Free Republic

In 2019 my life was changed by an act of terrorism perpetrated by Brenton Tarrant in Christchurch, New Zealand, which claimed the lives of 51 civilians, including my close friend Atta Elayyan. Tarrant drew inspiration from Anders Breivik, who carried out a terrorist attack in Oslo eight years prior. Breivik, a self-styled Christian crusader, justified his heinous deeds by citing an “existential conflict” between the West and Islam.

Vivek Ramaswamy has a favorite term for his enemies on foreign policy: "neocon," short for neoconservative.“I want to be careful to avoid making the mistakes from the neocon establishment of the past,” he told moderator Lester Holt during the third Republican presidential debate on Nov. 8 in Miami.“Corrupt politicians in both parties spent trillions, killed millions, made billions for themselves in places like Iraq and Afghanistan fighting wars that sent thousands of our sons and daughters, people my age, to die in wars,” the millennial businessman continued, rattling off criticisms of pre-Trump foreign policy.“Do you want Dick Cheney in three-inch...

That said, Why did Cheney even bother running for re-election, in a state that voted more heavily for Trump than any other, twice? What is characterised in the press as a “split” in the Republican Party — between Trump’s supporters on one hand, and conventional Republicans on the other — in fact is not a schism or factional matter at all. It more closely resembles an ice floe upon which the decrepit and useless remnant of the party has been set adrift. The neoconservatives who proudly announced that they would vote for Biden in 2020 because they put “country over...

Is Russia worthy of being called a “great power,” let alone a superpower? Not to kick someone when they’re down, but it’s difficult to argue that Vladimir Putin represents anything other than a middling regional state, albeit the largest country in the world and one with nuclear weapons. In the first place, until the Russo-Ukraine War, consider how irrelevant and inconsequential Russia was. For the most part, regarding international relations, Russia scarcely mattered. Moscow has nary a footprint in the Middle East (mainly Syria) and is nonexistent in Asia and other parts of the world. Russia has lost influence in...

Can the United States only fight one war with a chance of winning? According to Adm. Mike Gilday the chief of naval operations (CNO, Navy's senior officer) the answer is yes -- at least when it comes to the U.S. Navy fighting its share of the war. According to Stars and Stripes, during a May 12 Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo, asked Gilday: "What would the impact be on the Navy's ability to meet its operational requirements in (Europe) if we had to withhold Navy forces from Europe in order to deter Chinese aggression in (the...

There's an obvious takeaway about the pitfalls of nation-building, but there's also a deeper revelation about the limits of liberalism itself.The inability to establish an enduring, stable democracy in Afghanistan after spending 20 years, trillions of dollars, and thousands of American lives delivered a decisive blow to the catechism of neoconservatism. But it also revealed blind spots and misplaced assumptions of modern Western liberalism.Liberalism — not the misused synonym for leftism but the political, social, and moral philosophy arising out of the 18th-century Enlightenment — produced many great breakthroughs for human thriving and liberty, including the American experiment itself. Its...

The way to solve America's issues and connect with Republican voters is not to parrot libertarian talking points that enable leftist power.I am always wary of those who purport to speak for their respective generation, and a recent New York Post op-ed by a self-espoused libertarian student at New York University put on full display exactly what the Republican Party must abandon in the years ahead. In close to 700 words, writer Rikki Schlott calls for the GOP to “compromise on social and environmental issues and stand up to leftist extremism,” ignoring that these two are different sides of the...

At first glance, the new nationalism of conservatives will seem benign and even uncontroversial. In his book “The Case for Nationalism,” Rich Lowry defines nationalism as flowing from a people’s “natural devotion to their home and to their country.” Yoram Hazony, in his book “The Virtue of Nationalism,” also has a rather anodyne definition of nationalism. It means “that the world is governed best when nations agree to cultivate their own traditions, free from interference by other nations.” There is nothing particularly controversial at all about these statements. Defined in these terms, it sounds like little more than simply defending...

... Earlier, Pence met with Venezuela's interim President Juan Guaidó to express "resolute" U.S. support for Guido's leadership. Pence spoke alongside Guaidó and the President of Colombia Iván Duque Márquez during their trilateral meeting. Pence said Mr. Trump sent him to Colombia "to stand with you and to stand with our friends and our allies in Venezuela." He called it a "great privilege" to be able to meet with the interim president, adding, "we are with you 100 percent." The U.S. is "proud to recognize you as the legitimate president of Venezuela," Pence said. Pence urged the international body on...

With his stirring repudiation of socialism, both at home and abroad, President Trump is proving himself to be the very champion of liberty and freedom the world needs. While previous U.S. leaders have opposed totalitarian regimes, no American president since Ronald Reagan has confronted the evils of socialism as forcefully as Trump is doing today by supporting the people of Venezuela as they retake their country from the corrupt socialist dictatorship of disputed president Nicolas Maduro. President Trump deserves more credit than he is getting for taking this stance against an economic system that throughout its history has created nothing...

One thing that every late-stage ruling class has in common is a high tolerance for mediocrity. Standards decline, the edges fray, but nobody in charge seems to notice. They’re happy in their sinecures and getting richer. In a culture like this, there’s no penalty for being wrong. The talentless prosper, rising inexorably toward positions of greater power, and breaking things along the way. It happened to the Ottomans. Max Boot is living proof that it’s happening in America. Boot is a professional foreign policy expert, a job category that doesn’t exist outside of a select number of cities. Boot has...

In an age of individuals, when many people have never felt a deep and abiding sense of duty to something external to themselves, it is only too easy to be dismissive of a collective good such as nationalism, or to simplistically equate it with “white supremacy.” For many of us today, the state is merely something that enforces laws and to which we pay taxes. Beyond those necessities, it has no claim on us. Now this is another way of saying that our fellow citizens have no claim on us. Of course, given the boundless egoism of human nature—the natural...

The neocons became close to McCain in the 1990s, when they supported American intervention in the Balkans. According to the New Republic’s John Judis, the first sign of neocon influence on McCain came in 1999. McCain delivered a speech at Kansas State University in which he touted “national greatness conservatism,” Since then, McCain has, of course, become the most prominent advocate of ramping up the U.S. effort in Iraq, not to mention Sudan and a variety of other hotspots. If McCain becomes president, the neocons will be in charge.

Pity the poor Never Trumpets at the Weekly Standard! All they wanted was a bit of creative instability in the Middle East and Mitt Romney or Jeb Bush or David French or just about anyone in the White House other than Donald J Trump. And yet here we are two years into the Trump administration and they are still fighting the good fight and getting voicemails from readers like this

US will strike Syria

Gorka says president made pragmatic call on Syrian strike, suggests little risk of escalation Sebastian Gorka, deputy assistant to the president, said on Friday morning that President Donald Trump’s populist supporters need not fear that the decision to strike a Syrian government target last week represents an embrace of neoconservatism. “It’s not a modification,” Gorka said Friday on “The Laura Ingraham Show.” “Donald J. Trump hasn’t changed from November 7 to Good Friday, April 14,” he said. “This isn’t 2003, this isn’t 1991 and the Gulf War, and the president has not changed one bit,” Gorka said. “This is not...

When former Bush chief speechwriter Michael Gerson wrote a column for The Washington Post headlined “Cancel this reality show,” it sounded like just another anti-Trump column. Or is Gerson calling for a shutdown of conservative talk radio? It's understandable that establishment Republicans would despise the dynamic of conservative radio talkers trying to yank party leaders to the right. But shutting them down? Does that sound like reasonable moderation?

Trump says he'll rebuild the U.S. military and our missile defense in particular, but avoid committing U.S. forces overseas. The neo-conservatives never will forgive him for this. It means that they are out of a job, and when they say that Trump means "the end of the Republican Party," they mean the end of the Republican Party that used to employ them. Robert Kagan and Max Boot have gone to the Clinton camp. A Trump presidency almost certainly means that Chinese and Russian influence will grow faster and with fewer obstacles than it might have otherwise. That is not entirely...

In Las Vegas, he stands up for winning Reaganite foreign policy, not the losing Bush version....an important distinction was reintroduced to Republican politics. During the debate, Texas Senator Ted Cruz presented a well-thought out, foreign and national defense policy based on the original, Reagan conservatism. One that focuses on advancing America's security interests around the world, not on sacrificing American lives and treasure on replacing foreign dictators with human rights, birthing new democracies, or building jobs and prosperity in foreign lands.The Cruz and Reagan doctrine goes all the way back to America's Founding Fathers. They wanted America to stay out...

Washington, DC (September 22, 2015) — American Enterprise Institute (AEI) president Arthur C. Brooks announced today that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will receive the 2015 Irving Kristol Award on November 9, 2015, in Washington, DC. The annual award, AEI’s highest honor, is given to individuals who have made exceptional practical and intellectual contributions to improve government policy, social welfare, or political understanding. The winner is selected by AEI’s Council of Academic Advisers. The award ceremony and dinner will be held at the National Building Museum in Washington, DC. Currently in his fourth term, Prime Minister Netanyahu will share his...