Free Republic

Suddenly almost all the Michael Connelly detective novels featuring Harry Bosch have appeared on You Tube.

There is much to learn from Paul Johnson's history of the 20th century, not least the appalling truth about the "Republican" camp during the Spanish Civil War; some unpalatable facts about FDR and his "vanity … compounded by an astonishing naivety"; and, most importantly, the many ways in which the autocrats of the left (Lenin, Stalin, Mao, etc…) and of the right (Hitler, Mussolini, Pétain, etc…) inspired, complemented, and even conspired with, one another. Much of what we have learned turns out to be myths. What explains the rise of rightist fascism, and how does it differ from leftist communism?...

You’ve likely encountered films such as Dr. Strangelove, Fail Safe, or WarGames, narratives where the specter of nuclear war looms ominously, often triggered by a mere twist of fate. In my latest work, I delve into the unsettling realm of historical near-misses—moments when a convergence of computer glitches, radar anomalies, or communication breakdowns brought the world to the brink of nuclear Armageddon. Each chapter meticulously recounts instances where a stray aircraft carrying deadly cargo narrowly averted disaster or when a malfunctioning missile silo threatened to unleash unimaginable devastation. What sets this exploration apart from conventional historical accounts is its narrative...

Many Americans realize that our higher-education system is decaying, its standards in decline while costs continue to rise. Is this situation like a tooth with a cavity that can readily be fixed? Or is the decay so deep that we need something far more serious, such as a root canal? David Barnhizer’s new book, Conformity Colleges, strongly suggests that we must have the latter. His subtitle explains that we suffer from “the destruction of intellectual creativity and dissent.” That’s an accurate diagnosis. An emeritus professor of law, Barnhizer has written a no-holds-barred exposé of the tragic fall of our institutions...

A university library in the UK has placed trigger warnings for "white supremacy" on classic children's books such as Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland. York St John University warned readers that historical children's stories written in the 19th and early 20th centuries under their Rees-Williams collection are likely to contain "offensive" examples of "white supremacy" and "colonialist narratives." An online disclaimer for the collection, entitled "Content warning and position statement" says: “Within the 150 years of children’s writing which is represented in the collection, there is a widespread occurrence of colonialist narratives which centre white supremacy, and racist and...

The American edition, published in 1956, 468 pages, Translated by A.P. Maudsley The Diaz account is the best history book that I have read. It has all the advantage of a first person account and reads like a well written adventure novel. The Discovery and Conquest of Mexico by Bernal Diaz del Castillo is the only extant first person account of the campaign under the command of Hernando Cortez from 1519 to 1520. The campaign resulted in the discovery and conquest of the Aztec civilization in Mexico. Cortez himself wrote five long letters to Carlos V in Spain. Parts...

Christine Blasey Ford will release a memoir five years after she accused then-Supreme Court Justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh of assaulting her. Ford’s memoir, One Way Back, is slated for public release on March 19, and the central topic is her allegations against Kavanaugh. According to Ford, Kavanaugh groped her during a gathering at a house in suburban Maryland in 1982. Kavanaugh vehemently denied the accusations from Ford, in addition to the two other women who stepped forward with claims of misconduct. “The fact is, he was there in the room with me that night in 1982,” an excerpt reads. “And...

“Centuries of capitalism were held to have produced nothing of value,” Winston Smith discovers in George Orwell’s 1984. “One could not learn history from architecture any more than one could learn it from books. Streets, inscriptions memorial stones, the names of streets – anything that might throw light on the past had been systematically altered.” In other words, “history has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.” For all but the willfully blind, the parallels are apparent on every hand. For the Biden Junta, America is nothing more than a bastion of racist...

Conservatives have failed to see that arguments do not matter. My whole career in the classroom has been guided by one principle. Namely, that it is my job is to introduce young people to the goodness, the beauty, and the wisdom of excellent works of literature, art, and human thought, without regard to any political use to which knowledge of these works might be put. I detest when literature is wrenched away from its essence, which is to delight us in its teaching us about ourselves and the world, and is commandeered for one or another kind of gain. It...

Over the weekend Ann Coulter posted a short tweet seemingly supporting President Trump’s death. Coulter somehow discovered an old tweet from July 2023 that asked her what Trump needs to do to return America to its former glory. As Gateway Pundit readers know, Joe Biden and his regime have embarked on destroying America from the moment he assumed power. Instead of providing a thoughtful response, Coulter instead retorted: “Maybe he could die?”

FIRST IN PLAYBOOK — A new book reveals that Sen. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-S.C.) “threw Trump under the bus” during Graham’s secret grand jury testimony in the Georgia election subversion case.The new revelation was unearthed by Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman in “Find Me the Votes: A Hard-Charging Georgia Prosecutor, a Rogue President, and the Plot to Steal an American Election” ($30), on sale Jan. 30:“After fighting a four-month legal battle all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to block his grand jury subpoena — and losing — South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham turned on a dime ‘and threw Trump...

Colleges and universities keep telling us that they teach “critical thinking” skills, but in reality they are deeply complicit in the destruction of the ability to think at all. They’re the source of a kind of mental contagion called “cancel culture,” an anti-intellectual phenomenon that encourages people to silence and punish those who disagree with them. Rather than teaching students how to rationally argue, our schools (and not just colleges) are teaching that dissenters can and should be silenced. That is the big, frightening point of a new book by Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott, The Canceling of the American...

Exactly 110 years ago... 1913 - Nov 8: Sheikh Suleiman al-Taji al-Faouqi [سليمان التاجي] (1882-1858) pens a vile hate poem, combining old anti-Semitic stereotypes with Islamic motifs in the influential 'Falastin' [فلسطين] newspaper.Israel-Palestine: Lands and Peoples. (2021). Germany: Berghahn Books, p. 270. Mandel, N. J. (1976). The Arabs and Zionism Before World War I. United Kingdom: University of California Press, p. 175. Morris, B. (1999). Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-1999. United Kingdom: Knopf, p. 65. Benny Morris, The War on History, ''Jewish Review of Books'', Apr 6, 2020. Gilbert, M. (2010). In Ishmael's House: A History...

When I was looking desperately for a number of years two decades ago for voices that intelligently and courageously spoke up against the militarist excesses of Bush 2, I was astonished and delighted by what I found on The American Right - Congressman Ron Paul and Patrick Joseph Buchanan. IMHO there is nothing short on film from Buchannan to match the magnificence and power of Paul's "what if" speech. But the longer culture wars speech on youtube is for me an almost sacred text which I watch once or twice a year to restore my faith in truth. My own...

A series of declassified satellite images from the Cold War era have revealed hundreds of undiscovered Roman forts in Iraq and Syria. A total of 396 new sites have been identified from the images taken in the 1960s and 1970s, with the findings, published in the journal Antiquity, changing the perception of how the region functioned. A previous 1934 aerial survey, conducted by French explorer Antoine Poidebard, recorded 116 Roman forts across the region. They were previously thought to form a defensive line against incursions from Arabia and Persia along the Roman Empire’s eastern flank. The latest findings, however, suggest...

A fundamental strength of conservatism is not forgetting the past out of hubris believing that we can get all new answers to everything now. When Tucker Carlson (https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/4192571/posts) says: "You can say you care about America, but if you’re sending $100 billion to foreign countries right now, you’re lying" and “If something really dramatic in your country happens — like young people can’t, I don’t know, get married, you know, or buy houses or have any hope for a future that approaches, you know, the middle class upbringing they had — then you’ve got a huge problem and someone should...

Bronx child prodigy and poet Joy Davidman was born in NYC in 1915 and died in Oxford, England, aged 45, in 1960. Davidman was a convert from communism to Christianity during a troubled marriage. She then moved to England and found her second and final husband, writer and theologian, C.S. Lewis. She wrote: “What war did for him (hasten disillusionment with communism), childbirth did for me. I began to notice what neglected, neurotic waifs the children of Communists were and to question the genuineness of the love of mankind that didn’t begin at home.” Perhaps motherhood taught her of our...

Last year on this date, I paraphrased the words of Marcus Junius Brutus (and Gaius Epidius Marullus and Aussie bush poet Banjo Paterson) against tyranny to condemn the then Premier of Victoria, Australia, Daniel Michael Andrews (his full criminal name): “You are a block, a stone, a worse than senseless thing. You contaminate our future with mass debt And sell the vison splendid of our southern land For all the trash of Spring St cowards’ tyranny. I would rather be a dog who bays the moon than deny the simple agonising fact that your wide deep crimes against democracy are...

Why I Am a Christian: Knowing God. Download free, next three days: Where Do You Want to Go, Eternally? Healing One Heart at a Time, With John Wesley's Forms of Prayer (Modern English)! The book topics include: The Truth about Eternity, I've Broken the Commandments!, Taste and See, Who Was Jesus, Anyway? Good Man, Crazy Man, Son of God?, The Real Jesus Claimed to be God and Performed Miracles, Jesus Fulfilled Prophesy and Rose from the Dead, Jesus Is God, Bonus Resources For Further Study, and John Wesley's A Collection of Forms of Prayer for Every Day in the Week.The...