Free Republic

Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy voiced support for a variety of far-right conspiracy theories at the fourth GOP presidential primary debate Wednesday, suggesting at one point that the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol was an "inside job." "Why am I the only person on this stage, at least, who can say that Jan. 6 now does look like it was an inside job?" Ramaswamy said, before he listed other topics popular in conspiracy circles. "That the government lied to us for 20 years about Saudi Arabia's involvement in 9/11? That the great replacement theory is not some grand right-wing...

The FBI is facing new scrutiny for its 2018 background check of Brett Kavanaugh, the supreme court justice, after a lawmaker suggested that the investigation may have been “fake”.

Conventional wisdom of the moment tells us that the great war of 1861—1865 was “about” slavery or was “caused by” slavery. I submit that this is not a historical judgment but a political slogan. What a war is about has many answers according to the varied perspectives of different participants and of those who come after. To limit so vast an event as that war to one cause is to show contempt for the complexities of history as a quest for the understanding of human action. Two generations ago, most perceptive historians, much more learned than the current crop, said...