Free Republic

My days as a political analyst at MSNBC have come to an end. After 10 enjoyable years, I am departing, after an incessant clamor from the left that to permit me continued access to the microphones of MSNBC would be an outrage against decency, and dangerous. The calls for my firing began almost immediately with the Oct. 18 publication of "Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?" A group called Color of Change, whose mission statement says that it "exists to strengthen Black America's political voice," claimed that my book espouses a "white supremacist ideology." Color of Change...

According to Pat Buchanan, the Obama administration’s decision to revise its mandate that religious institutions must offer “access” to conception, despite the mandate violating Church doctrine, still falls short. On this weekend’s broadcast of “The McLaughlin Group,” Buchanan criticized the Obama administration Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, describing her as a “nominal Catholic” and questioning the administration’s political judgment. “Trinity girl, nominal Catholic,” Buchanan said of Sebelius. “When they antagonize and enrage and get the bishops of the Catholic Church — a lot of whom grew up in Democratic families and are not hostile toward Obama — fighting...

After his fourth-place showing in Florida, Ron Paul, by then in Nevada, told supporters he had been advised by friends that he would do better if only he dumped his foreign policy views, which have been derided as isolationism. Not going to do it, said Dr. Paul to cheers. And why should he? Observing developments in U.S. foreign and defense policy, Paul's views seem as far out in front of where America is heading as John McCain's seem to belong to yesterday's Bush-era bellicosity. Consider. In December, the last U.S. troops left Iraq. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta now says that...

As such, the Obama/Clinton/Biden analogy rings hollow. Though every candidate might have his own specific plan, and one can prefer a candidate for myriad reasons, there was never any serious ideological split between these candidates. So handling the end of the primary season and attempting to unify the party, required massaging egos and satisfying personal ambition. Thus, the approach the Welches are proposing here – giving consolation prizes to the losers so they feel connected and valued – makes sense only in that context. When, however, there are substantive policy differences, the efforts to make the losers feel valued can...

Over the last week, several people that worked in the Reagan administration have come forward and countered former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s claim that he is a “Reagan Republican.” These people say Gingrich “wasn’t on board with a lot of what President Ronald Reagan tried to accomplish during his two terms.” And although that claim has been disputed by other Reagan administration officials, former Reagan communications director Pat Buchanan told “The McLaughlin Group” this weekend that Gingrich wasn’t seen favorably by those in the administration. “[I]n the Reagan White House, Newt Gingrich was considered quite frankly by a lot of...

An activist group whose leaders object to the beliefs of Pat Buchanan, a senior adviser to three American presidents, a candidate for the Republican nomination in 1992 and 1996, and the Reform Party’s presidential candidate in 2000, is announcing victory in its campaign to have the author of multiple best-selling books removed from MSNBC. “ColorOfChange.org welcomes MSNBC’s decision to indefinitely supend (sic) Pat Buchanan,” ColorOfChange.org Executive Director Rashad Robinson posted in an online statement.

On Dec. 8, 1941, Franklin Roosevelt took the rostrum before a joint session of Congress to ask for a declaration of war on Japan. A day earlier, at dawn, carrier-based Japanese aircraft had launched a sneak attack devastating the U.S. battle fleet at Pearl Harbor. Said ex-President Herbert Hoover, Republican statesman of the day, “We have only one job to do now, and that is to defeat Japan.” But to friends, “the Chief” sent another message: “You and I know that this continuous putting pins in rattlesnakes finally got this country bit.” Today, 70 years after Pearl Harbor, a remarkable...

A Miami congresswoman is pressuring National Public Radio stations, the cable television network CNBC and others to stop airing sponsorships and advertising by a giant German insurer that collaborated with the Nazis. U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who is pushing legislation that would allow Holocaust survivors to sue Allianz AG, has launched a letter-writing campaign aimed at blocking the insurer from advertising with any U.S. media until it pays off all Holocaust survivors’ life insurance claims. During World War II, Allianz insured concentration camp facilities and sent money to the Nazis instead of rightful Jewish beneficiaries. “Allianz is no ordinary insurance...

Pat Buchanan's new book Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025 is the bluntest and most cogent statement of the truth about the present course of Western civilization that has been seen in American bookstores in many years. In this book, Pat takes the gloves off and hits the American Left with the Hard Right. He knocks the liberal establishment out of the ring. Everything that real conservatives have privately known to be true for generations is finally aired in this brave and long overdue new book. Christianity is the foundation of Western civilization. As people of European...

On Oct. 31, the U.N. Population Fund marks the arrival of the 7 billionth person on Earth and raises the population estimate for the planet at mid-century to 9.3 billion people.         There is a possibility, says the United Nations, that, by century's end, world population may reach 15 billion. What does this mean for Western civilization?         It may not matter, except to identify who inherits the estate. For while world population is exploding, Western peoples are dying. Not a single European nation, except Muslim Albania, has a birth rate that will enable it to replace its present population.         By mid-century,...

During this weekend’s broadcast of “The McLaughlin Group,” host John McLaughlin asked his panel about what would happen to Occupy Wall Street as its novelty wears off and the weather gets colder. Amid mixed reactions, conservative MSNBC contributor Pat Buchanan described a scenario where freezing temperatures bring out the movement’s violent side. “It’s going to end very, very badly with these folks in the winter,” Buchanan said, “and they’re not going to be getting publicity and they’re going to be acting up and acting badly like the worst of the demonstrators in the ’60s … not just overnight camping: They’re...

Earlier this week, we asked conservative commentator Pat Buchanan how he proposes eliminating D.C.’s economic racial disparities. Buchanan, who firmly believes diversity hurts America, suggested stopping immigration to combat high national black unemployment, and general national unemployment. “We’ve got to start putting our own people first,” he said. The Root’s Nsenga Burton takes issue with Buchanan’s rhetoric: “Our own people?” Since when did blacks become “our own people” to folks like Buchanan? Invoking the Willie Lynch strategy of dividing and conquering those who would benefit from coming together (African-Americans and immigrants) as opposed to functioning separately is foul. Buchanan and...

Author and commentator Pat Buchanan appeared on Sean Hannity's nationally syndicated radio program Monday afternoon to promote his new book. In his book, "Suicide of a Superpower," Buchanan says the politics of race, culture and tribalism will be the largest problem civilization will face. "Christianity is dying in the West," he declared on the radio. Buchanan says there is a "long plan" by Marxists to rid the nation of Christianity. Buchanan doesn't think much holds us together as a nation anymore. "[The]disagreements are so profound," he told Hannity. "Cultural Marxism has succeeded in transvaluing all the values in society," Buchanan...

How much difference is there, really, between the far-Left, the far-Right, and overt white supremacists? How do the public stances of Michael Moore, Pat Buchanan, and David Duke compare? Proponents of both extreme views now think and sound so much alike, they sound like soulmates. Somehow these fringe characters have moved so far around the edges that they have arrived at the same territory, spouting identical positions in copycat rhetoric on such issues as Iraq, the broader War on Terror, and the Jewish state of Israel.

Is America in its twilight years? Patrick J. Buchanan argues it is. Americans, especially conservatives, should heed his warnings. The very future of our republic is at stake. Mr. Buchanan has written the political book of the year - and maybe of our time. In “Suicide of a Superpower” (Thomas Dunne Books, 2011), the nationally syndicated columnist and TV commentator delivers a damning indictment of the past two decades. His thesis: America is in decline. Unless it is reversed, the United States - like great republics before it - will be swept into the dustbin of history. Mr. Buchanan argues...

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Observing the correlation of forces in this city and the intensity of conviction in the base of each party, the outcome of the ongoing fiscal fight between Barack Obama and the Tea Party Republicans seems preordained. Deadlock. There will be no big jobs-for-taxes deal. The can will be kicked down the road into the next administration. A second truth is emerging. When the cutting comes, as it shall, the Pentagon will be first to ascend the scaffold. Why so? Consider. The Republican House cannot agree to tax increases without risking retribution from the base and repudiation by...

For the third straight year, the median income of the typical American family fell in 2010. Adjusted for inflation, it is back where it was in 1996, the longest period of zero growth since the Depression. And the poverty rate has inched up to 15.1 percent. Both figures, however, should be put in perspective. For example, a family can be classified as poor and own a car, a flat-screen TV and a computer, and have a washer-dryer and a garbage disposal. Folks below the poverty line have their kids educated free in Head Start, for 13 years in public schools,...

"Your people, sir, is ... a great beast." So Alexander Hamilton reputedly said in an argument with Thomas Jefferson. At the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Hamilton explained: "Real liberty is not found in the extremes of democracy, but in moderate governments. If we incline too much to democracy, we shall soon shoot into a monarchy, or some other form of dictatorship." In his column, "Democracy Versus Liberty," Walter Williams cites Hamilton, James Madison and John Randolph, who wrote of "the follies and turbulence" of democracy, and John Adams: "Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There...

Once, it was a Labor Day tradition for Democrats to go to Cadillac Square in Detroit to launch their campaigns in that forge and furnace of American democracy, the greatest industrial center on earth. Democrats may still honor the tradition. But Detroit is not what she was, not remotely. And neither is America. Not so long ago, we made all the shoes and clothes we wore, the motorcycles and cars we drove, the radios we listened to, the TV sets we watched, the home and office calculators and computers we used. No more. Much of what we buy is no...

As government cuts loom, one segment of the population could be especially hard hit — the black community — not just because any particular social program is in jeopardy, but because that community makes up a sizable chunk of federal employees. In an appearance on Tuesday’s Laura Ingraham radio show, MSNBC’s Pat Buchanan elaborated on a case he made in his most recent column, “Obama’s Race-Based Spoils System.” He also questioned why an initiative by the White House to apply affirmative action policies to senior civil service workers is underway. ...more (w/video)...

Pat Buchanan regularly serves as Morning Joe's lone conservative in the show's self-described 10:1 ratio of lib to conservative guests. But Buchanan this morning demonstrated that he is anything but a Republican partisan. Sounding more like Barney Frank after a bad night's sleep, Buchanan blasted President George W. Bush, claiming 43 "broke the Republican party and frankly he broke the United States as a superpower." View the video here.

As he and his daughters bicycle around the summer playground of the Northeastern elite, Martha's Vineyard, President Obama is steadily bleeding away both the support of the nation and that of his most loyal constituency. Several times, his approval rating in Gallup's daily tracking poll has sunk to 39 percent, with disapproval reaching 54 percent. Support for his handling of the economy has dipped to the mid-20s. Only 11 percent of Americans, says Gallup, are satisfied with the way things are going. Unemployment remains at 9 percent, as it has for two years. The Dow has lately lost 2,000 points,...

Just as one fire involving a MSNBC contributor and their description of President Obama is finally put out, might a new one be starting? Today on Morning Joe, Mark Halperin returned to the show after his suspension for calling Obama a “dick.”Yet moments after Halperin completed his analysis of the debt deal, it was Pat Buchanan’s turn to address his fresh controversy. Last night we questioned the terminology used by Buchanan in a debate with Al Sharpton, and Buchanan didn’t waste any time attempting to set the record straight: “Let me clarify something that happened last night on the Al...

"The United States is strategically overextended worldwide. What are we doing borrowing money from Japan to defend Japan. Borrow money from Europe to defend Europe. Borrow money from the Persian Gulf to defend the Persian Gulf. This country is over extended. It is an empire and the empire is coming down," Pat NuBuchanan said on "Morning Joe" today. "Well you're not going to get the revenue, so you might as well end the war," he added.

"It seems to me that if America were really expanding economically, that kind of wealth, that kind of disparity is palpable. But when you have stagnation when you have a chronic case of unemployment, the sense of social injustice can be terribly demoralizing and politically in the long run, very dangerous. It can politicize social economic issues, create radicalism, class conflict [and] extremism and I think that is a real risk in our society. Especially since so many of those who made so much money recently produce very little wealth for others. They essentially pocket the money. They are engaged...

In deciding to pull all of the 30,000 troops from the surge out of Afghanistan, six weeks before Election Day 2012, but only 10,000 by year's end, President Obama has satisfied neither the generals nor the doves. He has, however, well served his political interests. A larger drawdown would have risked the gains made in Kandahar and Helmand and invited a revolt of the generals, some of whom might resign and denounce Obama for denying them the forces to prevail. Sen. John McCain, citing some generals, is already saying that, with fewer troops and more missions per unit, U.S. casualties...

Is there any redeeming social value to the tawdry tale of Anthony Weiner? Only this: The nationwide revulsion at the conduct of the congressman has compelled the leadership and members of the House Democratic caucus to demand he resign immediately and cease not only distracting them from their work but stinking up their party. Traditional morality has just been affirmed by Nancy Pelosi and the House Democrats. For consider what it was Weiner did. He sent lewd and pornographic photos of himself to half a dozen women, including a college student, a stripper and a 17-year-old who had befriended him...

"John Demjanjuk Guilty of Nazi Death Camp Murders," ran the headline on the BBC. The lede began: "A German court has found John Demjanjuk guilty of helping to murder more than 28,000 Jews at a Nazi death camp in Poland." Not until paragraph 17 does one find this jolting fact: "No evidence was produced that he committed a specific crime." That is correct. No evidence was produced, no witness came forward to testify he ever saw Demjanjuk injure anyone. And the critical evidence that put Demjanjuk at Sobibor came -- from the KGB. First was a KGB summary of an...

Pat Buchanan defends why he is skeptical of President Obama's past. "I'll tell you what. He went to Occidental College then suddenly he ends up at one of the best schools in the country, Columbia. He vaults from there to Harvard Law School. Suddenly he's on the Harvard Law Review. Suddenly he's the editor of Harvard Law Review. We've never seen any grades of the guy. These are legitimate questions," Buchanan said. Key quote: Pat Buchanan to Chris Matthews: "You're supposed to be a journalist!"

In yet another segment where he is double-teamed by two liberals, Pat Buchanan defends why he is skeptical of President Obama's past. "I'll tell you what. He went to Occidental College then suddenly he ends up at one of the best schools in the country, Columbia. He vaults from there to Harvard Law School. Suddenly he's on the Harvard Law Review. Suddenly he's the editor of Harvard Law Review. We've never seen any grades of the guy. These are legitimate questions," Buchanan said. Key quote: Pat Buchanan to Chris Matthews: "You're supposed to be a journalist."

Video: Pat Buchanan Goes Birther On MSNBC And The White House Press Corps. The Segment Aired 4/20/2011...

Video: Ron Paul; Obama's Constitutional Eligibility To Be President Is Irrelevant. The Comment Was Recorded On 4/20/2011...

Two-time GOP presidential candidate and longtime political analyst Pat Buchanan says Barack Obama should just show his birth certificate to put an end to questions over his eligibility to occupy the Oval Office. His comments came in an interview on MSNBC, where he serves as a political analyst: Buchanan said he agrees with Mitt Romney in that he believes Obama was born in Hawaii, and the newspapers probably were accurate in reporting his birth there in 1961. However, he said, "I do agree with Donald Trump when he said, 'Why is Barack Obama toying with the American people? Why doesn't...

"Rather than building bridges, he's poisoning wells," said Rep. Paul Ryan, after listening to Barack Obama's scathing attack on his deficit-reduction plan as a shredding of America's social contract with the elderly and poor. Ryan is right. Yet, with Obama's partisan savagery, virtually calling the GOP plan immoral, we have clarity. There will be no grand bipartisan bargain on taxes and spending. The two parties on Capitol Hill and the president will not be coming together to solve the gravest financial and fiscal crisis America has faced since the Great Depression. Between them today is a high wall and a...

We can thank Providence that the earthquake was not 150 miles closer to Tokyo, else Japan's dead might number in the millions. Prime Minister Naoto Kan calls it the worst crisis since World War II. Yet, horrendous as it is, it does not, thus far, compare with that. For the earthquake dead are not 1 percent of those who perished in World War II. Between 1942 and 1945, Japan was stripped naked of an empire that embraced Formosa, Korea, Manchuria, the entire China coast, all of French Indochina (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia), Thailand, Burma, Malaysia, Singapore, the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia),...

MANCHESTER, N.H. – Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann kicked off her first swing through the Granite State with an unfortunate gaffe. "You're the state where the shot was heard around the world at Lexington and Concord," she said Saturday morning at an event organized by the Republican Liberty Caucus of New Hampshire. "And you put a marker in the ground and paid with the blood of your ancestors. Good, patriotic stuff … only the “Shot Heard ‘Round the World” was fired about 70 miles to the south in Concord, Massachusetts. For a candidate already known for her gaffes in public remarks,...

The fever sweeping the Middle East is now coursing through Libya, Yemen, Iran and Bahrain, where the U.S. Fifth Fleet is based. In all four nations, state violence is being used to crush the rebels, and regime survival hangs on whether security forces and the army stand behind the government or stand aside. A new Middle East is dawning. What will it look like? Perhaps the nation to study is Turkey, which has already gone through a democratic and dramatic transformation. In 2000, Turkey was a reliable U.S. ally, a friend to Israel, an aspiring candidate for membership in the...

Multiculturalism has "totally failed," says German Chancellor Angela Merkel. "State multiculturalism has had disastrous results," says Britain's David Cameron. Is multiculturalism a failure in France? "My answer is clearly yes, it is a failure," says President Nicolas Sarkozy. Ex-Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar has declared multiculturalism a failure in Spain, saying it divides and debilitates Western societies. Only in Canada and the U.S., it seems, is the issue still in dispute. Yet these European leaders are not leading anyone. They are far behind the people, and their belated appreciation of the idea of national identity is but a product of...

With his approval rating moving up to 50 percent and higher in some polls, the pundits are all agreed. President Obama has turned the corner. He is now the winter-book favorite in 2012. How, two months after his "shellacking," did he do it? First, by taking the wheel from Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, cutting a deal to extend the Bush tax cuts, bringing aboard Bill Daley, and separating himself from the demonizers of Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck as moral accomplices in the Tucson massacre. Second, Obama has been the beneficiary of bullish news. Corporate profits are coming in...

A new book about the closing days of WW2 chronicles how German civilians murdered many concentration camp survivors as they moved through their towns and villages on infamous 'death marches' back into the shrinking Reich. The violence shows how even with their nation in ruins, the Allies advancing on all fronts and the war hopeless, ordinary people were so indoctrinated with Nazi hate they were prepared to kill defenceless people in cold blood.

"Conservative Tycoon ... Dies at 95," said the New York Times headline on New Year's Eve about the death of Roger Milliken. Clearly, the headline writer did not know the man. For Roger Milliken exemplified the finest in American free enterprise. He cared about his workers. He cared about his industry. He cared about his community. He cared about his country. Into his 90s, Roger was holding strategy sessions in Washington and walking the halls of Congress to convince free-traders half his age that, Esau-like, they were swapping the manufacturing base of their nation for a mess of Chinese-made pottage...

With Christmas shoppers out in force and the stock market surging to a two-year high, talk is spreading that the long-awaited recovery is at hand. Perhaps. But gleaning the news from Europe and Asia as U.S. cities, states and the federal government sink into debt, it is difficult to believe a worldwide financial crisis that hammers governments, banks and bondholders alike can be long averted. Consider. Fitch and Moody's have just downgraded the debt of Ireland, Greece, Portugal and Hungary. In Budapest, the politicians talk of default. Spain has been warned its debt and banks could be downgraded. The European...

We knew what was disclosed by WikiLeaks wasn’t good, but does it mean the end of United States global supremacy? According to MSNBC’s Pat Buchanan, that will be the fallout from reputed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s latest document dump and the backlash of his arrest in the United Kingdom. Buchanan offered that dire assessment on the Dec. 12 broadcast of “The McLaughlin Group.” “What you got is an anarchic attack on American diplomacy,” Buchanan said. “Anarchic attack – by young people, very talented, want to destroy America’s position and destroy America diplomacy and frankly disarm America.” ...more (w/video)...

Tonight on Hardball, Chris Matthews brought up a thorny issue: exactly who should have the right to vote? A small group of conservatives, including Tea Party Nation president Judson Philips, think the answer to that question should be “property owners.” And while MSNBC Correspondent and former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan told Matthews that he doesn’t wholeheartedly agree with that group, he does think that the idea of universal franchise is badly flawed. When asked to comment on Philips’s statement—that restricting the vote to property owners “makes a lot of sense”—Buchanan replied that he “understand[s] the principle behind it,” but thinks...

Republican Congressman Ron Paul may be Julian Assange’s most loyal supporter in Congress. Visiting Fox Business’ Freedom Watch– a program on which Assange has been welcome several times– Rep. Paul went to bat for the Wikileaker in the middle of condemning the secrecy of the Federal Reserve, and made a little request of his own: “every conversation of the last ten years with the Federal Reserve people.” Chop, chop, Assange! Rep. Paul, who is also a regular guest on the program, chatted for some time with the injustices of having a “secret government” like the Federal Reserve with Judge Andrew...

Well, at least he's consistent. Consistently nutty, that is: "In a free society we're supposed to know the truth," Paul said. "In a society where truth becomes treason, then we're in big trouble. And now, people who are revealing the truth are getting into trouble for it." "This whole notion that Assange, who's an Australian, that we want to prosecute him for treason. I mean, aren't they jumping to a wild conclusion?" he added. "This is media, isn't it? I mean, why don't we prosecute The New York Times or anybody that releases this?" That's the high school freshman's take...

Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) is defending WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's release of thousands of classified diplomatic cables. In an interview with Fox Business Thursday, Paul went against the opinions of many of his Republican colleagues, asserting that Assange should be given the same protections as the media. "In a free society we're supposed to know the truth," Paul said. "In a society where truth becomes treason, then we're in big trouble. And now, people who are revealing the truth are getting into trouble for it." “This whole notion that Assange, who's an Australian, that we want to prosecute him for...

Is the US Government Machiavellian enough to orchestrate the recent brouhaha over the so-called website WikiLeaks, is this a real embarrassment, or will it indeed be damaging as some U.S. diplomats claim? I am not one to support conspiracy theories but when you stop to analyze the content of the information that was leaked it seem that two things emerge: first, the content of the cables were not so earth shattering as to damage national security, or harm Washington’s relations with other countries. Second, upon further analysis, it would appear that the information revealed instead sends a strong message to...

What in the name of Gilbert Stuart is going on at the National Portrait Gallery? A week ago, CNSNews' Penny Starr reignited the culture war with an arresting story about the staid old museum that began thus: "The federally funded National Portrait Gallery, one of the museums of the Smithsonian Institution, is currently showing an exhibition that features images of an ant-covered Jesus, male genitalia, naked brothers kissing, men in chains, Ellen DeGeneres grabbing her breasts and a painting the Smithsonian itself describes in the show's catalog as 'homoerotic.'" Film of the crucifix with ants crawling on Jesus is from...

Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) is taking a stand as one of Julian Assange’s few defenders in Washington, arguing that the WikiLeaks founder should get the same protections as the media. Attorney General Eric Holder said this week that the Justice Department is examining whether Assange can be charged with a crime for posting hundreds of thousands of leaked government intelligence documents and diplomatic cables. Many Republicans have gone even further in their attacks on Assange, especially former Arkansas GOP Gov. Mike Huckabee, who said this week that the source who leaked to the WikiLeaks founder should be tried for treason...