Free Republic

Old Right War Lessons by Donald Devine Issue 112 - July 23, 2008 “Every man holds his property subject to the general right of the community to regulate its use to whatever degree the public welfare may require it.”“America was created to break every kind of monopoly and to set men free upon a footing of equality.” Are these anti-property and pro-equality quotes from Marx or Lenin? In fact, they are from two U.S. presidents, the first from Theodore Roosevelt and the second by Woodrow Wilson, the fathers of American progressivism, the radical doctrine that explicitly broke with the philosophy...

Woodrow Wilson's Constitution by Robert Curry Issue 112 - July 23, 2008 Justly revered as our great Constitution is, it could be stripped off and thrown aside like a garment, and the nation would still stand forth in the living vestment of flesh and sinew, warm with the heart-blood of one people, ready to recreate constitutions and laws. ... Woodrow Wilson Justly revered, but not by Wilson. He really did want to cast it aside, writing “no doubt a great deal of nonsense has been talked about the inalienable rights of the individual, and a great deal that was mere...

National Security: In 1962 the Soviets tested a young American president by putting nuclear missiles 90 miles from Florida. Barack Obama fancies himself the next JFK. He may get to find out.In June 1961, a young and ambitious President Kennedy met with Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna, Austria, to discuss Cold War issues, particularly the situation in Berlin. Khrushchev came away unimpressed, convinced the young Kennedy could be had. Two months later the Berlin Wall was going up. By the following spring the Soviet leader was making plans for installing nuclear missiles in Cuba. Kennedy quickly found out that "aggressive personal...

Polish authorities have erected a monument to US president Ronald Reagan, feted for his crusade against communism and seen by some as having hastened the collapse of the Soviet bloc, reports said Tuesday. Officials in the south-west city of Wroclaw unveiled the monument to the Hollywood actor-turned-president, apparently the first of its kind in Europe, Poland's centrist Dziennik daily reported Tuesday. "To Ronald Reagan for his struggle against totalitarianism -- from the residents of Wroclaw," reads the caption on the relief plaque erected at an intersection in the city bearing Reagan's name. During his two terms as president between 1981-1989,...

McCain’s Cult of Teddy RooseveltThe Sage of Sagamore Hill was not a conservative. By Michael Knox Beran Asked recently by the New York Times to name a conservative model, John McCain cited Theodore Roosevelt. Teddy, of course, had no shortage of virtues. Conservatism, alas, wasn’t one of them. It’s one thing for a conservative to admire T. R.’s style and gallantry, the charge up San Juan Hill, the rounding up of crooks in the Badlands. It’s something else for a conservative to identify Roosevelt as a fellow reformer, as Sen. McCain did in the Times interview. Far from allaying conservative...

McCain’s Conservative Model? Roosevelt (Theodore) By ADAM NAGOURNEY and MICHAEL COOPER HUDSON, Wis. — Senator John McCain in a wide-ranging interview called for a government that is frugal but more active than many conservatives might prefer. He said government should play an important role in areas like addressing climate change, regulating campaign finance and taking care of “those in America who cannot take care of themselves.” “I count myself as a conservative Republican, yet I view it to a large degree in the Theodore Roosevelt mold,” Mr. McCain said, referring to Roosevelt’s reputation for reform, environmentalism and tough foreign policy....

HUDSON, Wis. — Senator John McCain in a wide-ranging interview called for a government that is frugal but more active than many conservatives might prefer. He said government should play an important role in areas like addressing climate change, regulating campaign finance and taking care of “those in America who cannot take care of themselves.” “I count myself as a conservative Republican, yet I view it to a large degree in the Theodore Roosevelt mold,” Mr. McCain said, referring to Roosevelt’s reputation for reform, environmentalism and tough foreign policy.

HUDSON, Wis. — Senator John McCain in a wide-ranging interview called for a government that is frugal but more active than many conservatives might prefer. He said government should play an important role in areas like addressing climate change, regulating campaign finance and taking care of “those in America who cannot take care of themselves.” “I count myself as a conservative Republican, yet I view it to a large degree in the Theodore Roosevelt mold,” Mr. McCain said, referring to Roosevelt’s reputation for reform, environmentalism and tough foreign policy. The views expressed by Mr. McCain in the 45-minute interview here...

Making good on a promise to a friend to summarize his views on Christianity, Thomas Jefferson set to work with scissors, snipping out every miracle and inconsistency he could find in the New Testament Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Then, relying on a cut-and-paste technique, he reassembled the excerpts into what he believed was a more coherent narrative and pasted them onto blank paper -- alongside translations in French, Greek and Latin. In a letter sent from Monticello to John Adams in 1813, Jefferson said his "wee little book" of 46 pages was based on a lifetime of...

On this 4th of July, President Bush attended the 46th Annual Independence Day Celebration and Naturalization Ceremony at Monticello in Charlottesville, Virginia (Transcript) Those of you taking the oath of citizenship at this ceremony hail from 30 different nations. You represent many different ethnicities and races and religions. But you all have one thing in common -- and that is a shared love of freedom. This love of liberty is what binds our nation together, and this is the love that makes us all Americans. You may have heard about the uninvited guests at today's ceremony. More on that...

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life,...

Researchers announced Wednesday that remains excavated in the last three years were those of the long-sought dwelling, on the old family farm in Virginia 50 miles south of Washington. The house stood on a terrace overlooking the Rappahannock River, where legend has it the boy threw a stone or a coin across to Fredericksburg.

So…On this week in which we celebrate the birth of our nation and the liberties and freedoms which our predecessors have fought so hard to uphold, I bring you a simple message; a reminder and a warning from our First President and the man who was charged with uniting and building this great nation...

CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA. – President George W. Bush will attend the July 4 event at Monticello, home of Thomas Jefferson, the White House has announced. Bush will be the featured speaker at Monticello’s 46th annual Independence Day Celebration and Naturalization Ceremony. He will become the fourth sitting president to participate in Independence Day activities at Monticello, joining Franklin D. Roosevelt (1936), Harry S. Truman (1947), and Gerald R. Ford (1976). “We are truly honored to have President Bush as our featured speaker on July 4, and regard it as a great compliment that he has chosen to spend part of the...

"Not Exactly a Crime" is the title of a book on America's vice presidents published in 1972 -- a year before Vice President Spiro Agnew was forced to resign for actually committing a crime. The office of vice president has long been the butt of jokes -- you know the punch lines -- but as we await Barack Obama's and John McCain's choices for vice president, we do so with the knowledge that vice presidents in the last five administrations have been important officers of government. (Yes, including Dan Quayle -- see Bob Woodward and David Broder's book). How the...

The near simultaneous publication of historian Sean Wilentz book “Age of Reagan” and the publication of activist / reporter Rick Pearlstein’s “Nixonland”, previously praised on these pages, has caused a dust-up over who most personified and ultimately transformed the modern conservative age which played out on the New Republic website. Although I am neither historian nor an unbiased reporter, I was a participant in the Nixon realignment which ultimately begat the Reagan revolution. ..... The change in Richard Nixon comes with Goldwater’s sweeping nomination and what Nixon then understands can be salvaged, even nurtured,in the ashes of Barry’s defeat. “You...

You don't have to agree with everything in this monumental account of politics in the 1960s and 1970s to find Rick Perlstein's "Nixonland" (Scribner, 896 pages, $37.50) interesting and even engrossing. The book is a masterful retelling of the turbulent period between the crushing defeat of Barry Goldwater by Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964 and the equally stunning loss by George McGovern to Richard Nixon in 1972. Mr. Perlstein's use of the elections of 1964 and 1972 as ideological goalposts may be arbitrary, but it is easy to see why he selected them. Could two such different countries really be...

Rick Perlstein, an unabashed man of the left, first attracted wide notice seven years ago with the release of Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, his engagingly written and fair-minded study of the rise of the American conservative movement in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Last month brought the much-awaited publication of the second volume of Perlstein’s projected trilogy on American conservatism. Nixonland (Scribner), as should be obvious from the title, focuses on American politics from the mid-1960’s to the early 1970’s, a time and an era dominated by Richard Nixon. The Monitor asked Perlstein...

World’s Largest Reagan Statue To Be UnveiledJune 25, 2008 After four years and several setbacks, the world’s largest Ronald Reagan statue will be unveiled in Covington, Louisiana, this Friday. The statue was not Covington’s idea. “We had nothing to do with it,� said city council president Trey Blackall. A local oil tycoon, however, was interested in building a big Reagan tribute, and Covington volunteered itself as the site. “It’s a weird little story,� Trey conceded, “but when somebody offers something like this, you gladly accept it.�The big bronze Gipper, created by local sculptor Patrick Miller, stands nearly 15 feet tall...

As he leaves the White House at the end of his second term, the President has a poll rating of only 23 per cent, and is widely disliked and even despised. His foreign policy has been judged a failure, especially in view of the long, painful, costly war that he declared, which is still not over. He doesn't get on with his own party's presidential candidate, who is clearly distancing himself, and had lost many of his closest friends and staff to scandals and forced resignations. The New Republic, a hugely influential political magazine, writes that his historical reputation will...

Barack Obama has informed us that any criticism of his wife is strictly forbidden. This though Michele Obama is constantly making speeches for her husband and plays a significant role in his campaign. However, according to his allies in the press we are also forbidden to comment on the racist rants of his pastor, his association with a known terrorist, as well as his 20 year membership in a church that seems to preach more hate than anything else. Seemingly, hyper-sensitive, Obama has taken an unprecedented step in confronting his critics who have legitimate questions about his background. He has...

June 20, 2008, 0:00 p.m. What’s the Frequency?New Deal narcissism and what FDR wrought. An NRO Q&A The New Deal celebrates its 75th anniversary this week. National Review Online editor Kathryn Lopez checked in with New York Times bestselling author of The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression, Amity Shlaes, to mark the occasion. Kathryn Jean Lopez: How are you celebrating the New Deal’s 75th? Amity Shlaes: I’m participating in the Roosevelt Reading Festival at Hyde Park Saturday! One of the people I will see there is Nick Taylor, author of his own book, American Made,...

The stature and repute of our public figures are shaped, as I have written before, by this thing called Kultursmog . It is our political culture, a kultur utterly polluted by politics, left-liberal politics. For instance, it renders the Clintons, as reporter John F. Harris hymned in a recent hagiography, "the two most important political figures of their generation." Continues...================================================================= Still a hero after all these years Anyone who has been following the MSM for the past eight years and has had nothing but the MSM to go by might be forgiven for believing Bush to be some bungling nincompoop,...

"I have been charged by the president with making sure that none of the tyrannies in the world are negotiated with," Vice President Cheney reportedly declared in a White House meeting on North Korea in December 2003. "We don't negotiate with evil; we defeat it." Cheney's call to battle resounded last week as the Bush administration slammed former president Jimmy Carter for talking to Hamas, the extremist Palestinian group that now runs the Gaza Strip, and began to have its own second thoughts about closing a new nuclear deal with North Korea. Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain also chimed...

"A house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it...

In the third week of June 1972, Richard Milhous Nixon committed an injustice with which the Western world is still struggling. Yes, two men broke into the Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate building - but we're no longer bothered about that. What still affects us today - or rather tomorrow - is that the then President that week brought the American nation together by making Father's Day a public holiday. For this high crime and misdemeanour, his name should live on in the annals of infamy. Now, of course, it's over here. It's just like Hallowe'en - another American...

"The more things change, the more they stay the same." --author unknown For the past 32 years, the election cycle has revolved in a most familiar way. Every sixteen years, the Democrat candidate for president has been a relatively-unknown who campaigned as an agent of "CHANGE!" "One reason why this constant mantra of “CHANGE! HOPE!” is so irritating is that they’ve been peddling this snake oil for decades." --Charles Johnson, Little Green Footballs[video of Carter commercial] Thirty-two years ago, it resulted in a squeaker of an election that wasn't decided until the next day. Jimmy Carter became just the...

Tomorrow is the fourth anniversary of my father's death. For anyone who has lost a loved one, those anniversaries are both sad and sweet. The sadness is obvious—you don't stop missing the person who has gone; you don't stop wishing you'd had one more year, one more day. The sweetness sneaks up on you. It comes in the form of memories, some of them long buried. But mostly it comes with the realization that nothing ever dismantled the love between you, even though many things seemed to along the way. At this time of year in California, the jacaranda trees...

The Associated Press announcement that Barack Obama has clinched the Democratic nomination for president has prompted former President Jimmy Carter, one of Georgia's three undecided delegates to the national convention, to officially pick a side. Deanna Congileo, a spokeswoman for Carter, confirmed that the former president has told the Obama campaign "they would have his vote after polls close tonight." Carter has strongly hinted that he would support Obama, but did not commit until Tuesday. Two other superdelegates -- Richard Ray, president of the Georgia AFL-CIO, and U.S. Rep. Jim Marshall of Macon -- said they'll continue to sit...

I do not argue that the problems of early 21st-century Europe are identical to those of late 18th-century America. I am now myself a federalist. Yet the Americans did have to face similar problems in trying to reconcile the relationship of the federal government with the individual states - the very questions that confront Europe in the Lisbon treaty. The American Constitution has succeeded in providing the US with a stable democratic framework that has survived the great changes of the past two centuries, including - in the 20th century - two world wars, a Cold War and a slump....

During the Civil War, when the issues of right and wrong were clear, one of President Lincoln’s appointees, General George McClelland, betrayed him.  The anti-war Democrats to whom McClelland pandered were called “Copperheads.�  They rallied around McClelland to defeat the president politically, when they could not defeat the armies of America militarily.  McClelland had a pretty high opinion of himself.  He knew what Lincoln did not:  That the war come not be won, that giving up and bringing the troops home was the only sensible answer, and that the president was not much of a leader. Democrats overwhelmingly supported this...

One hundred nine historians already nearly unanimously agree. They call the presidency of George W. Bush a "failure." The History News Network (HNN), who polled the historians, failed to name them or where they work. Wonder why? American Enterprise magazine, in 2002, examined voter registrations to determine the political affiliations of humanities professors at an assortment of colleges and universities, public and private, big and small, located in the North, South, East and West. Of those registered with a political party -- and most were -- historians overwhelmingly belong to a "party of the left" (Democratic, Green or Working Families...

IN his inaugural address, President John F. Kennedy expressed in two eloquent sentences, often invoked by Barack Obama, a policy that turned out to be one of his presidency’s — indeed one of the cold war’s — most consequential: “Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.” Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Kennedy’s special assistant, called those sentences “the distinctive note” of the inaugural. They have also been a distinctive note in Senator Obama’s campaign, and were made even more prominent last week when President Bush, in a speech to Israel’s Parliament, disparaged a willingness to...

I am honored to be here as we confer this tribute on a President who was great in purpose and impact – and who for me was a good friend and a generous foe. For me, there is also a sense of completeness to this day – for it was Ronald Reagan who invited the Kennedy family to the White House in 1981 to receive the gold medal that Congress had authorized in honor of Robert Kennedy. It was an early and powerful demonstration of the largeness of spirit that infused his Presidency. He was a fierce competitor who wanted...

ATLANTA - Former President Jimmy Carter often sent his mother to meet with foreign dignitaries and attend state funerals, but it wasn't until he started researching a new book about her life that he learned just what the woman known as "Miss Lillian" did on those visits. "Mama had developed a reputation for expressing unorthodox opinions and not being constrained by any outside advice," Carter writes in "A Remarkable Mother," which chronicles Lillian's life from her birth in 1898 to her death from cancer in 1983. "The officials in the State Department were always quite nervous about what she would...

A week or so ago, I found a great pic (painting) of the Republican Presidents playing poker. Bush 41 & 43, Reagan, Ford, Nixon, Eisenhower, Teddy Roosevelt and Abe Lincoln. My POS Dell laptop crashed and I had the pic as my desktop. Anyway, lost it in the crash and am hoping somebody can post it for me again. Any help would be much appreciated as well as the artist's name. Thanks in advance!

Long after nightfall on January 20, 1969, Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson arrived at their 330-acre Texas ranch.  LBJ had been an ex-President for just a few hours.  Throughout the day well-wishers had gathered – first at Andrews Air Force Base, then at Bergstrom Air Force Base in Texas.  They showed up to say thank you to the man who had ascended to the presidency in those chaotic Dallas moments more than five years before - and who less than a year before had pulled himself out of the race for a final term in the White House. One of...

WILL: I was at the Truman library in Independence, Mo., last week, and was looking at a black-and-white photograph of Harry Truman giving a speech in a stadium in Los Angeles during the '48 campaign. Seated next to the lectern, right next to Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart, is a man who had introduced Truman, and it was a 37-year-old Ronald Reagan. That was probably the last time he voted for a Democrat. And so Sean's right, he was the first Reagan Democrat, but what really made Reagan Democrats were Democratic policies. One of the worst things that ever happened...

OPINION, May 4 /Christian Newswire/ -- Gary McCullough, director of the Christian Newswire, submits the following for publication and is available for comment: When judging the performance of a president the grid one uses is the most influential factor. For many Americans that grid is national security. With this in mind, which presidents have led our nation to a more secure status? And which presidents have left us more at risk? When viewed through this grid I propose that President Jimmy Carter put America at physical risk more so than any other president. Today on a Sunday talk show, Mr....

Based on David McCullough's 2001 best-selling book, "John Adams," the HBO 7-part mini-series starring Paul Giamatti as John Adams and Laura Linney as Abigail Adams is as important for the message that it sends as it is for the history it conveys. Beginning with young attorney Adams's defense of the British soldiers on trial for the Boston Massacre (for whom he won an acquittal), the story follows the political career and personal life of Adams as he becomes a key member of the Continental Congress, editor/co-drafter of the Declaration of Independence, minister to France and England, vice president, then president....

Carter's Spiteful Second TermBy Floyd and Mary Beth BrownFrontPageMagazine.com | 4/29/2008 You have probably heard of a “rogue cop,” but now there is a “rogue former president” who is out independently and recklessly promoting his own foreign policy. However, this is certainly not a new stunt for Jimmy Carter; he has a long history of meeting with terrorist leaders in the Middle East. Once again, this former president defied the United States and Israel by meeting with top leaders of Hamas. U.S. Rep. Sue Myrick said of Carter, “His actions reward terrorists, lend support, and provide legitimacy to their...

Since being ejected from the Oval Office in 1980, Jimmy Carter has spent his days conducting rogue diplomacy in global hot spots, dashing from the embrace of one dictator to another and generally making life miserable for sitting American presidents. For this, Mr. Carter is often called our greatest ex-president. Accordingly, his latest round of unauthorized diplomacy with Hamas will surely only enhance his post-presidential resume. But truth be told, no amount of hobnobbing with terrorists or international do-goodery at the expense of American interests will ever erase Mr. Carter's miserable legacy as president. From his disastrous handling of both...

Grand Old Partisan salutes Ulysses Grant, the second Republican to serve as President of the United States. He was born in Point Pleasant, OH on April 27, 1822. Sometimes overlooked are President Grant's exemplary efforts to protect African-Americans from their Democrat oppressors.In 1870 and 1871, President Grant signed into law three laws known as the Enforcement Acts, one of which banned the Ku Klux Klan and other Democrat terrorist organizations. Grant then...[see http://grandpartisan.typepad.com/blog/2008/04/ulysses-grant-r.html]Each day, Grand Old Partisan celebrates 154 years of Republican heroes and heroics.

It's always a pleasure to come back to Heritage. An invitation from The Heritage Foundation, obviously, is always very special--only more so when it provides an opportunity to talk about Ronald Reagan's visionary Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). I'm sure [Heritage President] Ed Feulner thought, "Well, if we're going to talk about Star Wars, we might as well invite Darth Vader." I'm happy to accept.I see many friends in the room tonight. I'm reminded of a tribute once given to Ed and the supporters of The Heritage Foundation--comments that are still apt today. We are "unlucky in many things in...

I don't know about you, but I'm amazed - amazed at the courage, fortitude and strength of our Founding Fathers. They put their lives on the line for an untested and abstract concept called America, not knowing if it would succeed or fail. We owe them everything. Sometimes I think we have squandered our inheritance. What are your thoughts?

As I have written in the past, it is testimony to the mettle of the American Republic that it can, from time to time, suffer fools at its helm. It has endured the drunkenness of Ulysses S. Grant, the socialism of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the constitutional violations of Richard M. Nixon and the alley-cat morality of Warren G. Harding, John F. Kennedy and William J. Clinton. We have managed to survive even the naivete of James E. Carter, the peanut farmer turned politician who proved "The Peter Principle" by rising to his own special level of ineptitude and remaining there...

The Logan Act was enacted in 1799. It states in full: Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both. This section shall not abridge the right of a citizen to apply, himself or his agent,...

President Bush often argues that history will vindicate him. So he can't be pleased with an informal survey of 109 professional historians conducted by the History News Network. It found that 98 percent of them believe that Bush's presidency has been a failure, while only about 2 percent see it as a success. Not only that, more than 61 percent of the historians say the current presidency is the worst in American history. In 2004, only 11.6 percent of the historians rated Bush's presidency in last place. Among the reasons given for his low ratings: invading Iraq, "tax breaks for...

Prospects of Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton winning the US Presidential nomination have turned grimmer and dimmer with bad news breaking by the day. On Thursday, former President, Jimmy Carter drove a dagger through the heart of her campaign by indicating he would be supporting rival Barack Obama, even as African-American challenger outdid her famous fundraising ability by two to one, taking in $40 million in contributions to her $20 million in March, but her campaign received a big blow when Carter confirmed that his heart is with Obama. Carter declared that he will cast his vote as a super-delegate in...

Seventy-five years ago this month Franklin Delano Roosevelt was inaugurated as the 32nd President of the United States. Within days after swearing to uphold the U.S. Constitution, through a Presidential Proclamation he closed the U.S. Mint to gold. Recall that the Mint had been established by the Constitution to protect the people’s right to sound money. Roosevelt had been elected on a platform of sound money. Barely in office, he reversed himself. He grabbed the gold of the people, marked up its value, leaving Federal Reserve notes in the hands of the people that were to lose 95 percent of...