Free Republic

“There’s no trick to being a humorist when you have the entire government working for you,” Will Rogers quipped, capturing his era’s zeitgeist and explaining the popularity of our moment’s outsider presidential candidates. It’s good to be a non-politician when 75 percent of Americans say government corruption is widespread, up from 66 percent in 2009, and half say government is an immediate threat to lives and freedoms, according to Gallup. It’s bad to be the debate-shy “candidate of destiny,” Hillary Clinton, when the first three words voters associate with her are “liar,” “dishonest” and “untrustworthy,” according to a Quinnipiac poll....

“There’s no trick to being a humorist when you have the entire government working for you,” Will Rogers quipped, capturing his era’s zeitgeist and explaining the popularity of our moment’s outsider presidential candidates. It’s good to be a non-politician when 75 percent of Americans say government corruption is widespread, up from 66 percent in 2009, and half say government is an immediate threat to lives and freedoms, according to Gallup. It’s bad to be the debate-shy “candidate of destiny,” Hillary Clinton, when the first three words voters associate with her are “liar,” “dishonest” and “untrustworthy,” according to a Quinnipiac poll....

Last week during the most-watched primary debate in history, a U.S. senator fired a cogently argued objection at his party’s leader, drawing a contemptuous and insulting personal attack. No, it wasn’t Sen. Rand Paul, who chastised Donald Trump for being “on every side of every issue,” criticism for which Trump poked Paul for “having a bad night.” It was Sen. Chuck Schumer who, after taking a month to Think Again about the Iranian nuclear agreement, announced his carefully considered rationale for opposing President Barack Obama’s controversial foreign-policy objective — an accord that reverses America’s long-standing policy to prevent an Iranian...

At a recent 11,000-strong Netroots Nation conference, irate protestors booed presidential candidate Martin O’Malley for proclaiming, “Black lives matter, white lives matter, all lives matter.” That O’Malley’s echo of “all men are created equal” — the self-evident truth that fueled America’s civil-rights movement — was jeered reflects a disturbing phenomenon, one social critic Aldous Huxley called the propagandist’s purpose: “to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human.” By emphasizing differences and distorting reality, propagandists incite mistrust and hostility, compelling followers to line up dutifully behind partisan agendas, never to Think Again. Yet as...

As capitulations to Iran’s theocracy dragged on, numbing Americans to the civilization-imperiling consequences of the planet’s most lethal terrorist state possessing nuclear weapons capability, a political sideshow emerged. Two blunt iconoclasts, billionaire Donald Trump and self-described socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders, are encouraging Americans to Think Again about policies that undercut our interests, drawing surprisingly large crowds, breathless media attention and lofty poll numbers. Causing the collective eyes of the political class to roll, Trump and Sanders resonate with a pablum-fed electorate starving for authentic debate, policies aligned with citizens’ concerns and leaders who say what they mean and mean what...

Amid unending political horserace punditry — who’s up, who’s down in the wake of Supreme Court rulings, Congress’ trade-promotion votes, Iranian nuclear negotiations and the racist Charleston massacre — let’s Think Again about the most important concern: Are the American people winning or losing? Are “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” — the national promise Americans celebrate on July Fourth — secure in this year of the Magna Carta’s 800th anniversary? That watershed moment in the annals of human liberty curbed a tyrannical monarch, like the American founding it helped inspire. Initially an agrarian backwater in a socially stratified...

It’s not a “Mad Max” world into which students are graduating, but it’s a mad, mad one, fraught with genocidal fanaticism, proliferating scandals and morally deficient leadership. As terrorists claimed swaths of Iraq and Syria for the Islamic State, and “death to America”-seeking Iran crept closer to nuclear-weapons capability, recent headlines featured indictments of international soccer officials at FIFA and former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert. Distrust of civil institutions pervades society. Meanwhile, the conflicts of interest surrounding Hillary Clinton prompted CNN’s Jon King to note, “You can’t go 20 minutes ... without some story ... that gives you...

Fleeing East Africa for Italy in a rickety rescue boat, 15 Christian asylum seekers were thrown to their deaths last week by fellow refugees because they weren’t praying to Allah. We’re shocked by reports of innocents murdered for their beliefs and orange-jump-suited victims marching to their deaths because, as Americans, we’re safe from such persecution. Our freedoms evolved in part from an infamous, hysteria-induced episode in 17th century Puritan Massachusetts where anyone suspected of witchcraft was persecuted. The Salem Witch Trials became a cautionary tale about the dangers of false accusations and contempt for due process, and an allegory for...

Last week, as radical Islamists slaughtered 148 Christian students at a Kenyan university, America’s faithful celebrated Easter and Passover in tranquility, demonstrating why religious liberty is not the eccentric uncle in the human-rights family — it’s the matriarch. Yet with demonic evil spanning the globe, and religion a life-and-death matter, punishment for defending one’s faith is now acceptable in America. Our “live and let live” ethic is increasingly imperiled. Witness the firestorm after Indiana became the 20th state to enact its version of the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act. In our morally upside-down world, we accommodate the nuclear ambitions of...

“All the world’s a stage,” Shakespeare penned, and last week I was fortunate to behold a performance for the ages, one that moved its standing-room-only audience. Sitting in the gallery above a joint session of Congress and feeling history’s weight at our civilization’s fateful crossroads, I watched Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu enter the House chamber to thunderous bipartisan applause before delivering a gracious, credible and consequential speech. Defending our common heritage and interests, Netanyahu received 43 ovations from ideologically diverse lawmakers, reflecting our countries’ durable bond — for which he expressed fervent gratitude — and our mutual desire for...

There’s an old political saying that if your opponent is committing suicide, get out of the way. Yet professor Sean Elias requires a response, so hateful was his odious retort in The Aspen Times to my column, “Why coexist with a mortal Iranian threat?” Evidence that society’s oldest prejudice endures after a post-Nazi dormancy, Elias’ letter to the editor reflects the bigotry that’s inciting lethal anti-Jewishness in Europe and existential threats to Israel, the only nation-state of the Jewish people and the sole democracy in the Middle East’s radicalized swamp. No other nation is surrounded by as much hostility or...

Imagine catching a lethal, fast-growing, yet operable cancer in a child before it’s spread. The doctors assure a high survival rate, assuming traditional protocols. Meanwhile, a third opinion proposes no treatment, believing the child can coexist normally with cancer. Entrusted with the awesome responsibility of ensuring the child’s healthy future, how long would you Think Again before opting to remove the cancerous “Sword of Damocles” — and fear — hanging over precious life? Alas, too often leaders charged with safeguarding life have sacrificed it on the altar of “normalization,” preferring inaction to threat-mitigating, albeit difficult, operations. Regretful that Western powers...

Aired-out uproariously on “Saturday Night Live,” “Deflategate” has been a national fixation since word broke that the New England Patriots used underinflated footballs in their Super Bowl-berth-clinching victory over Indianapolis. The alleged-cheating controversy has even pumped up the loveability of the oft-despised Seattle Seahawks. However, Think Again if you believe Deflategate is merely hot air. Though overblown, Americans’ disquiet reflects our fairness instinct and commitment to equality of opportunity — the ideal that all competitors in the race of life, no matter their status, can succeed on a level playing field. Sensing a slanted NFL field, Seahawk Richard Sherman questioned...

So a priest, an imam and a rabbi walk into a bar. The bartender says, “What’s this? A joke?” Yes, and it’s funny, so accustomed are we to religious humor and wit that pokes fun at humanity and the powerful who govern it. Though humor is in the eye of the beholder, its historic purpose is to induce us to Think Again. Truth-telling with laughter — whether by medieval court jesters, cartoonists, humorists such as Mark Twain, Charlie Chaplin impersonating Hitler in “The Great Dictator,” comedy troupes such as Monty Python or sitcom actors such as Archie Bunker — pushes...

In an ironic twist, the long-awaited sequel to the cult classic “Dumb and Dumber” opened as Americans discovered that in the eyes of our political class, we’re like the film’s low-IQ duo — “stupid voters.” Caught dropping truth bombs in a series of videos, MIT professor and Obamacare co-architect Jonathan Gruber describes how policymakers hid the Affordable Care Act’s true nature. “Call it the stupidity of the American voter,” Gruber chortled, since “that was really, really critical to getting the thing to pass.” But who’s the dunce, considering Gruber is now persona non grata in capitals where he’s earned millions...

“The people have spoken, and they must be punished,” former New York City Mayor Ed Koch famously vented in defeat. In sweeping away waves of Democrats in Tuesday’s midterm election — even in blue states like Maryland, Illinois and Massachusetts — a punished and disrespected American people have vented, silencing the politicians whose agenda and tactics they soundly rejected. In this collective Think Again election, Harry Reid was demoted for allowing hyper-partisanship to trump the constitutional integrity of the Senate, known as the “world’s most deliberative body” — except under Reid’s leadership. Though Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu’s fate awaits a...

It’s been an October of surprises. As U.S. health officials’ mistake-riddled handling of the deadly Ebola virus topped newscasts, the Denver Post editorial board captured headlines for its denunciation of Sen. Mark Udall’s campaign tactics, helping subdue the fevered politics that’s plagued us. Insisting that Udall ­— dubbed “Mark Uterus” — Think Again about his fixation on gynecological issues while “a great deal is at stake,” the Post’s endorsement of challenger Cory Gardner injected truth serum into a poisonously dishonest election season. Noting Udall’s lack of leadership in Washington and his “obnoxious one-issue campaign” in Colorado, the Post contends that...

As if on cue, settled-science believer Auden Schendler delivered a punishing retort in The Aspen Times to my recent column “Inconvenient Truths Denied By Climate Faithful.” Archie Bunker-like in frustration, Schendler wants me to stifle myself. If I don’t “dummy up” like Archie’s wife, Edith, he suggests Aspen Times editors Think Again before publishing my commentary without peer reviews or risk “being complicit in promoting falsehoods.” Schendler calls this “ground-truthing of scientific claims,” noting that the Los Angeles Times doesn’t publish pieces that “deny established climate science.” Like Robert Kennedy Jr., who recently called for the jailing of treasonous nonconformists...

God knows Joan Rivers had much to atone for every Yom Kippur, considering her trenchant wit, off-color jokes and celebrity takedowns — though sidesplitting. Never deferential to fame and status, Rivers claimed, “I succeeded by saying what everyone else is thinking.” Hence, Liz Taylor was “so fat, she puts mayonnaise on aspirin” and “hamburgers on hot dogs,” and HBO-star Lena Dunham’s ever-present breasts “look like Michael J. Fox drew them and Stevie Wonder filled them in.” Alas, the trailblazing performer can’t Think Again and repent this year. Known for resilience and career rebirths springing from fearlessness, a legendary work ethic...

At the tumultuous summer’s close, when throat-slashing, genocidal jihadists and economic malaise dominated headlines and our psyches, Hillary Clinton announced her preoccupation. “Climate change is the most consequential, urgent, sweeping collection of challenges we face,” she proclaimed, adding, “no matter what the deniers try to assert” — thus dismissing from polite society those inclined to Think Again about America’s greatest concerns. Like Clinton, members of the “Church of Settled Science” invoke the moral equivalent of Holocaust denial to reject those deeming climate change less dangerous than other threats, such as the Islamic State, a nuclear Iran, a debt-laden stagnant economy...