Free Republic

When you buy a Lottery ticket, do you buy the "Cash Option" or go for the 20 equal payments from the Lottery over 20 years? At first, I called this my Conservative test. But then I realized that true conservatives probably wouldn't buy a lottery ticket. Now I call it the self-reliance versus government test. The question is a good one to use to help undecided voters and men and women that you believe would vote Republican if they thought the issues through. Compare the payout on Lottery winnings with Social Security, Medicare, and government health insurance. It's amazing and...

The selection of Sarah Palin as Republican vice-presidential candidate has revealed a serious chasm in conservatism, a chasm separating conservative elites – opinion leaders, pundits, spokesmen -- from the vast population of center-right Americans they purport to represent. If this is the choice of the conservative base, one said “Then we need a new base.� (We’ll leave names out of this for the moment, lest this deteriorate into an “I never liked him anyway� discussion. The problem is systemic, and not limited to a few individuals.) “It’s over,� another insisted of Palin’s candidacy (the later “explanation� for this remark was,...

July 25, 2008, 0:00 p.m. In the HeightsA recent musical set in Washington Heights is a rare voice for conservative views. By Monica Mullin Barack Obama is not the only one singing a hopeful tune these days. Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical In the Heights — an exuberant paean to life in a New York City barrio — is overflowing with hope. A hope refreshingly based on essentially conservative values. What a far cry from Paul Simon’s ill-fated 1997 musical The Capeman, the play Ben Brantley of the New York Times once compared to “watching a mortally wounded animal.� Also set...

John McCain is clearly the preferable option for conservative voters come November. Although liberal in his views toward immigration, government intrusion in free speech, environmental issues, campaign finance reform, health care, education mandates, and a host of other issues that run contrary to conservative orthodoxy, McCain is solid on two (alas, two) vital issues that make the difference; spending and judges. From the frustration of eight years of a Republican Administration that began with so much hope and promise it pains one to say it, but there it is. Against the prospects of a President Obama, McCain wins. A victim...

The Dumb Blond: To US Citizens Who Hate the Greatest Country

It's all but settled. John McCain will be the Republican Party nominee for president in 2008. That has caused much anguish among many conservatives who knew Ronald Reagan - who was a friend of theirs. And Senator, you're no Ronald Reagan, or words to that effect. Nevertheless, conservative realists recognize that despite all the chinks in the right side of his armor, John McCain still is far more conservative than either Hillary or B.O. But when President Bush declared that John McCain was a "true conservative" this week - which was kinda like Joan Crawford declaring that Britney Spears was...

Now that Mitt Romney has stepped aside in the GOP presidential race, many conservatives are trying to figure out where to go from here. John McCain will be the Republican presidential nominee. Conservatives are dispirited because on many issues they don't consider him one of them. And it's true -- he is a moderate who considered leaving the GOP in 2001 ... he did think about joining John Kerry's ticket in 2004 ... and he did side with liberals over conservatives on everything from immigration to closing Gitmo. But we have no time to be dejected and have to keep...

The prospect of John McCain as Republican nominee is inspiring sometimes angry resistance from millions of conservative stalwarts. Ann Coulter's famous support for Hillary Clinton  threatens to spark a wave of conservative "suicide voters"  if the Arizona Senator gets the nomination. Other Republicans, variously called insiders, party pros, elitists and worse, blithely assure us the alienated base will come around in the end and vote for McCain and the GOP ticket, particularly if Hillary Clinton is the alternative. Assuming McCain gets the nomination, I am not so sure. It could go either way. Anger at McCain Anger has been a...

This is my idea, and I am trying to get a read on what you think people would do and its effect...

This speech is a verbatim transcript of "The Speech" given as a portion of a pre-recorded, nationwide televised program sponsored by Goldwater-Miller on behalf of Barry Goldwater, Republican candidate for the presidency whom Ronald Reagan actively supported. Thank you very much. Thank you and good evening. The sponsor has been identified, but unlike most television programs, the performer hasn't been provided with a script. As a matter of fact, I have been permitted to choose my own ideas regarding the choice that we face in the next few weeks. I have spent most of my life as a Democrat. I...

Mr. McCain stepped up his attempts to court the Republican right, scoring a number of high-profile endorsements this week. Yesterday, he received the support of billionaire Steve Forbes as well as former Solicitor General Theodore Olson. Mr. Olson, who served as assistant attorney general in the Reagan administration, represented President Bush in the Supreme Court case Bush v. Gore. The picture was a bit mixed earlier in the week when Mr. McCain got near-simultaneous endorsements from moderates California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and former New York Mayor and rival Rudy Giuliani, causing some consternation among party conservatives. Some prominent pundits, including...

John Fund takes a look at the problematic relationship between John McCain and conservatives in his party, and focuses on one of the hot-button issues: judicial nominations. He doesn't give activists much hope on this front, quoting McCain as supportive of John Roberts' nomination but rejecting Samuel Alito as a model for future nominations. Why? Alito didn't hide his conservative nature well enough: Nothing would improve Mr. McCain's standing with conservatives more than a forthright restatement of his previously stated view that "one of our greatest problems in America today is justices that legislate from the bench." Mr. McCain bruised...

In an introduction to his standout lecture series on existentialism Professor Robert C. Solomon summarizes and defines existentialism as follows: ”The message of existentialism, unlike that of many more obscure and academic philosophical movements, is about as simple as can be. It is that every one of us, as an individual, is responsible—responsible for what we do, responsible for who we are, responsible for the way we face and deal with the world, responsible, ultimately, for the way the world is. It is, in a very short phrase, the philosophy of “no excuses!” Life may be difficult; circumstances may be...

Ron Paul is no compassionate conservative. His supporters love him for it. If there's been a phenomenon in this Republican presidential race, it's been the strength of a fiery doctor from Texas and his message of limited government. As the GOP front-runners address crowds of dispirited primary voters, Mr. Paul has been tearing across the country, leaving a trail of passionate devotees in his wake. Paul rallies heave with voters waving placards and shouting "Liberty! Liberty!" Money is pouring in from tens of thousands of individual donors--so much cash that the 10-term congressman recently admitted he wasn't sure he could...

Bowden accused of imposing religious beliefs on players ACLU wants Clemson to stop coach's annual team trip to local church The American Civil Liberties Union has accused Clemson head football coach Tommy Bowden of abusing his authority by imposing his religious beliefs on his players, and it has asked the university to discontinue the coach’s practice of strongly recommending players to participate in an annual team visit to a local church. The university on Wednesday denied the ACLU’s claim that Bowden, who is a state employee in a supervisory position, has violated the players’ constitutional rights of separation of church...

The New York Times report that social conservatives are talking of bolting to a third-party candidate, should Rudy Giuliani get the GOP nomination, is another sign of the disintegrating Reagan coalition. In truth, that coalition—the 49 states and 60 percent of the nation Reagan won in 1984—was but a Xerox copy of Nixon’s New Majority of 1972. A decade before Reagan won the presidency, Kevin Phillips had already published The Emerging Republican Majority.To understand why the Republican coalition is disintegrating, one must understand what held it together.To create a GOP majority in the 1960s, as Nixon did, one had first to...

...In response, the men seeking the 2008 GOP presidential nomination have largely turned that race into a contest over which candidate can best remind primary voters of Ronald Reagan, the model small-government Republican. ...In his inaugural address in 1981, Reagan said, "It is my intention to curb the size and influence of the federal establishment and to demand recognition of the distinction between the powers granted to the federal government and those reserved to the states or to the people." In his farewell address eight years later, the president said, "[M]an is not free unless government is limited. There's a...

Conservatives today are in a funk. The strains of governing, the challenges of war, and the frustration of an unsuccessful mid-term election have contributed to unease and unhappiness. But deeper than these issues is an intellectual fatigue and uncertainty about where the attention of the conservative movement now should be directed. What domestic issues can unite and motivate conservatives to great political exertions, and can win the allegiance of the public? In this respect, the right is partially a victim of its own successes. If 25 years ago you had asked an American conservative to name the preeminent domestic policy...

Some of you guys are jerks. No, I'm not talking about you, dear reader, whose erudition and class I've always admired. And you smell good, too. But some of you other guys are some seriously pre-literate knuckle draggers. Exhibit A would be the relatively new message boards on the Web site of that great metropolitan newspaper, The Miami Herald. Or at least it would have been, before management stepped in a few weeks back, began policing the boards more closely and put up a notice asking people to keep their comments on-point. Before that, the message boards, theoretically a place...

In the video, which has made the rounds online and on television, Nugent stands onstage with an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle in each hand. First he tells of his recent visit to Chicago, during which he claims he said to Sen. Barack Obama, "Hey, Obama! You might want to suck on one of these [guns], you punk!" Nugent adds, "Obama, he's a piece of s---, and I told him to suck on my machine gun. Let's hear it for him!" Nugent then relays details of a recent visit to New York, during which he putatively conveyed a similar message to another...

Our government, we're been told, is one of laws, not of men. Yet, our politics have fast become a politics devoid of ideas and focusing instead on personalities. Patrick Ruffini, writing on Hugh Hewitt's blog, recently declared, "policy is boring and politics is interesting." A journalist told me something similar a while back. And heretofore the campaign coverage has aligned with that fact. The truth is, we've had a campaign of irrelevancy with red herring being the fish of the day. We've talked about John Edwards' haircut, Hillary Clinton's cleavage, what some Huckabee supporter said about Catholicism, and the smack...

Updated on August 31, 2007 thanks to retirement of Sen. John Warner of VA who was one of our 'GOP 13', now 12.Sen. Larry Craig’s indiscretion is just the latest in a series of poor judgments – both of a political and/or personal nature that has inflicted the Republican Party in recent years, thereby hurting the Republican ‘brand’. Now, thanks to actions such as these, we find the GOP in the minority in both houses in Congress, with a Democratic White House coming in 2009 looking increasingly likely. Unless the Republican Party – and its leaders – realize that the...

In summer 1991, beginning a long air trip on a National Review Institute delegation to the Far East, I opened a 14,000-word submission to National Review and settled down to read. My mood was a good deal more optimistic than it usually was toward 14,000-word submissions. Its author was a friend and gifted writer, Peter Brimelow, then a senior editor at Forbes, who had long wanted to write this piece. But was the topic “hot� enough to command as much as 20 pages in a national magazine? I was soon blown away by one of the most powerful and lively...

But now, in the sixth year of the Bush Administration, the Republican Party is in serious disarray. Only thirteen years after Gingrich brought the GOP roaring into power, and thanks in no small part to a congress who spent more and achieved less than any other in recent memory, the American people have tossed out the GOP, seeking fiscal discipline, and national security answers from, of all places, the Democratic Party.

Political activism on the Internet -- and in the so-called blogosphere, in particular -- has long been considered a liberal stronghold. But conservative bloggers show increasing signs of their own coming of age. They took a major leap forward by playing a central role in scuttling the Senate immigration bill. Meanwhile, many of the most popular talk-radio hosts are now posting on blogs, and the frequent collaboration of the two media is creating a unified conservative voice that is likely to be an important factor in the 2008 elections. One example: Fred Thompson, the actor and former Tennessee senator, was...

  Question: How can a candidate for president raise US$23-million in three months--only slightly less than John McCain and Rudy Giuliani combined--and still register barely above zero in polls of members of his own party? That is the sad story of Mitt Romney, the movie-star handsome former governor of Massachusetts. Romney registers a dismal fourth in Republican opinion polls. Yesterday's LAT/Bloomberg poll put him at 8% approval among Republicans. A year ago, Romney looked like an emerging Republic star. He had rescued Massachusetts from a large budget deficit without raising taxes. And he had engineered a state-wide health insurance...

Posted on Wed, Apr. 04, 2007 A victory for conservatives BY JONAH GOLDBERG Considering how badly things have been going for conservatives, right-wingers, Republicans and anyone else whose brain doesn't explode like one of those guys from the movie Scanners at the thought of another Republican president, it's worth noting that one of the greatest conservative victories of the last 40 years is quietly unfolding right in front of us. On March 9, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit issued an epochal ruling. The court found that the Second Amendment actually protects the right...

March 12, 2007, 6:00 a.m. Conservative WinSecond Amendment victory in D.C By Peter Ferrara The conservative movement won an historic victory last Friday. In the case of Parker v. District of Columbia, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled that the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution does, indeed, protect a right for individual citizens to keep and bear arms for self-defense and other legal uses. Consequently, the court struck down a nettle of D.C. gun-control laws which effectively prohibited gun ownership and use within the District by law-abiding citizens. The media played the case as...

Mr. Toastmaster Mickey Edwards, thank you very much for those generous words - reverend clergy, ladies and gentlemen, we're delighted to be here at the ninth annual Conservative Political Action Conference. Anyone looking at the exciting program you've scheduled over these four days, and the size of this gathering here tonight, can't help but be impressed with the energy and vitality of the conservative movement in America. We owe a special debt of gratitude to the staffs of American Conservative Union, Young Americans for Freedom, Human Events and National Review for making this year's conference the most successful in the...

What a difference there is between a Republican defeat and a Democratic defeat.  After 1994 and 2000 and 2004 the Democrats were apoplectic.  They're coming for the children, they roared after 1994. We wuz robbed, they spat after 2000.  The voting machines did it, they squirmed after 2004. But like the sensible middle-class folks we are, we Republicans have gone home after November 2006 to do some thinking.  Some have complained about the congressional Republicans.  But they are politicians; they must deal in the art of the possible-this week!  It is our job, especially on a page named American Thinker,...

The following speech was delivered on November 30, 2006. Our topic is "Can We Rebuild the Reagan Coali­tion?" The short answer is yes. It is possible if we look at how the Reagan coalition was built and the lessons that he taught us on how to put together and sustain a coalition over the years and then use that coalition to accomplish something important. That's certainly what he did. Particularly since President Reagan passed away two years ago, I'm often asked by people, "What was he really like?" I would have to say -- something that I think is a...

WASHINGTON - Lots of conservative activists, thinkers and leaders gathered over the weekend at the National Review Conservative Summit to discuss the future prospects of their movement. They heard from actual and presumptive presidential candidates and they listened to a wide variety of speakers advocating various approaches on issues critical to the movement that took intellectual flight with the publication of William F. Buckley’s “God and Man at Yale” in 1951. These are difficult days for the right after reaching the end of the GOP’s dozen years of congressional ascendancy having achieved too few conservative policy aims. Forthwith some thoughts...

I. INTRODUCTION:“Libertarians” and “conservatives” often duke it out on Free Republic. This usually occurs over the legalization of drugs but other social issues result in vitriolic debates as well Russell Kirk in Chapter XI of his book, The Politics of Prudence, argues most libertarians are not conservatives. They are really radicals of the right. But before we can present Russell’s arguments we must first document what a “conservative” is. Previously, I have summarized Kirk’s views as to conservativism by summarizing another chapter of this book, Ten Conservative Principles. Human nature is such that few will have the time or interest...

I. Introduction Recently, NYT Columnist David Brooks wrote a column titled, ”GOP Needs To Woo Back Folks Like Me”. Brooks states he once voted Republican but now does not. He gives a laundry list of gripes including opposition to “stem cell research, “ free trade, micro policies that are tantamount to selling one’s soul and failing to be problem oriented. His article can be found: HERE. Mr. Brooks once voted Republican but he is not a conservative. He may believe he is, but his complaints argue against this claim. In 1953 or thereabouts Russell Kirk completed a scholarly book on...

One of the assumptions of Gestalt Psychology is ideas like needs move from the background to the foreground. Rush Limbaugh as well as many of the posts on Free Republic surely document an increasing awareness of attacks on our common culture. Rush has even indicated such successes as are being made against the culture outweigh even the loss of the last election. This lecture by Russell Kirk addresses this problem in a clear and convincing manner. It is seven pages long but the past paragraph sums up the problem: "...America has overcome the ideological culture of the Union of Socialist...

LAKE TEXOMA, Okla. - “GOD-BLESS-OUR-TROOPS” is spelled out in four big signs along a wooded stretch of highway in rural southern Oklahoma. Support for U.S. soldiers in Iraq runs deep in these parts and throughout much of the South and Southwest. But while polls show the war itself is steadily losing the support of Americans, it has strong backers in the region, with God and terrorism often evoked to justify the war effort. Rodeos here can start with a prayer to the troops abroad, while yellow ribbons remembering the soldiers are common sights on the bumpers of big pickup trucks....

This is a fine well thought out article than I have not been able to access so I am discussing and summarizing it here. Alfred Regnery is the Publisher of the magazine and is the most prominent and influential conservative book publisher. His father, Henry Regnery, was similarly ensconsed and Henry Regnery wrote the introduction for Russell Kirk's classic The Conservative Mind (1986 edition published in 1953). Alfred is promising a book on conservativism and this we will have to see, but if he is as clear and able as this article it should be a best selling article. The...

To most people a compromise is an agreement. Two or more parties sit down and they each give up something for a greater agreement. Thus they end up with a part of what they want but not all of it. The misery/goodness is spread equally. Enter the Baker Report. It's been out two days and the left is celebrating. I haven't seen them this happy since the election of Bill Clinton and the Democrat Congress. Katie Couric was almost wetting her panties the other night in excitement. Lefty bloggers are going crazy with happiness. Thus I'm wondering what they gave...

Black conservatives come in many sizes, shapes, and party affiliations. The next two years are a perfect time for wise conservatives to build bridges with the leaders of the “new black church”. These church leaders are classical social conservatives. They believe that government programs alone cannot stop crime, poverty, or poor schools. The new black church is not waiting for a handout. They are promoting immediate change through wiser, biblically-informed choices and personal accountability. They are using a new brand of black power to transform the nation. These men and women all believe that they can change America because of...

Lawrence W. Reed is one of those people with so much passion for an unusual line of work that he invented a new occupation, and it has helped shape the conservative movement from here to the Himalayas. Mr. Reed runs a conservative think tank school. Twice a year, ideological allies from across the globe travel to his program at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Midland, Mich., to study the tricks of the idea-peddling trade. Policy institutes have been central to a national organizing strategy that has long won the right a reputation for savvy, and state-level versions are...

Like the Berliners of 1945-46 who picked through the rubble to separate still usable bricks for re-building from that which was destroyed beyond repair, the Republicans now start the same lamentable process of finding something of value in the rubble that was their majority. And just as the Berlin of today is physically both similar to and different from the Berlin that stood before it was flattened during WWII, so, too, the new Republican majority that someday will be rebuilt will be similar but not identical to the one that was constructed in the Reagan-Gingrich era. For both edifices the...

The most important -- and unfortunately the least debated -- issue in politics today is our society's steady drift toward a class-based system, the likes of which we have not seen since the 19th century. America's top tier has grown infinitely richer and more removed over the past 25 years. It is not unfair to say that they are literally living in a different country. Few among them send their children to public schools; fewer still send their loved ones to fight our wars. They own most of our stocks, making the stock market an unreliable indicator of the economic...

The Constitution Party made great strides in the 2006 election and can, for the first time, celebrate victory! First of all, congratulations go out to Rick Jore, of Montana, who made history becoming the first Constitution Party candidate from any state to be elected to the state legislature, capturing the seat in Montana’s 12th District. Jore actually won in 2004, by three votes only to see the courts throw out enough ballots to give the Democrat the victory. This year, in a rematch, he won convincingly, garnering 56.2% of the vote and drubbing his Democrat opponent. Two candidates in Nevada’s...

Cheer up, conservatives. Far from rejecting conservative principles, voters across America have resoundingly affirmed them. And they sent a harsh admonition to those who choose to neglect them. Skeptical? If so, ask yourself this question: were Republicans swept from power because they adhered to the Contract with America, which galvanized their majority in 1994? Or is the opposite true ? Republicans were swept from power because they disregarded those principles? The answer is obvious. Republicans were disciplined because they neglected conservatism, not because they practiced it. Quoting Congressman Mike Pence (R-Indiana), one of the most thoughtful and articulate conservative voices...

Make no mistake about this mid-term election. Conservatives didn't lose. Republicans masquerading as conservatives lost. Democrats were not elected, RINOs and CINOs were rejected. The American people are smarter than the politicians want to believe. They got this one right, and I applaud their voting prowess. I must admit to my readers: I didn't get this one right at all, but thanks to the American spirit I have been set straight. There is no doubt that true conservatives would have never allowed the level of out-of-control spending this Republican held Congress allowed. Conservatives would have never allowed our borders to...

Since our last meeting we have been through a disastrous election. It is easy for us to be discouraged, as pundits hail that election as a repudiation of our philosophy and even as a mandate of some kind or other. But the significance of the election was not registered by those who voted, but by those who stayed home. If there was anything like a mandate it will be found among almost two-thirds of the citizens who refused to participate. Bitter as it is to accept the results of the November election, we should have reason for some optimism. For...

Have you heard of the "Chuck Norris Facts"? There are more than 50,000 jokes making their way around the Internet that purport to be "facts" all playing off my movie roles as a "tough guy" and my history as a martial arts champion. But they aren't "jokes" to those who spread them – they're "facts." Here are a few of my favorites: "When the Boogeyman goes to sleep every night, he checks his closet for Chuck Norris." "Chuck Norris doesn't read books. He stares them down until he gets the information he wants." "Outer space exists because it's afraid to...

GOP needs tough love, not abandonment -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By Star Parker, World Net Daily, October 14, 2006 A survey just released by the Pew Center shows that 51 percent of Democrats are enthusiastic about voting in 2006 as opposed to 33 percent of Republicans. This is almost a mirror image of what the picture looked like in 1994. A Pew Center poll also shows a precipitous drop in support for Republicans and the Bush administration among white evangelicals. It's now a little over 50 percent, whereas in 2004 it was closer to 75 percent. Given the realities staring us in the...

Bill O'Reilly recently bemoaned the fact that there are no conservative late-night comedians/hosts. He had on Jeanne Wolf from Parade Magazine, and she gave the usual hack response: "Maybe conservatives just aren't as funny--not on purpose, anyway!" Well The America Show is coming. It's a TV pitch that Julia Gorin is currently shopping around with her two co-creators. It'll be a female Daily Show with a conservative bent. Comedy's next frontier: pro-American humor, baby! There's a short clip of the three gals gabbing conservatively at this site.

The problem with liberalism National Post: Letters To The Editor Tuesday, October 10, 2006 Re: Statism Isn't Liberalism, George Jonas, Oct. 7. George Jonas's column should be required reading for all Canadians, especially for those running for the Liberal party's leadership. As Daniel Patrick Moynihan once wrote, "Somehow liberals have been unable to acquire from life what conservatives seem to be endowed with at birth: namely, a healthy skepticism of the power of government to do good." Too many of today's liberals, small-l or large-L, have no real understanding of liberalism. Politically, they engaged with the Liberal party because...