Free Republic

It's no wonder that sensible people just shake their heads and wonder what's wrong with the extremists of the far left when they come up with such off the wall nonsense and then try to pass it off as real political analysis. It just makes people who have even the slightest clue about what is really going on in the world double over with laughter. Such is the case with today's comedic attempt at political forecasting by nut in residence Ed Garvey of the Madison, Wisconsin Capital Times. Columnist Garvey, in true nutroots fashion, thinks he has hit on the...

<p>It was inevitable: As the events of Sept. 11, 2001, fade into history, a disturbing number of conspiracy theories are gaining a toehold in our collective consciousness.</p> <p>As people who lived through that day and who now must make sense of what it means to live in a post-9/11 universe, we owe a commitment to the truth, both to those who perished and to ourselves.</p>

The neoconservatives are not riding high these days. The Iraq War--their number-one cause--is a failure, and the public has turned on the war, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, their top man in the Administration. Meanwhile, the so-called foreign policy realists appear to have the upper hand against the Administration's dwindling neocon cell in many internal policy squabbles. But the neocons are faring rather well when it comes to the presidential race. The leading GOP contenders are all die-hard fans of the war. And the newest star in the show--Fred Thompson, the former Republican senator from Tennessee, onetime lobbyist and...

I frequently meet people who claim to have no idea of the difference between traditional conservatism and so-called "neo" conservatism. The other day I came upon an amusing song parody by a right- wing Vietnam vet named George Gould that goes a long way toward explaining the difference. It's titled "The Neocon National Anthem" and it is set to the tune of the Vietnam War-era hit "The Ballad of the Green Berets." ''Laptop warriors from the sky, "Fearless men who send others to die ''Men whose every word's a lie ''The brave men of the AEI." The AEI is the...

BILL MOYERS: The gentleman you're about to meet is someone I'm also meeting for the first time, although we started in national politics in the same year long ago. And therein lies a story. Back in 1960 Vic Gold and I were both young idealists, and we both voted for John F. Kennedy for president. Except for our awe of the Alabama football legend Bear Bryant, that's probably the last time we ever agreed on anything until now. What we have in common now is the belief that politics ain't what it used to be. I went on to serve...

~~~snip~~~ BC: Mr. Babbin, what is the central theme of In the Words of Our Enemies? Jed Babbin: The reason I wrote this book is to create a hawkish diplomacy. If that sounds like an oxymoron, it shouldn't. Churchill said of World War II that no war could more easily have been prevented by prompt action. Using the words of people such as Vladimir Putin, Hugo Chavez, and others I'm trying to get people to pay attention to potential enemies abroad and do what is necessary to either avoid war altogether or position America to win. BC: Isn't the acknowledgment...

Why has the left's poisoned love affair with it endured? Communism, like nuclear fuel, has a long afterlife. In country after country across Europe - from Russia to Albania - it has been discredited for its record in power. No government in Africa or the Americas subscribes to it except the Castro regime in Cuba. In Asia, the communist flag is waved in Vietnam and China without anyone denying that the economic future lies with capitalism; only North Korea stands by the basic precepts of Marxism-Leninism.What happened in the October 1917 revolution in Russia was an ideological bank robbery. Its...

The super-secret Bilderberg Group, an organization of powerful international elites, is set to meet this week somewhere in Turkey - but even the precise location is a mystery.

So-called "neo" conservatism has its roots in a Marxist view of the world. So it is not surprising that the neocons are trying to silence their most prominent conservative critic. That would be Texas Rep. Ron Paul. He outraged the neocons during the Republican presidential debate last week by advocating that the GOP return to the traditional conservative stance of noninterventionism. Paul invoked the ghost of Robert Taft, the GOP Senate leader who fought entry into NATO. And he also pointed out that messing around in the Mideast creates risks here at home. That prompted Rudy Giuliani to interrupt Paul...

The web is awash with conservative save-America blogs and the radio waves are saturated with "conservative" talk radio. Yet, politically, America just keeps moving further and further to the Left. Why is that? Let me tell you what I think: It's not the drive-by media. It's not the surgically modified perky-eyed twins Nancy and Hillary. And it's not even Teddy Kennedy or Harry Reid. No. It's us conservatives. We are the enemy. We are the enemy because we, frankly, are no longer conservative. We don't know what that means any more. We the People have bought the liberal lie that...

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  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...

Introduction Rudy Giuliani has been barnstorming the nation, proclaiming himself a conservative and saying his hero is Ronald Reagan. Recent opinion polls suggest his campaign is striking a chord with the GOP?s rank and file, and New York?s neo-conservatives have taken the lead in promoting the former Mayor as the savior of the Republican Party, and heaven knows the GOP needs saving. But those polls also indicate that most Republicans around the country don?t really know where Mr. Giuliani stands on key issues, and those who do know are glossing over some very striking philosophical flaws?at least from a truly...

One of America's most influential neocons says President Bush is prepared to use military force against Iran if he believes it will acquire nuclear weapons. This past Sunday, Richard Perle, speaking in Israel at the Herzliya Conference, said he had no doubt of President Bush's intentions. "President George Bush will order an attack on Iran if it becomes clear to him that Iran is set to acquire nuclear weapons capabilities while he is still in office," Haaretz reported of Perle's remarks. Perle, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, served as chairman of the Bush administration's Defense Policy Board. Perle...

When political leaders make drastic mistakes, accountability is delivered in the form of elections. That occurred in November when voters removed the party principally responsible for the war in Iraq. But the invasion would not have occurred had Americans not been persuaded of its wisdom and necessity, and leading that charge was a stable of pundits and media analysts who glorified President Bush’s policies and disseminated all sorts of false information and baseless assurances. Yet there seems to be no accountability for these pro-war pundits.

Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan, said a rueful John F. Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs. George W. Bush knows today whereof his predecessor spoke. For as he prepares to "surge" 20,000 more U.S. troops into a war even he concedes we "are not winning," his erstwhile acolytes have begun to abandon him to salvage their own tattered reputations. Case in point, the neoconservatives. As the Iraq war heads into its fifth year, more than half a dozen have confessed to Vanity Fair's David Rose their abject despair over how the Bushites mismanaged the war...

"Are there even any real conservatives left in America?" recently asked the one eager for knowledge. "There are," responded the wise man, "but they are often called paleoconservatives." What are paleoconservatives? Well, as Russell Kirk once said, they are the only real conservatives left in America. The whole "conservative movement" has moved so far to the Left, or rather has been "neoconned," that many so-called conservatives are "conservative" in name only. What do paleoconservatives believe? Like mainstream conservatives, paleos are often religious, or at least reverent of religion. They are opposed to secularism, opposed to "gay marriage," opposed to the...

RUSH: I mentioned yesterday David Duke was over in Iran attending the Holocaust-Didn't-Happen Convention sponsored by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and I said, "If you listen to David Duke, you can't tell the difference between him and Jimmy Carter," and a lot of people wrote me, "You can't say that! David Duke has become... You can't say that!" Yes, I can, and now I'm going to prove it. We have two side-by-side comparisons. First up, David Duke yesterday on PMSNBC live with Rita Cosby. She said, "The president of Iran just said a short time ago that the Zionist regime will soon...

NYYRC December Political Forum Thursday, December 14 Time: 7:30pm - 9:30pm Location: The Grand Hyatt New York, 109 East 42nd Street, in the Alvin Room, which is located on the Conference level Our Guest Speaker: Max Boot Max Boot is a Senior Fellow in National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. He is also a weekly foreign-affairs columnist for the Los Angeles Times, a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard, and a regular contributor to The New York Times, The Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, and many other publications. The award-winning author and former editorial page...

Next week, the Baker-Hamilton Commission will make its recommendations on U.S. Iraq policy, and Congress will begin hearings on defense secretary nominee and Cold War realist Robert Gates. Both events will reflect the failings of the Bush administration's policy in Iraq. But even as a grudging acceptance of reality takes hold in Washington, the architects of the war are urging that we double down on the losing bet in Iraq. Amid spiraling sectarian violence, the leading advocates of invading Iraq seem now to have centered on an explanation for how their idea has driven that country to blood-soaked disaster: deposing...