Free Republic

Anything in these remarks that does not stray from the truth is indebted to the American Founders, who bequeathed these ideas to us, to Abraham Lincoln, who preserved and ennobled them in the country's greatest crisis, to Harry V. Jaffa, who has done more than anyone since Lincoln to recover them, and to the late Tom Silver, the wisest and best of those who founded the Claremont Institute for the sake of these ideas. American children are not born understanding the principles of their country, and most American college students—if reports can be believed—are still largely unfamiliar with them...

Lord Curzon, Britain's viceroy of India and foreign secretary during the initial decades of the 20th century, once declared: No patchwork scheme—and all our present recent schemes...are mere patchwork—will settle the Waziristan problem. Not until the military steam-roller has passed over the country from end to end, will there be peace. But I do not want to be the person to start that machine. Nowadays, this region of what is today northwest Pakistan is variously called "Al-Qaedastan," "Talibanistan," or more properly, the "Islamic Emirate of Waziristan." Pakistan gave up South Waziristan to the Taliban in Spring 2006, after taking heavy...

Rumsfeld Remarks at Churchill Dinner PATH TO VICTORY Refashioning Institutions for the 21st Century Remarks by Donald H. Rumsfeld at the Claremont Institute's 20th Annual Dinner in Honor of Sir Winston Churchill, November 17, 2007.This past year has certainly provided ample entertainment for those interested in politics. The activities of Congress and the unexpected blessing of an extra year of presidential campaigning fill our newspapers, televisions, and blogs. The problem is that this entertainment tends to focus on the petty and the personal, and seems to avoid a serious discussion of the emerging challenges our country and the next...

A Merry Claremont Christmas Oh, there's no place like home for the holidays. While you're there, curl up with one of these fine books...   Tom Karako Director of Programs, the Claremont Institute  The Suit: A Machiavellian Approach to Men's Style, by Nicholas Antongiavanni  Few books may be called original. The Suit is a rare exception. Rarer still, because it has the virtue of being read on many levels, providing bona fide instruction for men's dress, a careful commentary on Machiavelli by one who knows him well, and, finally, managing to be extraordinarily funny. This little work allows the...

Losing the Enlightenment Remarks at the Claremont Institute's annual Churchill Dinner By Victor Davis HansonPosted November 20, 2006These remarks were delivered on November 10, 2006 at the Claremont Institute's annual dinner in honor of Sir Winston Churchill. (To applause.) Good evening, and thank you very much for the honor of the Statesmanship Award at this annual Claremont Institute dinner in memory of Sir Winston Churchill—a tribute conceived in the name of a great man, bestowed by a great institute, and honored by great past recipients. Tonight I would like to talk of our current crisis—not yet a catastrophe, but...

The Right Stuff By Elihu GrantPosted November 9, 2006 A review of American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia edited by Bruce Frohnen, Jeremy Beer, and Jeffrey O. NelsonIf you need to find out in a hurry?and who knows when such a need might arise??what year Walter Berns was born (1919) or how many condensed editions of The Road to Serfdom were distributed by the Book-of-the-Month Club at the end of World War II (600,000), you will readily find the answers in this indispensable new collection of data about the American conservative movement, published by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute and edited by...

Hedging Allegiance A review of True Faith and Allegiance: Immigration and American Civic Nationalism by Noah Pickus By Edward J. ErlerPosted August 7, 2006This essay appeared in the Summer 2006 issue of the Claremont Review of Books. Click here to send a comment.   Twenty years ago, the immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) was hailed by its supporters as the final resolution of the illegal immigration problem. It gave a "one-time only" amnesty to nearly 3 million illegal aliens living in the United States, promised increased border security, and enacted criminal penalties on employers who knowingly hired illegals....

Let Sleeping Beauties Lie By Dorothea Israel WolfsonPosted August 2, 2006This essay appeared in the Summer 2006 issue of the Claremont Review of Books. Click here to send a comment.   A review of The Norton Anthology of Children's Literature: The Traditions in English edited by Jack Zipes, Lissa Paul, Lynne Vallone, Peter Hunt, and Gillian Avery  Parents have always fretted about what to read to their children, and experts have always been ready with advice. In their educational writings, John Locke and Jean Jacques Rousseau together mentioned only three books worthy of a child's mind. Locke recommended Aesop's...

Dr. John Eastman, Director of the Claremont Institute's Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, testified today at 10:00 a.m. Eastern at a U.S. House Intelligence Committee hearing addressing whether the media can be prosecuted for publishing classified information about ongoing intelligence operations designed to prevent another terrorist attack. Eastman argued that the First Amendment's Freedom of Press clause does not provide the institutional media a special exemption from the Espionage Act and other laws, and that enforcement of those laws is particularly important in the present assymetrical war against international terrorist organizations. A copy of his prepared testimony is available here. More...

For those of you not familiar with Comedy Central or their flagship cartoon 'South Park,' a brief introduction. The show was created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, two film students from the University of Colorado. The rampant liberalism of the film department at Colorado contributed to Parker and Stone's rejection of many of modern liberalism's pieties, and they emerged as right-of-center libertarians. 'South Park'--often crude, vulgar, and depraved, but usually funny--is their outlet for a dissatisfaction with modern political and social hypocrisy and demagoguery. Think of it as 'The Simpsons' for an even more desensitized culture--social commentary for the...

Worse than being a Christian in a Muslim country is being a Muslim who converts to Christianity. Such is the case of Abdul Rahman, a longtime Christian convert who lived in Germany for years and was arrested last month in Kabul, Afghanistan. Christians are no strangers to this, having endured persecution, including beatings, imprisonment and death in both Communst and Muslim nations, which Evangelicals have long chronicled. But, again, rejecting Islam for Christ is considered far worse. Christians worldwide have been joined by President Bush in condemning Rahman's being sentenced to death for this "crime." Of course, Americans of all...

For this magnificent and brilliant speech, delivered by Prime Minister Winston Churchill in the House of Commons in June 1940, the Claremont Institute has announced that it will posthumously give Mr. Churchill its prestigious Mark Steyn award. (The speech is excerpted below, click here for full text.) The British people have strong stomachs, so let me lay it out as baldly as I can. Much of the so-called Western world will effectively disappear within our lifetimes, including many if not most western European countries. There’ll probably still be a geographical area on the map marked as Italy or the Netherlands...

Speech to the Claremont Institute earlier this month. So far, Steyn is still being introduced...

Forgetting Pearl Harbor By Ken MasugiPosted December 7, 2005 Every few months it seems we are presented with yet another poll revealing astounding ignorance of basic American history by especially the young. The tendency is aggravated by the forces of political correctness, i.e., the liberal understanding of America, which emphasize a distortion of that history to favor a leftist contemporary political outcome. This type of knavery has always been around--we can go back to 1913 for the egregious example in Charles Beard's An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States . This work set off a whole...

A review of Challenges to the American Founding: Slavery, Historicism, and Progressivism in the Nineteenth Century, edited by Ronald J. Pestritto and Thomas G. West The essays in this volume, the second in a planned trilogy, survey the principal currents of 19th-century American political thought. The book is divided into two main parts: those ideas emanating from proslavery thinkers before the Civil War and those from progressive and positivist thinkers after the war. The slavery advocates emphasize historically conditioned social hierarchy as a central element of their romantic rejection of egalitarian political principles. The post-war intellectuals emphasize radical egalitarianism based...

Writings is the home for general works by friends of the Claremont Institute that don't fall into any other site category, such as our projects or Precepts newsletter.Derek Leebaert is a professor at Georgetown University and a consultant with the Zurich-based firm Management Assessment Partners (MAP). He is the author of The Fifty-Year Wound: How America's Cold War Victory Shapes Our World and Commandos and Conquerors: Special Operations and the Rise and Fall of Nations.Between Realism and IdealismPosted on June 23, 2005 Between Idealism and RealismPosted on June 23, 2005Tyranny And UtopiaPosted on May 31, 2005 Looking for something? Enter...

What (Most) Women Want A review of Taking Sex Differences Seriously by Steven E. Rhoads By Christine RosenPosted May 16, 2005This review appeared in the Spring 2005 issue of the Claremont Review of Books. Click here to send a comment.   That men and women are different is an accepted tenet of popular culture— indeed, the success of everything from reality television shows to self-help books relies on the notion that la difference is a fact that yields happy, challenging, and occasionally comic results in the course of everyday life. The acknowledgment of difference has also provided fuel for...

My friend Ken Masugi disagrees with me and Ben Boychuk not on the principles of free society and constitutional government, but on the prudent defense of those principles today. In an earlier post I had suggested that it would be good if President Bush, given his popularity and the public platform available to him, would remind his fellow citizens, those serving in Congress as well as those not, that in America we have the rule of law -- that the fundamental law, the Constitution, serves as the authority for what government may and may not do. That after all has...

Chivalry Now A review of The Compleat Gentleman: The Modern Man's Guide to Chivalry, by Brad Miner By Terrence O. Moore   Edmund Burke's famous pronouncement that "the age of chivalry is gone" was perhaps premature. Sure, ten thousand swords did not leap from the scabbards of the French nobility to defend Marie Antoinette, but such a betrayal did not mean that "the unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise" was forgotten in Britain, or America. More than two centuries later, the spirit of chivalry has not been entirely...

During one especially hectic week in mid-February, the Internet took three scalps in what appeared to be unrelated events. Liberal bloggers forced Talon News White House correspondent James D. Guckert, a k a “Jeff Gannon,” to resign after it was revealed that he was writing under a false name for a Republican activist group (GOPUSA), that he was not really a journalist at all, and that he had posed nude on the Internet in an effort to solicit sex for money. Conservative bloggers, meanwhile, created a firestorm after Eason Jordan, the chief news executive for CNN, made controversial remarks during...

Race to the Finish Consumer's Guide to a Brave New World, by Wesley J. Smith By Travis D. Smith Wesley J. Smith excels at making complicated and controversial biotechnologies easier to understand while exposing the tricks and rationalizations that are oftentimes used to advance them. His latest book offers an inventory of the interested parties in these matters, from ethicists to ideologues and cult leaders, to scientists, celebrities, politicians, and businessmen. But the most essential and durable part of Smith's book is the author's uncompromising yet carefully considered arguments, which will hold, while various procedures, and those devoted to...

An Introduction to Citizenship for New Americans By Tom Krannawitter INTRODUCTIONAmerica has a long and noble tradition of immigration, welcoming millions from around the globe who have come in search of civil and religious liberty and economic prosperity. For many who have lived under despotic governments, the unparalleled liberty and equal protection of the law that America offers are blessings for which they have been willing to make great sacrifices. Those who want to work, live freely, and obey the laws, usually find a good life in America. They are better for coming here. And America is better for...

The Lesser Evil is Not Good Enough A review of The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror, by Michael Ignatieff By Jeremy Rabkin Michael Ignatieff is director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University and teaches courses on human rights at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. He is, in other words, a professional human rights advocate. Yet in 2002, Ignatieff broke with almost all human rights organizations when he publicly defended the Bush Administration's decision to go to war in Iraq, based on fears of what Saddam Hussein might do with weapons...

Bush's Mandate By William J. Bennett Editor's Note:This essay is adapted from a speech sponsored by the Heritage Foundation and the Claremont Institute, delivered on November 15 in Washington, DC. * * * What emerged from the 2004 election was a moral consensus, and with it, something we might call a mandate. But it is not the mandate some are talking about. Let's begin with some inescapable facts. George W. Bush is the first president of either party since Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936 to be reelected while gaining seats in both houses of Congress. President Bush won a majority...

  What Does a Conservative Do on Martin Luther King Day?  How should conservatives celebrate Martin Luther King Day? We can honor the high-minded, patriotic side of King, who spoke of the American Dream, of a color-blind society that evaluates people on “the content of their character.” That would truly be an aristocracy of merit, a conservative idea if there ever was one. This King was the one calling us back to the ideals of the American Founding and reminding us that its legacy was not fully enjoyed by all. In this view, the Civil Rights Revolution, for which...

Democracy and the Bush Doctrine By Charles R. Kesler George W. Bush's first presidency, devoted to compassionate conservatism and to establishing his own bona fides, lasted less than eight months. On September 11, 2001, he was reborn as a War President. In the upheaval that followed, compassionate conservatism took a back seat to a new, more urgent formulation of the Bush Administration's purpose. The Bush Doctrine called for offensive operations, including preemptive war, against terrorists and their abetters—more specifically, against the regimes that had sponsored, encouraged, or merely tolerated any "terrorist group of global reach." Afghanistan, the headquarters of...

The Chief Justice and the Constitution By Charles R. Kesler We wish Chief Justice William Rehnquist well in his fight against thyroid cancer, and hope that he will be able to return to the bench soon. Even the New York Times seems to have caught the spirit, editorializing not long ago in support of Rehnquist's "proud record of defending the independence of the federal judiciary against intrusive attacks by politicians." Conservative politicians, that is. The occasion was the Chief Justice's nineteenth—"and potentially final," the Times noted cheerily—annual report on the federal judiciary. In it, he showed "appropriate concern" over...

Schwarzenegger on the State of the State By Ken Masugi Television allowed us to visualize the fight against "special interests" Governor Schwarzenegger is spoiling for. The tedious build-up he was given at his State of the State speech Wednesday night said almost all. (Sacbee audio here, under the story on the speech.) The silly Assembly Speaker Nunez, the investigated Secretary of State Shelley, the investigated President Pro Tem of the Senate Perata, the boorish, ponderous Lt. Gov. Bustamante (whom the Governor sarcastically congratulated for "his wonderful speech" introducing him), all those officials down to members of the State Board...

Killing Them With Kindness By William Voegeli Conservatives have a new reason to voice the four loveliest words in the English language: I told you so. A Stanford Law Review article by Prof. Richard Sander of UCLA concludes, "Blacks are the victims of law school programs of affirmative action, not the beneficiaries." According to Stuart Taylor, Jr.'s summary of Sander's research, preferences do such a thorough job of placing black students in law schools where they are unlikely to succeed, that abolishing affirmative action in admissions would decrease the number of blacks admitted to law schools—but increase the number...

  Democracy in Washington State, San Diego, and the Ukraine  Reading accounts of the Washington election for governor in the national papers makes the Republican request for a recount sound like loser's sour grapes. But there is a deeper issue that makes the episode surprass San Diego, even if doesn't near Ukrainean proportions. The conservative Republican challenger ran narrowly ahead of long-time Democratic pol, Attorney General Christine Gregoire, in the original election (261 votes) and then the first recount (42 votes). But, the second recount, by hand, put her ahead (by 129 votes), with her margin of victory increased...

Tom Wolfe's Struggle With God and the Greeks A review of I am Charlotte Simmons, by Tom Wolfe By Ken Masugi This is an ugly book, but it could have been even uglier, being as it is a book about the life of the mind. And protagonist Charlotte Simmons of Sparta, North Carolina is scarcely an heroic figure. Prized by her protective family and a determined teacher, Charlotte becomes an outstanding student—admitted with full scholarship to Dupont University (a fictitious Ivy League school with a Georgetown or Duke-level basketball team). She is a freshman version of Sherman McCoy of...

Fallen Idol A review of Mao: A Reinterpretation by Lee Feigon By Arthur Waldron Mao Zedong was the great hero and icon of much of the "New Left" of forty years ago much as Stalin was for its predecessor, the "Old Left" in the early to middle decades of the last century. Those who fell under the spell of these tyrants in their youth have rarely managed completely to rid themselves of visceral sympathies for them, and a sense that somehow those who pillory their erstwhile heroes don't quite understand. So it is perhaps not surprising that the first...

  May Christian Teachers Teach the Declaration of Independence?  Bill Becker of Schwartz & Janzen, who has filed a brief with our John Eastman, Director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence on the LA County Seal case, discusses religious liberty, in the recent Williams case involving the Cupertino school district. The district had forbidden him to distribute American political documents, including the Declaration of Independence, on the grounds he was using the documents for purposes of religious indoctrination. The article appears in today's Daily Journal, the legal newspaper for Los Angeles.  School District Should Teach Nation's Vaunted Christian Principles...

Can Catholics Vote Democratic Anymore? A review of The American Catholic Voter: 200 Years of Political Impact by George J. Marlin By Dennis E. Teti For the first time in history, a majority of American Catholics voted this year against one of their own for President. President Bush and Senator Kerry both campaigned for the support of Catholics. In the end, 52 percent, including 56 percent of weekly church-goers, supported the Protestant Republican rather than the Catholic Democrat. In 2000, only 45 percent of Catholics supported Bush against a Southern Baptist. If Kerry had won the same Catholic vote...

Defending Thomas By Tom Krannawitter When asked recently what he thought of Justice Clarence Thomas, Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid told Tim Russert on NBC's "Meet the Press," "I just don't think that he's done a good job as a Supreme Court justice." Reid went so far as to say that Thomas was "an embarrassment to the Supreme Court" and that his opinions were "poorly written." Reid's comments came during speculation over the possible successor to Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, should he retire soon. Aside from the fact that Reid was disrespectful, we must ask why a Democrat...

The Implausibility of a New Liberalism By William Voegeli Peter Beinart, the editor of The New Republic, has written an unusually long, provocative, and important essay for that magazine. Its title, "An Argument For a New Liberalism," is at odds with its thesis, since what Beinart really wants is to revive an old liberalism. But then, its thesis is at odds with the reality of that old liberalism. Beinart wants, specifically, a revival of the liberalism of 1947, the year the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) was founded. More specifically still, he wants liberalism to stand resolutely against Islamist...

The Logic of the Colorblind Constitution By Harry V. Jaffa The crisis of American constitutionalism today turns on the interpretation of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. Since Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, the jurisprudence of something called the "living constitution" has largely replaced the traditional jurisprudence of "original intent." What has ruled the judicial process or the last half century is not what the framers and ratifiers of the original Constitution, as modified by the framers and ratifiers of the amendments, understood their words to mean, but what justices (and litigators) think those words...

Introduction by Alex SpanosI am delighted to be here this evening because I just love Rush Limbaugh. (Cheers and applause) I love his courage. I love his principles. And most of all, I love that his heart is as big as his compassion and generosity. I have seen Rush give of his time and resources to help others many times over. My friends, he is truly one of a kind. Rush Limbaugh's influence on American politics is unrivaled by any other person in the media world. (Applause) Although he holds no elected office, he commands the attention of millions of...

Islamo-Fascists Bring Malnutrition, and U.S. Invasion Gets the Blame  Old Media have as much difficulty with war-torn Iraq as apologists for slavery had for Civil War and Reconstruction. Why, things were much better when there was an autocratic authority and there was no opposition. This WaPo piece, that goes against the grain of the overwhelmingly good news from most of Iraq, cites the decline in health care and the rise of malnutrition "since the war." True, U.S. forces have nothing to do with these unfortunate developments, which are chiefly caused by terrorist attacks on doctors, hospitals and groups like...

Doubling Down on a Losing Bet By William VoegeliPosted November 8, 2004   The list of credits for the Republican victory in 2004 would be incomplete without a line for Michael Moore—not Michael Moore the filmmaker and activist so much as Michael Moore the phenomenon.  Fahrenheit 911 was the ultimate expression of the hatred and contempt for George W. Bush that existed long before this election year.  The popularity of the film both reflected that hatred and intensified it. President Bush benefited in two ways from being not only misunderestimated but misoverdespised.  First, the volume level inside the liberal echo...

The Multiplier Effect How the Popular Vote Translates into Electoral Votes By Brian P. JaniskeePosted October 29, 2004 In the first presidential contest since the razor-thin election of 2000, it seems as if unprecedented attention is being paid to state polls. This is understandable. However, a bit of perspective is in order. That fact is that the Electoral College, for the most part, closely tracks the results in the national popular vote. For example, in the last presidential election George W. Bush lost the popular vote to Al Gore by 0.5 percent but won a bare electoral majority with...

"Stolen Honor" Morphs Into Broader Sinclair Documentary  The long-awaited Sinclair Broadcasting Company production about "Stolen Honor" was, according to a company press release, always intended to be a documentary in the customary sense of the term. Appearing tonight at 8 (7 p.m. central) on 62 stations in 39 markets to 24 percent of the television households, "A POW Story: Politics, Pressure and the Media" will go beyond the Swift Boat Veterans (and POWs) for Truth documentary previously expected.  "The news special will focus in part on the use of documentaries and other media to influence voting, which emerged during...

Partisans of Neutrality By Richard ReebPosted October 19, 2004   A review of Weapons of Mass Distortion: The Coming Meltdown of the Liberal Media by L. Brent Bozell III The Republican Noise Machine: Right Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy by David Brock This presidential election brings with it the near-simultaneous publication of two books radically different in their understanding of the political influences in today's mass media. Brent Bozell and David Brock are both well known to conservatives, although Brock's star has fallen since he turned left. Brock first came to public attention with his "Troopergate" exposes...

War and Progress A review of Civilization and Its Enemies: The Next Stage of History, by Lee Harris. By Paul J. Cella IIIPosted October 14, 2004   It would be a pity if this book were ignored. It runs the risk of being ignored because its author thinks for himself, and deeply. Moreover, he is not afraid to follow his thought to its logical conclusions and in the process say things that will win him few enthusiastic allies. His objectivity—an almost clinical detachment at times—can be frankly appalling. The book also runs the parallel risk of not being attended...

President Bush's Domestic Agenda: Freedom and Dignity  President Bush's performances in the three scheduled debates have become progressively better, culminating in tonight's superior effort. I think the key to his success in this debate that focused on domestic issues is his clarity about the virtues of American citizenship. The President was asked some tough questions about health care, Social Security, the minimum wage and unemployment, and he deftly tied them all to citizens' taking responsibility for their lives and their own self improvement. He made health care clearer than anyone in a presidential debate I can remember by emphasizing...

Asian-Americans and Affirmative Action in Higher Education  The WaPo's Jay Matthews concedes points to an Asian-American critic of racial preferences in higher education. Leftist Asian-Americans often make shocking arguments about standing aside for those who have suffered more discrimination. In other words, Asian-Americans should not protest discrimination in favor of blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans. Matthews' interlocutor, Ed Chin, M.D., lacks such generosity: "I am convinced that one reason why Chin's well-reasoned complaints have not led to massive demonstrations and legislative reform is that the students of Asian descent who are rejected by the Ivies get educations just as good...

Bush Judges Rightly on Dred Scott  Democratic politico Susan Estrich on television and the LA Times (see the last paragraph) both went after Bush for his comments on Dred Scott, in response to his answer about whom he would pick for the Supreme Court. But Bush was in fact right in using the Dred Scott case as an example of bad judging and a bad reading of the Constitution.  Like the justice he has expressed admiration for, Clarence Thomas, Bush believes that the Declaration’s “principle of inherent equality … underlies and infuses our Constitution.” Bush’s understanding differs from that...

A review of A Man of Faith: The Spiritual Journey of George W. Bush by David Aikman The Faith of George W. Bush by Stephen Mansfield George W. Bush on God and Country edited by Thomas M. Freiling Conservative evangelicals have high negatives in public opinion polling, due in large part to public fears that they are rigid, closed-minded, unreasonable, and unwilling to respect the separation of church and state. Many critics of the Bush Administration have attempted to cast Bush himself in such a light, arguing that religious considerations dominate his politics to such a degree that they prevent...

At an uncertain moment late in Ronald Reagan's 1980 campaign for the presidency, National Review offered the following editorial observation: "It's time to stop worrying about Ronald Reagan…. His mind has an unfashionable and even homemade quality, he knows a lot more than people expect him to know, and he will win or lose as Ronald Reagan." The "homemade quality" of Reagan's political thought came back to mind during the week of his passing in June when Irving Kristol wrote that Reagan was the first "neoconservative"—that is, "a liberal mugged by reality." It is not correct to call Reagan a...

John Kerry took the floor of the United States Senate on March 27, 1986, and delivered a dramatic oration indicting the foreign policy of the Reagan Administration. As is his habit, Kerry drew on his Vietnam war experience in explaining his opposition to the policy. "I remember Christmas of 1968 sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia," he said. "I remember what it was like to be shot at by Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge and Cambodians, and having the President of the United States telling the American people that I was not there." To emphasize the importance of this incident to...