Free Republic

In 2020, America elected Joe Biden to be not-Trump—a role for which he seemed well-suited. In 2016, the country voted for burn-it-all-down upheaval. Trump was the tribune of those who felt betrayed and misled and mistreated. Four chaotic years later, alarmed voters fled into the arms of an aging former vice-president and senator—a man they had twice rejected as a presidential contender—who seemed the personification of the steady hand. No one expected Biden to be transformational or extraordinary, but we did need him to be the anti-Trump in the most important ways. We needed him to be sober and responsible,...

President Biden is not very good at his job, and yet, I thank God every day that Biden is president. In the Ukraine crisis, he has redeemed the hopes of those who voted for competence. The administration’s warnings to Moscow were unambiguous without being hysterical. Our revelations of intelligence unmasking Russian disinformation and false flag narratives were on the nose. Biden’s coordination with European allies was a skillful presentation of unity (special kudos to Secretary of State Antony Blinken). There were some missed opportunities. The president should have placed the invasion of Ukraine in a broader historical context and outlined...

If it concerns sex in any way, you can be sure that our culture will fixate on it and manage to defy common sense with hyperventilating indignation. Same-sex marriage roiled the waters for decades, but now that the Supreme Court has big-footed that question, culture warriors are prowling for new realms of transgression to embrace. So, coming to a bathroom near you — transgenderism. I’m just back from a weekend at Harvard University where unisex bathrooms are the norm. On behalf of womankind, I say: To the Bathroom Barricades! Bathroom injustice has been a feature of the world for a...

When a Republican has been in the presidency for eight years, as George W. Bush was, Democrats run against the Republicans. When a Democrat has been in office for eight years, as Barack Obama will soon have been, Republicans run against Republicans. This is a year in which the multiple failures of the Obama years should be irresistible for Republican presidential candidates. Democrats, correspondingly, should be awkwardly sidestepping and tightrope walking to avoid a too-close association. Instead, partly due to the eccentric obsessions of Donald Trump, we've seen Republicans reprising debates about the wisdom of the Iraq War while ignoring...

The Race Conversation Starbucks Wants You to Have by MONA CHAREN March 20, 2015 Unfortunately, it’s likely to be just as “honest” as all the previous ones. Starbucks is hoping to lead a national conversation about race. According to a video released by founder Howard Schultz, Starbucks barristas are encouraged to scrawl “race together” on coffee cups before placing them in the hands of customers. This hollow bit of moral exhibitionism is supposed to encourage “compassion,” “honesty,” “empathy,” and “love.” Does Starbucks sell caffeine-free compassion? Each and every time we’re hectored to engage in an “honest conversation” about race, it’s...

"Our house is as quiet as a tomb." So said a friend who's at the same stage of life -- that is, a mother of three with only one child still living at home. Her youngest, unlike mine, is an introvert, but like my Ben, he is exceedingly busy in his last years of high school, thus leaving the house echoing with emptiness. As a college sophomore, I visited my academic adviser with a problem. "I don't know what I'm going to do after graduation," I confessed. He cocked his head sideways. "Most people don't come to me with this...

Noting the comeback campaigns of Eliot Spitzer and Anthony Weiner in New York, feminist author Hanna Rosin wonders why "50 years into the sexual revolution" women politicians lag so far behind men in the sex scandal tally. She notes biological and evolutionary explanations only to reject them in favor of the idea that women are just too unused to power to abuse it in that way. She's cheered though by surveys showing that younger women are cheating on their spouses almost as much as men and confidently looks forward to the not-too-distant day when we'll "find ourselves willing to look...

Eric Holder dismissed America as a "nation of cowards" because we wouldn't, he argued, have a "national conversation" about race. It's a slander wrapped in a farce. We talk of race unremittingly. That's the farce. The slander is hydra-headed. No honest conversation about race is possible when accusations of racism replace reasoned arguments. Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen, who mentioned high rates of crime among black males, was rewarded with the racist label within minutes by some of those (The Atlantic, Slate) who presumably agree with Holder that we are too timid when discussing race. Many American liberals are achingly...

The code persists despite feminists’ best efforts. Chivalry is back in the news. The always alert Charles Murray of the American Enterprise Institute draws our attention to an item in the Psychology of Women Quarterly. A new study on what the authors are pleased to call “benevolent sexism” (which, as Murray translates, seems to mean gentlemanly behavior) found that both women and men are happier when men behave like gentlemen. This being a sociological publication, though, the findings are not written in English, but rather in academic argot. It’s full of sentences like this: “A structural equation model revealed that...

Let's stipulate that people, and particularly politicians, can get into trouble by attempting to speak for God. But that's not the moral of the story regarding Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock. Responding to a question about abortion, Mourdock offered a grieved response -- his voice breaking a bit -- on the matter of which exceptions he favored. His Democratic opponent, Joe Donnelly, also pro-life, said that he would permit abortions in cases of rape, incest and to save the life of the mother. Mourdock said he had "struggled with it . . . for a long time," but had come...

By telling Barbara Walters that she thinks she can defeat President Obama, Sarah Palin has dimmed hopes cherished by sensible Republicans that she might decide against a run for the White House in 2012. Here are just some of the reasons she should not run. The Republican nominee should be someone with a vast and impressive record in government and the private sector. Voters chose a novice with plenty of star power in 2008 and will be inclined to swing strongly in the other direction in 2012. Americans will be looking for sober competence, managerial skill, and maturity — not...

President Obama has a weakness for thinking in categories. For someone who provokes swoons among liberals for his great intellect, he has repeatedly evidenced an unsophisticated, one might even say simple-minded, view of the world: Workers good; bosses exploitative. Borrowers good; lenders bad. Patients good; insurance companies bad. Again and again, the president and his spokesmen have justified their expansions of government power as efforts to help those who "through no fault of their own" find themselves in difficulties. Many politicians traffic in this kind rhetoric during campaigns, but Obama has institutionalized it in policy. One of those reifications --...

Come in. Make yourself comfortable. What’s that? You’re a congressional Democrat? You voted to triple the national debt; destroy a health-care system that an overwhelming majority of Americans were happy with in a way that creates a massive and infinitely complex new entitlement; bail out the banks and auto companies; and “stimulate” the economy with an $862 billion boondoggle that hasn’t created a single private-sector job? Your president is suing the state of Arizona for having the effrontery to enforce a law he wishes not to enforce (though he does have the constitutional responsibility to “take care that the laws...

President Obama likes to preen himself on his supposed moral superiority to his predecessor. He announced the closing of Guantanamo in his first week on the job (though, ten months on, it remains open) to advertise the new administration’s disdain for George Bush’s war-fighting tactics. And at every opportunity since, he has stressed that his policies — on taxes, on the Middle East, on health care, on “man-caused disasters,” and on “climate change” — reflect a more refined and elevated morality than has ever before held sway in Washington, D.C. So you have to wonder how the president slept last...

The Supreme Court of the United States is a redoubt of decorum in a casual-Friday world. The justices still wear robes. The assembled attorneys, journalists, and interested observers still rise when the robed ones enter the chamber. Lawyers still begin their oral-argument presentations by intoning the words, “May it please the court.” But when the justices convened last November 4, they were hearing arguments about whether the “S-word” and the “F-word” can be legitimately regulated by the Federal Communications Commission. In a decision handed down last week, the Court ruled 5–4 on behalf of the FCC. But the fact that...

When thousands of people in all 50 states assemble to protest government policy, you might suppose that this is news. Not according to the coverage on the front pages of the Washington Post, New York Times, or the Wall Street Journal. The "tea party" rallies went unmentioned. In Washington, D.C., despite temperatures in the 40s and a driving rainstorm, about a thousand demonstrators assembled across from the White House. The front page of the Times found space for a big story with accompanying pictures of competing public demonstrations in Kabul, Afghanistan, but not a word about the American protestors. Perhaps...

Sunday's Q&A session with Mona Charen and Ruth Marcus is scheduled for rebroadcast this morning at 5:50 - 6:50 AMEDT on C-Span. Moderated by Brian Lamb, the program explores the political and cultural interests and views of this odd couple, who in fact went to the same high school together and claim to be friends. The program includes excerpts from a similar interview with the two from three years ago, giving them the chance to revise and extend some of their comments. Interesting to hear them go at topics such as the nature of man and the need for government...

Six members of the Congressional Black Caucus traveled to Cuba last week and were delighted with their reception. They met with Raul Castro for four hours (including dinner). Three lucky members of the delegation were even entertained by Fidel at his home. As the Miami Herald reported, the representatives found Castro, to be "very engaging, very energetic . very talkative.'' Imagine. The dictator known for his five-hour speeches. Who could have guessed?

One of President Obama's signature boasts was that his election would, to use his term, "reboot" America's image in the world. Addressing thousands of Germans last summer, Obama said, "In Europe, the view that America is part of what has gone wrong in our world rather than a force to help make it right has become all too common." His election, he promised, would transform America's global image. it the president, the Congress, or some unknown people who pull the strings?" Khamenei further suggested that some American leaders have "demanded that our great and honorable nation be wiped out." President...

Appearing on C-SPAN last weekend I mentioned that Barack Obama had opposed the Born Alive Infants Protection Act when he was an Illinois state senator — a position he has attempted to deny or obfuscate ever since. The liberal blogger who appeared on the program with me erupted with indignation. She didn’t deny that Obama had opposed the bill. She denied, hotly, that babies are ever born alive after an attempted abortion. Since I have actually met Gianna Jessen, who survived an attempted abortion, I invited viewers to contact me directly if they wanted evidence. My inbox has been bursting....