the camera, the propaganda film Olympia hit the screens in 1938 to spread the false...

Establishing my principles upon upon this preamble, namely, that we are all creatures of a beneficent God, made to love and serve Him in this world and to enjoy Him forever in the next; and that all this world's wealth of field and forest, of mine and river has been bestowed upon us by a kind Father, therefore, I believe that wealth as we know it originates from the natural resources and from the labor which the sons of God expend upon these resources. It is all ours except for the harsh, cruel and grasping ways of wicked men who...

WHAT MAKES the current field of candidates so timid? It is clear listening to figures from both parties this year that they still believe Social Security is untouchable. This despite the fact that bringing Social Security into solvency is a relatively easy task. When it comes to the more serious fiscal burdens upon our grandchildren, the candidates are likewise timid. This despite the fact that those burdens only become heavier as we delay. We speak of 2008 as an election year, but it is also the year when the tide of Social Security cash begins to recede with the retirement...

The Last Crusade: Spain 1936By Warren Carroll(Christendom Press/ISI Books, 240 pages, $15) WHEN THE HEROICS of the Spanish Civil War come up -- Orwell's Homage to Catalonia, Hemingway's fictions or the effusions of various poets -- there is a very large and usually unremarked elephant in the room: Orwell, who actually fought, and Hemingway who wrote about fighting, were on the wrong side. The strategic point is simple: had the Stalinists won war, then during the period of the Hitler-Stalin pact from 1939 to mid-1941, they would have allowed Hitler to cross Spain and seize Gibraltar. Had this happened, the...

The Supreme Court and the Constitution Robert E. Cushman, The Supreme Court and the Constitution (Public Affairs Pamphlet, No. 7, 1936) pp. 1-36. The average citizen has a very wholesome respect for the Constitution of the United States. His respect does not usually come from any clear or accurate knowledge of the document itself, but grows out of the belief that the Constitution sanctions those policies which he approves and forbids those which seem to him dangerous or oppressive. His reaction to the Supreme Court is similarly direct and forthright; its decisions are sound if he likes them and unsound...

One Sunday this past November, President Bush’s chief strategist Karl Rove went on the talk show circuit to discuss the possibility that 2004 would be depicted by historians as being a realigning election. A little over three months later, with the nation fixated on Social Security reform, his opinions seem remarkably prescient. According to Wikipedia: “[A realigning election is one] in which geographic bases of power for each of the two parties [are] significantly altered, resulting in a new political power structure and status quo. It is generally believed that a realigning election happens only after a shift in partisan...

As my freeper friends are aware, my mother is an immigrant from Seville, Spain, while my father is an Spanish-American whose family has lived in Florida since 1821, just when America was begining to take control of Florida from Spanish control. I still have relatives living in Seville and Valencia, including an elderly aunt. My Spanish family is outraged by the massacre perpetrated by Islamo-fascists. They are also angry at the government of Prime Minister Aznar, for not having done enough to protect the Spanish people from terrorism, especially when Spain was heading for the election season when the government...

<p>Granted, there is upheaval in the world and there are battles where a great deal is at stake -- life itself. All the more precious, then, the minor skirmishes on the home front that mean a great deal in a small way and remind us of how lucky we are to feel innocent hatreds, from summer to summer, at the ballpark.</p>