Free Republic

Text Also at link. Hat tip Stephen C. Rose

Thank you all very much, and Arthur, thank you for that introduction. It's good to be back at AEI, where we have many friends. Lynne is one of your longtime scholars, and I'm looking forward to spending more time here myself as a returning trustee. What happened was, they were looking for a new member of the board of trustees, and they asked me to head up the search committee. I first came to AEI after serving at the Pentagon, and departed only after a very interesting job offer came along. I had no expectation of returning to public life,...

There is a major cultural schism developing in America. But it's not over abortion, same-sex marriage or home schooling, as important as these issues are. The new divide centers on free enterprise--the principle at the core of American culture. Despite President Barack Obama's early personal popularity, we can see the beginnings of this schism in the "tea parties" that have sprung up around the country. In these grass-roots protests, hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans have joined together to make public their opposition to government deficits, unaccountable bureaucratic power, and a sense that the government is too willing to prop...

It is by now a cliché to say that the most important political event of the twentieth century has been the collapse of the Communist regimes and of the socialist idea on which they ultimately rested. True, there are still quite a few intellectuals who try desperately to distinguish one from the other, who insist that there is still some life left in the socialist idea, conceived of as a kind of immortal political soul that survives the corruption and decay of its worldly incarnations. But political ideas do not have any such Platonic or otherworldly status. They live and...

Newspaper headlines during the peak of the housing-credit crisis called it "the end of capitalism" or the end of American capitalism. As often, they greatly overstated and misstated by projecting a serious, temporary decline as a permanent loss of wealth. Capitalist systems have weathered many more serious problems. Capitalism as a guiding system for economic activity has spread over the centuries to now encompass most of the world's economies. This spread occurred despite almost continuous hostility from many intellectuals and, in recent decades, military threat from avowedly Communist countries.Capitalist systems are neither rigid nor identical. They differ, change, and adapt....

Funds worth trillions of dollars start to plummet in value. Political pressure to be “socially responsible” distorts the market decisions of government-related enterprises, leading to risky investments. Investors who once considered their retirements safely protectedwake up to a sinking feeling of uncertainty and gloom.Sound like the great mortgage-fueled financial crisis of 2008? Sure. But it also describes a calamity likely to hit as soon as 2009. State, local, and private pension plans covering millions of government employees and union workers with “defined benefit” accounts are teetering on the brink of implosion, victims of both a sinking stock market and investment...

US President George W. Bush spoke to the American Enterprise Institute, a Conservative think tank, at the Renaissance Mayflower Hotel in D.C. today and he also participated in a Q&A session. transcript Mrs. Laura Bush led a video teleconference with the Afghan Women Entrepreneurs group, in the Roosevelt Room at the White House in Washington.

Bush Shares Bittersweet Memories By DAVID STOUT WASHINGTON — President Bush shared some bittersweet reflections on Thursday as he looked back fondly on his White House days, but regretted his inability to win passage of immigration legislation and to change the tone of debate in the capital. “Reflections by a guy who’s headed out of town,” Mr. Bush called his musings in a question-answer session at the American Enterprise Institute. “An old sage at 62 ... headed to retirement.” The president, who has described himself as uncomfortable with introspection, loosened up considerably before a friendly audience. Better to have tried...

Always eager to shove their agenda into a seemingly unrelated policy discussion, the green movement has joined the debate over bailing out the Big Three automakers. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wants to tie federal assistance to a requirement that Detroit make more fuel-efficient, eco-friendly cars. “Any car company that gets taxpayer money must demonstrate a plan for transforming every vehicle in its fleet to a hybrid-electric engine with flex-fuel capability, so its entire fleet can also run on next generation cellulosic ethanol,” demands New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. Writing in The Washington Post, Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs calls...

Nine years ago today, in a quotation that appeared in an article in the New York Times, American Enterprise Institute resident fellow Peter Wallison predicted the current financial crisis. From the article (emphasis added): " In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980’s. " “From the perspective of many people, including me,...

In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders. The action, which will begin as a pilot program involving 24 banks in 15 markets -- including the New York metropolitan region -- will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans. Fannie Mae officials say they hope to make it a nationwide program by next spring. Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest...

The Flash video is available at the web page.

Neoconservatives whose influence had been waning in Washington have hitched their colours to rising star Sarah Palin in a bid to shape US foreign policy for another decade. Comments by the governor of Alaska in her first television interview, in which she said Nato may have to go to war with Russia and took a tough line on Iran's nuclear programme, were the result of two weeks of briefings by neoconservatives. Sources in the McCain camp, the Republican Party and Washington think tanks say Mrs Palin was identified as a potential future leader of the neoconservative cause in June 2007....

"The American Enterprise Institute hosts a panel of scholars to discuss the recent military conflict between Russia and Georgia." Here is the URL for the video. It is a long video (1hr 40min) but an interesting panel discussion to watch. I have not found a transcript of it yet.

Almost anything can happen in an election year, but among conservatives, almost everyone seems to agree that no matter who captures the White House in November, the movement that has ruled the Republican Party since the 1960s and mostly dominated American politics since 1980 has lost its way. Across the spectrum of the right, writers and thinkers have turned their relentless analysis inward, a kind of political EST seminar aimed at self-transformation.

Iran May Miscalculate in Taunting US, Panelists Say at AEI Josiah Ryan/ Staff Writer Washington. (CNSNews.com) - There is a danger that Iran may miscalculate the likelihood of a U.S. response as it taunts U.S forces in the Persian Gulf, experts on the Middle East said Monday at a conference held by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) in Washington, D.C. Noting that Iran threatened the U.S. Navy in international waters earlier this year, and that it continues to provide weapons and fighters to U.S. enemies in Iraq, Kenneth Katzman of the Congressional Research Service compared the U.S. to a great...

AEI scholar Michael Rubin's very sober analysis of Iran April 16, 2008 HH: Joined now by Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute, one of the country’s leading authorities on the Islamic Republic of Iran. Michael Rubin, last week, Vice President Cheney was on the program, and I talked to him about 12th Imamism, and about Ahmadinejad. And the left has gone crazy, and they’ve been throwing bricks at him, because he said we should take very seriously what Ahmadinejad says, and we should be concerned about sort of a millennialist outlook. And I’ve been waiting to talk to you...

The Basra Business   By Frederick W. Kagan and Kimberly Kagan The Weekly Standard | Thursday, April 03, 2008 MUCH OF THE DISCUSSION about recent Iraqi operations against illegal Shia militias has focused on issues about which we do not yet know enough to make sound judgments, overlooking important conclusions that are already clear. Coming days and weeks will provide greater insight into whether Maliki or Sadr gained or lost from this undertaking; how well or badly the Iraqi Security Forces performed; and what kind of deal (if any) the Iraqi Government accepted in return for Sadr's order to...

JOHN Howard says he has left Australia with a stronger, less ambiguous sense of national pride than before the Coalition won government in 1996. "I think we were having a pointless debate about our identity in the early 1990s," the former prime minister said after a speech to Harvard University students yesterday. "I think we've shed that. We have now got a very positive view of Australian history and Australian achievement. I think our sense of national pride is stronger now than it was in the 1990s and less ambiguous. And that's tremendously important." Mr Howard, who in Washington last...

The Patton of Counterinsurgency With a sequence of brilliant offensives, Raymond Odierno adapted the Petraeus doctrine into a successful operational art. by Frederick W. Kagan and Kimberly Kagan 03/10/2008, Volume 013, Issue 25 Great commanders often come in pairs: Eisenhower and Patton, Grant and Sherman, Napoleon and Davout, Marlborough and Eugene, Caesar and Labienus. Generals David Petraeus and Raymond Odierno can now be added to the list. It's natural to assume that successful pairs of commanders complement each other's personalities (the diplomatic Eisenhower and the hard-charging Patton, for example) or that the junior partner is merely executing the vision...