Free Republic

Those of us of a certain age will remember a time, some 40 years ago now, when President Ronald Reagan advocated the Strategic Defense Initiative, Project High Frontier, and various other related programs, all built around the basic concept that we should have defenses against incoming missile attacks. Throughout all of human history, military preparedness has involved both offensive and defensive elements. An army might have swords and longbows for offense, while being equipped with shields for defense. Cannons and cannonballs made up the offense, fortresses and moats provided a defense. Thus it has been for thousands of years, but...

President Ronald Reagan's audacious "evil empire" speech will be celebrated on Wednesday, March 8, 2023, in Washington, D.C. — 40 years to the day after the president issued a call to spiritual confrontation against communist doctrine and the Soviet Union. "Reagan brought clarity, moral clarity to the Cold War with the Soviet Union," said Roger Zakheim, Washington director of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute, told Fox News Digital. "It’s a lasting legacy speech." Zakheim’s organization is co-sponsoring a 40th anniversary symposium on March 8 hosted by The Victims of Communism Museum to honor the message of the "evil...

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is in the middle of a “fundamental transformation” and planning a massive military buildup along Russian borders. The Telegraph reported, “Nato is drawing up plans to deploy a permanent full-scale military force on its border in an effort to combat future Russian aggression following the invasion of Ukraine, the alliance’s secretary general has revealed.” Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said NATO will undergo a major “reset” and plans to put enough troops in states that border Russia to repel an invasion. The alliance currently has 40,000 troops in eastern member states. NATO considers its forces in Eastern...

Many view the United States as having the most sophisticated and capable national defense and intelligence apparatus globally. In totality, this is arguably true. However, often not taken into account is that all of America's capabilities rarely, if ever, come together to achieve a unified objective. Instead, you have constant and bitter bureaucratic infighting, with agencies often distrusting each other and operating as their own fiefdoms. Take, for example, Project GUNMAN. In 1978, the NSA discovered a sophisticated radio transmitter inside a false chimney in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. The NSA told the CIA and State Department that the...

President Reagan's Address at a United States-France Ceremony Commemorating the 40th Anniversary of the Normandy Invasion/D-Day - 6/6/84.

President Reagan was famously optimistic. He will forever be remembered for “Morning in America,” the campaign ad that inspired his 1984 landslide re-election, and for his policies that revived American confidence at home and abroad. But the caricatured version of Reagan as a perpetually grinning and genial old man does him a disservice. He was multifaceted and just as capable of stern warning as of sunny optimism. Reagan first appeared on the scene politically in October 1964, campaigning for the doomed candidacy of Sen. Barry Goldwater. He delivered a powerful televised address called “A Time for Choosing,” that galvanized conservatives...

There was a fascinating interview with Soviet KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov in 1984 in which he foretold in unerring detail the exact social and political scenarios that would exist in America in the near future. His contention was that the KGB was involved primarily not in espionage, but in an activity that he called "ideological subversion." According to Bezmenov, the KGB's goal was to take down America by slowly changing the minds of the population from within. He said the Soviet Union was producing Marxist-Leninist thoughts that are "being pumped into the heads of American students without [those thoughts] being...

On Friday, 1 May, 2020, at about 2 p.m., Calvin Munerlyn, 43, a security guard at a Dollar Store in Flint, Michigan, was shot and killed. 20 minutes earlier, at about 1:40, he had confronted a woman, Sharmel Lashe, and her daughter,  and ordered her daughter to wear a mask in the store, as required by Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. Stores are allowed to refuse service to customers if they are not wearing a mask.  The daughter left, but Sharmel got into an altercation with Calvin Munerlyn. Sharmel is reported as spitting on Munerlyn, then leaving in a red GMC...

This is the classic Ronald Reagan Christmas address, with the relevant message edited for clarity. I consider this the Gold Standard for presidential holiday addresses, and came about at a time of building American confidence after the troubling 70's.Link to Ronald Reagan Christmas Address

President Donald Trump hands down won throwback Thursday with an epic snap he shared showing him on stage standing next to Ronald Reagan. In the fantastic black-and-white shot, we get to see Trump rocking a black-tie look while standing next to the 40th president, who was also wearing a tuxedo at some kind of event, possibly for awards.

At the dawn of the USSR, hopes of the imminent global rule of communism soared high among leftists of the world. But in a few decades, it became clear that the socialistic ideals of Lenin had failed. How did this come to happen? “It is important to distinguish socialism from communism,” says Elena Malysheva, dean at the Division of Archival Studies at the Institute for History and Archives. “While socialism was the formal type of state administration of the USSR, communism was the ruling ideology. The project of the socialist state was initially utopian and populistic.” “The Soviet project contained...

A U.S.-Japanese interceptor successfully shot down a test ballistic missile over Hawaii. It was the second-ever success for the joint missile defense program, and a stunning technological accomplishment. Also, the whole thing was captured on video. The interceptor, called the Standard Missile-3 Block IIA, destroys targets with sheer force, rather than an explosive warhead, and according to its manufacturer Raytheon, the interceptor's "kill vehicle" (a projectile) rams into a ballistic missile with the force of a 10-ton truck traveling 600 mph (965 km/h). But does any of this make the U.S. (or Japan) any safer? Are American cities less likely...

FULL TITLE:Kelli Ward: Ronald Reagan’s Biggest Regret Was Granting Amnesty and Trusting Congress on Border Security “President Reagan’s biggest regret as president was granting amnesty and then trusting Congress to deliver on border security,” said 2018 Republican Senate candidate Kelli Ward, expressing opposition to the White House’s recently released amnesty proposal. Ward’s comments came in an interview with Breitbart News’s Washington Political Editor Matt Boyle on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Saturday. “We have to learn from our history,” advised Ward. “In 1986, Ronald Reagan–great president, amazing conservative, lover of liberty and of America–granted amnesty; and Ed Rollins, who is helping me...

Ronald Reagan removed Jimmy Carter’s solar panels from the White House roof as soon as he became president. Because Reagan understood the power of demonstrating that science is at the service of humans—not corporate interests and K Street lobbyists.Like Reagan, one of President Trump’s first moves was undoing a far sillier executive action of his own puerile predecessor, Barack Obama. Specifically, Trump unraveled the Paris Climate Accord, which Obama unconstitutionally negotiated with the United Nations in Paris, France in December of 2015.The Paris Accord was non-binding because it was a commitment to allocate U.S. taxpayer dollars to the environmental projects...

RUSH: “Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said that President Trump reminds him of President Ronald Reagan at the close of the Cold War. Poroshenko, who met with Trump and Vice President Pence Tuesday, said Reagan ended the Cold War without a single gunshot. “He said Trump can similarly bring peace to Ukraine in its conflict with Russia without shedding blood. ‘The real leader, the charismatic person can bring peace to my land, the same way Reagan [brought] victory in [the] Cold War without one single shot,’ Poroshenko said. He added that he is excited to make deals with Pennsylvania and Louisiana...

RUSH: The New York Post has an editorial today: “Delaying Trump’s Tax Cuts is a Huge Risk.” This is a big deal to people. There’s news out there today that Trump said Obamacare might not be repealed until next year, 2018, and people are getting nervous. I know people that voted for Trump who voted for Trump not because of trade deals, not because of NAFTA and not because of vetting of the bad people. They voted Trump ’cause they want tax cuts, corporate and personal, and they want Obamacare repealed. And they’re not hearing much about it and they’re...

One of President-elect Trump’s better ideas is to ease regulation, especially the regulatory burden on business. Some of the regulations that bedevil business are woven into the corporate income tax. Besides easing those tax-related regulations, Trump wants to lower the federal corporate income tax rate to 15 percent. Such a tax rate cut, in one fell swoop, would be truly Reaganesque. Indeed, it might even out-Reagan Reagan. But is 15 percent the right rate? The casual reader may believe that the U.S. has the highest corporate income tax rate in the world. On August 18, the Tax Foundation ran “Corporate...

John Hinckley Jr., who wounded U.S. President Ronald Reagan and three other people in a 1981 assassination attempt prompted by his mental illness, should be freed after 35 years and released to live with his mother, a federal judge ruled on Wednesday.

When I graduated high school, in 1969, a $20 bill had about as much value as a $100 bill today.  Inflation has taken a toll.  In 1969, $500 and $1,000 bills were still in reasonably common circulation.  They had been issued up until 1945.  With the turn toward ever increasing government snooping and tracking of financial transactions, the bills were taken out of circulation with an executive order by President Richard Nixon. It is long past due to bring the $500 bill back into common use. The European Union issues 500 Euro bills. Cash is useful for preserving privacy...

The names of the tech workers in this story have been changed.Ten thousand miles from Silicon Valley, in a room near the Black Sea, Yegor Karpenchekov dreams of money. At night, while the rest of Odessa sleeps and cocaine smugglers drift in and out of the port under cover of darkness, Yegor logs onto FaceTime and talks to a 70-year-old woman in San Francisco. Her name is Sally Faubion, and five months ago she recruited Yegor from the freelancer marketplace UpWork to code her apps. She believes "divine intervention" brought them together; for Yegor, it was likely $20 per hour...