Free Republic

"If you're in favor of World War III, you have your candidate." So said Rand Paul, looking directly at Gov. Chris Christie, who had just responded to a question from CNN's Wolf Blitzer as to whether he would shoot down a Russian plane that violated his no-fly zone in Syria. "Not only would I be prepared to do it, I would do it," blurted Christie: "I would talk to Vladimir Putin ... I'd say to him, 'Listen, Mr. President, there's a no-fly zone in Syria; you fly in, it applies to you.' "Yes, we would shoot down the planes of...

"Buchanan, if you ever hear of a group getting together to stop X, be sure to put your money on X." So, Richard Nixon told me half a century ago, after he had been badly burned in just such a futile and failed enterprise. It was the Cleveland Governors Conference of 1964. Sen. Barry Goldwater had just defeated Gov. Nelson Rockefeller in the final and decisive winner-take-all primary in California. As the story is told, Stu Spencer, Rocky's man in California, had come to his candidate and said, "Governor, I think it's time to call in the Eastern establishment." To...

An Establishment Unhinged December 10, 2015 By Patrick J. Buchanan Calling for a moratorium on Muslim immigration “until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on,” Donald Trump this week ignited a firestorm of historic proportions. As all the old hate words — xenophobe, racist, bigot — have lost their electric charge from overuse, and Trump was being called a fascist demagogue and compared to Hitler and Mussolini. The establishment seemed to have become unhinged. Why the hysteria? Comes the reply: Trump’s call for a temporary ban on Muslim immigration tramples all over “American values” and...

When Dan Rather filed suit against CBS 14 months ago -- claiming, among other things, that his former employer had commissioned a politically biased investigation into his work on a "60 Minutes" segment about President Bush's National Guard service -- the network predicted the quick and favorable dismissal of the case, which it derided as "old news." So far, Mr. Rather has spent more than $2 million of his own money on the suit. And according to documents filed recently in court, he may be getting something for his money. Using tools unavailable to him as a reporter — including...

Having established a base on the Syrian coast, Vladimir Putin last week began air strikes on ISIS and other rebel forces seeking to overthrow Bashar Assad. A longtime ally of Syria, Russia wants to preserve its toehold on the Mediterranean, help Assad repel the threat, and keep the Islamic terrorists out of Damascus. Russia is also fearful that the fall of Assad would free up the Chechen terrorists in Syria to return to Russia. In intervening to save Assad, Putin is doing exactly what we are doing to save our imperiled allies in Baghdad and Kabul. Yet Putin’s intervention has...

Though Gen. David Petraeus claims Vladimir Putin seeks to re-establish the Russian Empire, this misses the point. If Putin sought that, he would by now, 15 years in power, have annexed Belarus and Ukraine, but he has not even annexed the pro-Russian Donbass. Putin is a nationalist who sees his country as one of the world’s great powers and sees himself as protector of Russian peoples everywhere. He believes Moscow should have its own Monroe Doctrine, and that rival powers should not be planting military bases on Russia’s doorstep.

With that kumbayah moment at the Capitol in South Carolina, when the Battle Flag of the Confederacy was lowered forever to the cheers and tears of all, a purgation of the detestable relics of evil that permeate American public life began. City leaders in Memphis plan to dig up the body of Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, who is buried in a city park that once bore his name. A statue of the great cavalrymen will be removed. “Nathan Bedford Forrest is a symbol of bigotry and racism, and those symbols have no place on public property,” said council Chairman...

"Liberalism is the ideology of Western suicide," wrote James Burnham in his 1964 "Suicide of the West." Burnham predicted that the mindless magnanimity of liberals, who subordinate the interests of their own people and nations to utopian and altruistic impulses, would bring about an end to Western civilization. Was he wrong? Consider what is happening in Europe. Serbia, Hungary and Slovakia, small nations sensing they will be swamped by asylum seekers from the Muslim world, are trying to seal their borders and secure their homelands. Their instinct for survival, their awareness of lifeboat ethics, is acute. Yet they are being...

he Wednesday morning murders of 24-year-old Roanoke TV reporter Alison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward, 27, were a racist atrocity, a hate crime. Were they not white, they would be alive today. Their killer, Vester L. Flanagan II, said as much in his farewell screed. He ordered his murder weapon, he said, two days after the slaughter of nine congregants at the African-American AME church in Charleston, South Carolina. “What sent me over the top was the church shooting,” said Flanagan. To be sure, racism does not fully explain why Flanagan, fired from that same WDBJ7 station, committed this act...

Enter the Donald. If there is a single theme behind his message, it would seem to be a call for a New Nationalism or New Patriotism. He is going to “make America great again.” He is going to build a wall on the border that will make us proud, and Mexico will pay for it. He will send all illegal aliens home and restore the traditional value of U.S. citizenship by putting an end to the scandal of “anchor babies.” One never hears Trump discuss the architecture of our rules-based global economy. Rather, he speaks of Mexico, China and Japan...

While perhaps too early for Democratic elites to panic and begin bailing out on Hillary Clinton’s campaign as a doomed vessel, they would be well advised not to miss any of the lifeboat drills. For Hillary’s campaign is taking on water at a rate that will sink her, if the leakage does not stop, and soon. Initially, the issue of Hillary and the emails she sent and received as secretary of state seemed too wonkish, too complex, too trivial a matter to sink a candidacy as strong as hers. Her nomination was considered as assured as any since Vice President...

“Trump’s immigration proposals are as dangerous as they are stunning,” railed amnesty activist Frank Sharry. “Trump … promises to rescind protections for Dreamers and deport them. He wants to redefine the constitutional definition of U.S. citizenship as codified by the 14th Amendment. He plans to impose a moratorium on legal immigration.” While Sharry is a bit hysterical, he is not entirely wrong. For the six-page policy paper, to secure America’s border and send back aliens here illegally, released by Trump last weekend, is the toughest, most comprehensive, stunning immigration proposal of the election cycle. The Trump folks were aided by...

Pat Buchanan has for years been such a virulent opponent of Israel that he has frequently been accused of anti-Semitism, and this column condemning Benjamin Netanyahu for supposedly interfering in America’s internal affairs by opposing the Iran deal is not going to erase that impression. The paleocon Right hates Israel with such abiding passion that it is increasingly self-contradictory: for a small government advocate like Buchanan defending Barack Obama and tacitly supporting a deal that threatens not just Israel, but the U.S. as well, manifests a moral myopia of catastrophic immensity. But it’s no surprise. I’ve noted before how the...

Columnist and former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan said that “a significant slice of the Republican Party would take a walk” on GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump “and you could have a Goldwater situation,” and questioned the general election viability of other candidates Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Ben Carson on Monday’s “Sean Hannity Show.” Buchanan was asked whether Trump should pledge not to run as a third-party candidate. He answered that while this is “a political decision” for Trump, it would be “hard” for the Republicans to win if he runs third-party. Buchanan added, “I think it would be the...

The American political class has failed the country, and should be fired. That is the clearest message from the summer surge of Bernie Sanders and the remarkable rise of Donald Trump. “Wall Street owns the country. It is no longer a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but a government of Wall Street, by Wall Street, and for Wall Street. The great common people of this country are slaves, and monopoly is the master.” Yet the stagnation of workers’ wages as the billionaire boys club admits new members, and the hemorrhaging of U.S. jobs under...

Former MSNBC pundit Pat Buchanan, who was dumped by the network for his racist book is now coming back for an appearance on NBC's Meet The Press this Sunday. NBC's Meet the Press this weekend will host Pat Buchanan, a homophobic and racist commentator. MSNBC parted ways with Buchanan in 2012 following blowback over his book Suicide of a Superpower, which claimed to document how diversity and immigration are ruining the country. The Sunday show states on its website that it will interview Buchanan about "the return of populism" on the presidential campaign trail. Buchanan's brand of "populism" has long...

On arrival in La Paz, Pope Francis was presented by Bolivian President Evo Morales with a wooden crucifix carved in the form of a hammer and sickle, the symbol of Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Fidel. Had Pope John Paul II been handed that crucifix, he might have cracked it over Evo’s head. For John Paul II had seen up close what communism did — to his country, his church and his people in 45 years of Bolshevik rule. On his arrival in the Nicaragua of Daniel Ortega in 1983, Pope John Paul castigated a priest-collaborator who dared to serve that...

The Oklahoma Supreme Court, in a 7-2 decision, has ordered a monument of the Ten Commandments removed from the Capitol. Calling the Commandments "religious in nature and an integral part of the Jewish and Christian faiths," the court said the monument must go. Gov. Mary Fallin has refused. And Oklahoma lawmakers instead have filed legislation to let voters cut out of their constitution the specific article the justices invoked. Some legislators want the justices impeached. Fallin's action seems a harbinger of what is to come in America — an era of civil disobedience like the 1960s, where court orders are...

The Oklahoma Supreme Court, in a 7-2 decision, has ordered a monument of the Ten Commandments removed from the state Capitol. Calling the Commandments “religious in nature and an integral part of the Jewish and Christian faiths,” ... monument must go. Gov. Mary Fallin has refused. And Oklahoma lawmakers instead have filed legislation to let voters cut out of their constitution the specific article the justices invoked. Some legislators want the justices impeached. Fallin’s action seems a harbinger of what is to come in America – an era of civil disobedience like the 1960s, where court orders are defied and...

In the 2016 race, June belonged to two outsiders who could not be more dissimilar. Bernie Sanders is a socialist senator from Vermont and Donald Trump a celebrity capitalist and legendary entrepreneur and builder. What do they have in common? Both have tapped into what the bases of their respective parties believe is wrong with America. Bernie is the Willie Nelson of national politics, a leftist voice of a working class whose jobs and factories have been exported and whose wages have stagnated as banksters and the Davos-Doha crowd amass mammoth fortunes by playing games of three-dimensional Monopoly. The 73-year-old...