Free Republic

Since Sarah Palin’s announcement on Friday, pundits from across the political spectrum have been in a frenzy, with pundits from across the political spectrum arguing over whether or not her career is over, speculating on her health and welfare, and pontificating on whether her decision is part of one grand political strategy which will either prove to be incredibly brilliant or completely foolish. I have been tempted but have avoided to write and comment on the reaction to Palin’s announcement. However, one article in particular struck me as particularly spot-on, a post by Jim Prevor over at the Weekly Standard....

Whatever happened to limited government? Where did it go? Has anyone seen it? I have not. Instead I see a federal government that fires a CEO of a major American corporation, tells people where and under what circumstances they should and shouldn't travel, tries to tax everything including the air we breathe, and regulates everything that moves, or doesn't. I've seen a government that rewards failure (endless bailouts) and punishes success (the more you make, the more they take).

I've been trying to avoid coming to this conclusion ever since a nation chock full of economic illiterates elected him President, but Barack Obama confirmed my deepest fears on Tuesday: “I don’t want to pretend that this marks the end of our economic problems...," said Obama. "Today does mark the beginning of the end.” Now that Obama and I finally see eye-to-eye, where do we go from here? Judah Freed, my colleague and Political Issues writer at Examiner.com, has concocted a three-part plan. You can read it in its entirety here: Obama signs stimulus bill... now comes the real work...

Barack Obama keeps referring to the current economy as the worst since the Great Depression, a bold lie that he hopes will allow him to prevent most Americans from recalling what sort of policies actually got us out of the worst economy the country had since the Great Depression, those of Ronald Reagan. Even Jimmy Carter inherited a much worse recession from Gerald Ford than Obama currently faces, and his policies ballooned that recession into epic proportions during Ronald Reagan's first term. So what did Ronald Reagan do to put an end to America's downturn? Thankfully, we don't need to...

Expect chilly temperatures in Hell (more commonly known as Michigan) tomorrow, when Republican Drain Commissioner Dennis Lennox will ask that his office be terminated in order to save taxpayers funds, according to a spokesman for the politician. CHEBOYGAN, Mich. (Feb. 8) -- County Drain Commissioner Dennis Lennox will ask the Board of Commissioners to fire him by passing a resolution to abolish his office during Wednesday's session, which is scheduled to begin at 9:30 a.m. While drain commissioners play a role in agriculture-dominated counties, Cheboygan County has little need for the position... "There is nothing for the drain commissioner to...

It seems the most enduring divide in American politics isn't between left and right, conservative and liberal, or Republican and Democrat, but voters who want real change and politicians who refuse to give it to them. Mark Sanford is not that politician. As a South Carolina congressman and now governor, Sanford has had one primary guiding principle his entire political career — limited government. Not just limited government rhetoric, the sort of lip service paid by milquetoast Republicans to pacify their right-leaning base, but genuine, strict, fiscal conservatism. More importantly, Sanford has the guts to back it up. If you...

There isn't much point in my expending a lot of time this morning chastising Senate and Assembly Democrats for their plans, this morning, to try to stick Californians with billions of dollars in new taxes, using some scheme where they brazenly attempt to navigate around the State Constitution's requirement for a 2/3 vote to raise taxes. Through sleight of hand and bizarre terminology, Democrats are planning to hike the state's income, gas, and car taxes (and that's not all) -- and do it with a majority vote (Republican legislators have appropriately and boldly said NO to any tax increases to...

(CNN) -- The questions now being asked are: Where to go from here and who's to blame for the downfall of the Republican Party? Too bad the concern for the future of the Republican Party had not been seriously addressed in the year 2000 when the Republicans gained control of the House, Senate, and the Presidency. Now, in light of the election, many are asking: What is the future of the Republican Party? But that is the wrong question. The proper question should be: Where is our country heading? There's no doubt that a large majority of Americans believe we're...

In an op-ed in the Washington Post on Friday, U.S. House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, wrote that Republicans need to "rebuild our party by fighting for the principles of freedom, opportunity, security and individual liberty." You think? Boehner wrote that during an Obama presidency, Republicans will "stand firmly against policies that violate our principles." If only more Republicans had stood firm when their own leadership pushed policies that violated their principles, the party might be enjoying its eighth consecutive electoral victory instead of its second consecutive shellacking. Also on Friday, Boehner's predecessor, former Majority Leader Dick Armey, wrote in...

A Contract to Limit Government 1 - Limit Members of Congress to Social Security and Medicare for their retirement benefits 2 - Limit Members of Congress to Medicare for health care benefits while serving 3 - Limit Members of Congress to three terms in each House, cumulative 4 - Limit total Federal taxes per individual to no more than 15% of gross income 5 - Limit Federal rules on education to funding only. 6 - Make the Federal education funding portable at the choice of the parent/guardian. 7 - Limit access to our border to legal immigrants and citizens only....

1. Keep spending within constitutional limits. The Tenth Amendment restricts the size of government, and that should always bear out in the federal budget and spending. That means understanding income and export taxes were unconstitutional to our founders, which if applied today would be two of the greatest economic stimulus packages. 2. Return to a pay-as-you-go government. If we don't have the money, we don't spend it. Period. No more debt. No more bailouts. No more spending. As Thomas Jefferson once wrote to Fulwar Skipwith in 1787, "[T]he maxim of buying nothing but what we had money in our pockets...

Bill Clinton Says ‘Extreme Philosophy’ of GOP Dates to Reagan Presidency Thursday, August 28, 2008 By Staff (CNSNews.com) - In his speech at the Democratic National Convention in Denver last night, former President Bill Clinton said that the Republican Party has been defined by an “extreme philosophy” for more than 25 years. The remark appeared aimed at the foreign and economic policies of President Ronald Reagan, who was sworn into office in 1981 and was in his third year of governing 25 years ago.

There's a passage from a 2005 essay by Umberto Eco that I've frequently quoted, as it neatly defines several elements of the mindset of our age in just a few carefully thought out sentences: G K Chesterton is often credited with observing: "When a man ceases to believe in God, he doesn't believe in nothing. He believes in anything." Whoever said it - he was right. We are supposed to live in a [skeptical] age. In fact, we live in an age of outrageous credulity. Indeed. While it's a cliche that ours is a cynical era, it really is just...

War on Terror Complex by: Amanda Busse, January 09, 2008 The War on Terror is yet another example of the state using a national emergency to promote its own growth, according to Robert Higgs, a Senior Fellow in Political Economy for the Independent Institute. “The so-called war on terror has given rise to a huge industry that has emerged almost from scratch during the past few years,” Higgs writes in The Free Market, a newsletter published by the Ludwig Von Mises Institute. The title of the article, “The Siren Song of the State,” refers to Margaret Atwood’s poem Siren Song....

As soon as former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson announced that he was mulling over a run for the presidency, pundits and voters alike began to announce comparisons between Thompson and Ronald Reagan. Now that Thompson is in the race with both feet, it is worthwhile to examine more carefully ways in which he is or is not somehow parallel to Reagan. It is important to note at the outset that Republicans have to come to grips with the facts that there was only one Reagan and that he was not perfect (though he was very, very good). Constant seeking after...

First, the Founding Fathers wrote a Constitution that strictly limited the role of the federal government in the lives of Americans. The idea that Washington had some role in education, redistribution of wealth, setting minimum wage requirements, nationalizing millions of acres of land, taxing income and subsidizing government-approved artists would have been anathema to the men who fought so valiantly for freedom against an overreaching foreign tyranny – if they could have even imagined such abuses. Secondly, the Framers of that Constitution spoke eloquently about the fact that only a moral people – a nation of Godly people with common...

Last week Fred Thompson was speaking to a crowd of close to three hundred people at the Music Man Square in Mason City, Iowa, explaining how he accidentally fell into a movie career. In the early 1980s Hollywood producers came to Tennessee to make a film about a famous case Thompson had handled as a young lawyer. "They asked me to play myself," Thompson told the audience in his folksy, Southern drawl, "and I said, well, they can't tell me I'm doing it wrong - although they still did from time to time." The line always gets a big laugh,...

I interviewed Michael Moore recently for an upcoming "20/20" special on health care. It's refreshing to interview a leftist who proudly admits he's a leftist. He told me that government should provide "food care" as well as health care and that big government would work if only the right people were in charge. Moore added, "I watch your show and I know where you are coming from. ... " He knows I defend limited government, so he tried to explain why I was wrong. He began in a revealing way: "I gotta believe that, even though I know you're very...

"Why? Because we'll need more government and more spending to address the many and diverse problems that fragmented or absent-father families disproportionately create."

We published an analysis on “Dollar Myths” in which we criticized spending habits in Washington: "Interestingly, nobody seemed to focus on the fact that there is an unconventional solution to foreigners holding too much of our debt: live within your means and do not issue debt. Such an old fashioned concept would indeed strengthen the dollar. Unfortunately, none of the presidential candidates at either side of the aisle seem to have heard of this notion." We missed that there is indeed a presidential candidate who believes in the old fashioned view to “live within your means.” Our apologies go to...