Free Republic

The most important lesson of his career is that there are limits to accommodation. In times of perplexity evangelical Christians ask themselves, "What would Jesus do?" Conservatives trying to regroup in the age of Obama might ask themselves, "What would William F. Buckley Jr. do?" ... The most important lesson of his career is that there are limits to accommodation. Buckley came to fame in the early 1950s after two decades of liberal Democratic dominance, the Fair Deal of Harry Truman having followed the New Deal of FDR. When Republicans finally recaptured Congress and the White House in 1952, it...

Now that Fred Thompson is officially in the race, it is appropriate to say that he is, on the face of it, by far the weakest potential president of the top tier Republicans. Strongest is Giuliani who, alone of all the candidates in both parties, has done something. Two things—saved New York City; and led America for two days six years ago. Mitt Romney has been governor of an important, largeish state; has run a business; and saved the Olympics at a dicey moment. John McCain has spent his political career in the Senate, typically a graveyard of energy. And...

An Unmourned Death, An Unspeakable CauseBy: Richard BrookhiserDate: 6/19/2006 Page: 4 Death in war is rarely even dramatic in its circumstances. The sudden blast, here not there; lingering pain, too short to be taken home, but long enough to be agony. What nobility there is comes from the cause, the choice that the soldier has made.   Few causes have been worse than that of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Al Qaeda’s commander in Iraq. His goal was a society of command and control; his means were murder and chaos. He did not lead from the front. He never contemplated strapping...

My National Review colleague Byron York reported on last Saturday’s anti-war rally on the Ellipse in Washington, D.C. The main message of the rally was President Bush’s evil and stupidity—fair enough, in a two-party system—and the main instance of it was Iraq. The warriors of the anti-war movement—Joan Baez, Ramsey Clark, Cindy Sheehan—were front and center. A secondary text of the rally was Katrina; weather, the perennial joke of the newsroom, has become a main event. But another theme was anti-Zionism. As Mr. York reports, kaffiyehs outnumbered American flags. George Galloway, the left-wing M.P., wore one around his neck.

George Washington's Rules of Civility and Decent Behaviour in Company and Conversation: "..and it may truly be said, that never did nature and fortune combine more perfectly to make a man great.." – Thomas Jefferson, about George Washington, 1814 Richard Brookhiser, Founding Father: Rediscovering George Washington (New York: Simon & Schuster Inc., 1996) pp. 130-131. By age sixteen, Washington had copied out by hand, 110 Rules of Civility & Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation. They are based on a set of rules composed by French Jesuits in 1595. Presumably they were copied out as part of an exercise in...

Five days after D-Day, Winston Churchill got this message from Stalin: "My colleagues and I cannot but admit that the history of warfare knows no other like undertaking from the point of view of its scale, its vast conception, and its masterly execution …. History will record this deed as an achievement of the highest order." Now President George W. Bush has gone to Moscow, on the 60th anniversary of the end of the war in Europe, to pay tribute to the Soviet Union’s achievement in defeating Hitler. At the same time, in very Bush-like fashion, he has been ruffling...

How perfect, for starters, that the surname be Churchill. How many of us, in the aftermath of 9/11, to the extent we could think at all, thought of Winston Churchill during Britain’s grim days and longed for his steely words. But we had our own Churchill: Ward Churchill, professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and as all the world now knows, this is what he wrote after 9/11: “They [the people in the World Trade Center] were too busy braying into their cellphones, arranging power lunches and stock transactions, each of which translated, conveniently out...

"This is the famous city of Baghdad, the home of sweetness! She lies beyond the assaults of winter, sleeping in the shade of her roses in an eternal Spring, with flowers and gardens and the murmur of many streams!" That description, from the Arabian Nights, does not leap to mind today. Grant that newsmen look for bad news; their task is not hard. In the midst of daily murders, Iraq plans to hold elections for a transitional national assembly on Jan. 30, though voting may be hampered or prevented in the provinces where violence is concentrated. The disaffected provinces are...

<p>In 1887 a young Teddy Roosevelt penned an appreciation of the life of his fellow New York pol, the founding father Gouverneur Morris. From this middling pinnacle of historical recognition, Morris slipped to a low plain of neglect and obscurity on which he has languished ever since, consigned to footnotes, unmentioned in civics classes, and omitted from the national mythology.</p>

EDITOR'S NOTE: Former vice president Al Gore delivered troubling remarks to a MoveOn PAC audience in New York earlier this week. His unhinged style came as no surprise to Rick Brookhiser, who noticed Gore's weird thinking back in 1999 in "Weird Al," an article that appeared in National Review's November 22, 1999, issue and is reprinted here. There's a new, looser Al Gore. He left his assigned stool during his first debate with Bill Bradley at Dartmouth, to walk the stage, like Bill Clinton, and he invited questions from the audience before the show began. On the stump, he gestures...

The wars of our minds end clean, with a last fight, a handshake if the foe is worthy and a tribunal if he is not—Grant and Lee at Appomattox, or the seedy collection of seeming bookies, con men and child molesters who were in fact the Nuremberg defendants. In either case, the work of battle and diplomacy is done, and commentators can do what we do best: arrange tableaux.Real wars keep going after they end, by other means or by the same means, as Iraq shows. The Baathists in Fallujah, augmented by foreign predators and the followers of Moqtada Sadr,...

<p>Peace, in setting presidential reputations, far outranks its brother prosperity. I didn't realize how completely war and peace define our presidents until I was asked to think about their economic leadership.</p> <p>Our OpinionJournal.com1 and the Federalist Society sponsored a new rating of the presidents, and in June an expanded print version will be published in collaboration with Simon & Schuster. I was asked to join William Bennett, Richard Brookhiser, Robert Dallek and others in contributing. Asked about leadership on economic policy, I couldn't find much.</p>

Got change for a dollar? How about four quarters? George Washington is with us either way, his face a sober constant in our basic daily doings. America's most familiar countenance is left as tips, plugged into parking meters, seen in all the right and wrong places. But his essence is still elusive. As another Fourth of July flames out, Rediscovering George Washington takes another look at the great man's long-ago life. Born in 1732. Died in 1799. His 67 years were some of the best-spent ever. Now we spend him. Rediscovering George Washington Grade: A- 8:30 p.m. CST Thursday, PBS...