Free Republic

I confess that from the beginning I didn't get the Sarah Palin nomination. Everything about it seemed wrong, from her chirpy Matanuska Valley girl accent, to the MTV morals of her family life, to her complete lack of any experience or even of any stated views on national or international affairs. But now I get it. It represents the last gasp of the effort to turn the Republican Party of 2008 into the Democratic Party of 1896. Or at least I hope it does. The 1896 presidential race represented the high point of populism in America. The Democratic candidate, William...

Hopeful Science by: Ben Giles, June 20, 2008 Last October, the Center for American Progress launched a new online publication called Science Progress. Their progressive vision for scientific research has now made it to print. On June 13, the Center held a miniature science fair and panel discussion to launch the Spring-Summer edition of Progress, the first print release of the increasingly popular publication. “This first journal edition of Science Progress is yet another step we are taking to ensure that the American people realize that ‘science is the stuff of progress,’” said Center President John D. Podesta. The online...

Progressively Taxing by: Melinda Zosh, June 04, 2008 Health insurance for the unemployed, more money for non-profits, and “Pay-As-You-Drive Car Insurance” are three “new ideas” panelists proposed at a meeting about the new progressive agenda at the Center for American Progress on May 29. Lael Brainard, vice president and director of global economy and development at the Brookings Institution, spoke about America’s role in the global market and Americans’ ability to successfully compete abroad. “Americans are finding that more of them are encountering competition abroad…more than even 10 years ago,” said Brainard. “In the midst of this enormous economic transformation,...

PORTLAND, Ore. — Not every neighborhood in this city is one of those Northwest destinations where passion for espresso, the environment and plenty of exercise define the cultural common ground. A few places are still described as frontiers, where pioneers move because prices are relatively reasonable, the location is convenient and, they say, they “want the diversity.” Yet one person’s frontier, it turns out, is often another’s front porch. It has been true across the country: gentrification, which increases housing prices and tension, sometimes has racial overtones and can seem like a dirty word. Now Portland is encouraging black and...

Our Progressive Generation? by: Bethany Stotts, May 13, 2008 Are young American voters becoming increasingly progressive? That’s what Campus Progress, a liberal activist group, is arguing in their newest study, “The Progressive Generation.” The reports’ authors, David Madland and Amanda Logan, base their analyses on the General Social Survey (GSS), the National Election Study (NES) and Pew Research Center data. Defining the “Millennial Generation” as Americans age 18-29, they conclude that this group: - believes the government should ensure them good jobs and fair wages (45%); - believes that the government should provide more services (61%); - is less likely...

Progressive Calls for Civics Education by: Bethany Stotts, April 11, 2008 Contrary to the assumption that curriculum reform is promoted by only by conservatives, a member of the progressive movement recently lamented that students were losing touch with their American heritage. “We need to care, the Progressive Movement needs to care that the fabric of civics education in our country essentially has been decimated,” said Andrea Batista Schlesinger at a recent conference on the New Deal. However, Schlesinger warned the audience to not tell anyone what she said, lest she be accused of being a neoconservative. “And this where I...

Goldberg has marshaled a staggering amount of evidence to conclude, as the first chapter has it, that "everything you know about fascism is wrong." Mussolini was weaned on anarcho-socialism (his father Alessandro was a socialist and anarchist). Mussolini and the Italian Fascist party were, in the early years, not anti-Semitic—in fact, the party included Jews. As a young man, Mussolini had carried in his pocket a medallion of Karl Marx, whose influence—combined with the bizarre syndicalist philosophy of George Sorel and a Nietzschean contempt for Christianity—resulted in Italian fascism, a mix of myth-making, prophecy about the rise of the working...

 For those who hold the Constitution of the United States in high regard and who are concerned about the fate of its principles in our contemporary practice of government, the modern state ought to receive significant attention. The reason for this is that the ideas that gave rise to what is today called "the administrative state" are fundamentally at odds with those that gave rise to our Constitution. In fact, the original Progressive-Era architects of the administrative state understood this quite clearly, as they made advocacy of this new approach to government an important part of their direct, open, comprehensive...

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential platform is largely regurgitated progressive pap. The centerpiece is affordable universal health care, but it's not the only oxymoron. She proposes to reduce energy costs while opposing further development of domestic oil and natural gas; to boost payrolls and balance the federal budget with job-killing and deficit-raising tax increases; to provide greater retirement security while keeping the Social Security train wreck on schedule; and so forth. She is so unoriginal that she's even stealing the left-wing news media's ideas. Last week, she proposed $5,000 "baby bonds," which would be doled out to 4 million newborns...

In his 1932 campaign, Franklin D. Roosevelt had talked about helping someone he called “the forgotten man.” He was thinking of the poorest man, or as he put it—invoking the time of the pharaohs—“the man at the bottom of the economic pyramid.” The phrase came from an essay (and later a book) written decades before, called The Forgotten Man. Written by a famous Yale professor named William Graham Sumner, this essay defined “the forgotten man” differently. Sumner employed an algebra to explain what he meant: A and B want to help X, he wrote. This is the charitable impulse. The...

We share common cause with the Islamist terrorists: Far from being unreasonable fanatics, the terrorists fight for the same things we do. We have a common enemy. Ian Buruma, writing in the Financial Times, reveals that “suicide bombers and jihadis” are by their very nature unreasonable. “There is nothing to negotiate with people who wish to kill as many infidels as they can to establish a divine realm of the faithful,” he instructs us. They see “mass murder as an existential act,” he adds. What source is Buruma drawing on to make these extravagant conclusions? I have been paying...

Almost two-thirds of California residents believe President George W. Bush is untruthful and only 23 percent approve of his job performance, according to a new poll released today from San Jose State University. In contrast to the president, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's approval rating is at a near-record high of 62 percent, according to the poll, conducted by the Survey and Policy Research Institute at SJSU. Schwarzenegger is winning approval from liberal and moderate Californians while still maintaining a 64 percent approval rating among conservatives, according to the survey results. While California's presidential primary is 10 months away, the poll results...

CARACAS, Venezuela — A congress wholly loyal to President Hugo Chavez approved a law Wednesday granting the Venezuelan leader authority to enact sweeping measures by presidential decree. Meeting at a downtown plaza in a session that resembled a political rally, lawmakers unanimously approved all four articles of the law by a show of hands. "Long live the sovereign people! Long live President Hugo Chavez! Long live socialism!" said National Assembly President Cilia Flores as she proclaimed the law approved. "Fatherland, socialism or death! We will prevail!" Chavez, who is beginning a fresh six-year term, says the legislation will be the...

It’s easy for scholars to study statistics, and then provide solutions to change those numbers. Scholars perform massive amounts of research, but the field reporting is left to journalists. Recently, The Brookings Institution sponsored a panel to discuss policies that would aid in educating low-income children. After the panel had completed, four journalists took the stage to provide analysis on the presented ideas. The journalistic panel consisted of Adrian Wooldridge, of The Economist, Hugh Price, Senior Fellow of The Brookings Institution, Sebastian Mallaby, of The Washington Post, and David Wessel, of The Wall Street Journal; all four of whom have...

Whether we like it or not, “we live in a progressive world,” writes Jonah Goldberg in National Review. He means that when conservatives go into the public square they must use the language of progressivism. In debates on public policy, “The good is measured in material terms — greater health, greater prosperity, greater comfort — and the social sciences are the disciplines that allow us to engineer society in ways that will maximize the good.” This materialist public policy is based upon the SSSM, John Derbyshire writes, “the egalitarian, “blank slate,” Standard Social Science Model of human nature cherished by...

Originally delivered as a speech before the first convention of the Society for Individual Liberty, University of Pennsylvania, 15-16 November 1969. Preface This essay constitutes a part of “revisionism” in history, largely domestic history. The term revisionism originally came into use referring to historiography after World War I. A group of young historians, eager to uncover the realities behind the blanket of myths surrounding the origins of this crucial conflict, discovered as a result of their investigations that Germany and Austria were not, contrary to popular mythology, solely responsible for the outbreak of that crisis. Thus, reevaluating the history of...

The Euston Manifesto We are democrats and progressives. We propose here a fresh political alignment. Many of us belong to the Left, but the principles that we set out are not exclusive. We reach out, rather, beyond the socialist Left towards egalitarian liberals and others of unambiguous democratic commitment. Indeed, the reconfiguration of progressive opinion that we aim for involves drawing a line between the forces of the Left that remain true to its authentic values, and currents that have lately shown themselves rather too flexible about these values. It involves making common cause with genuine democrats, whether socialist or...

| Issue date 01.30.06 If you believe the statements they made during last week's hearings, Republican and Democratic senators agree that Samuel Alito, President Bush's nominee to replace Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, should be evaluated on the basis of his judicial philosophy--that is, on his general approach to interpreting the Constitution. "Will your judicial philosophy preserve these principles" of "executive power, congressional power, and personal autonomy?" asked Senator Charles Schumer of New York, in a characteristic opening statement. "Or will it erode them?" Unfortunately, not a single senator followed such questions by articulating a coherent judicial philosophy against...

The War on Terror has entered a new successful stage once the US field commanders began to force the enemy units to comply with the same government-imposed rules and restrictions that the US Army increasingly faces on a daily basis. One man, identified only as a "Soldier for Allah" explained, "We were led into a classroom and had to sit in circles for what they called 'Collective Self-Attaining Support Sessions' where they lectured us on matters such as "Gender Awareness." "Multicultural Identity." and "Environmental Racism." For the love of Allah (peace be upon him and his messenger, the Prophet Muhammad),...

In 1920, Winston Churchill spoke of a group of Enlightenment conspirators who had produced a system of morals and philosophy "as malevolent as Christianity was benevolent, which, if not arrested would shatter irretrievably all that Christianity has rendered possible."  He observed that this malignant worldview "has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the 19th century.  This worldwide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization and the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality has been steadily growing"  (Zionism versus Bolshevism).   This malevolent system of warped morals and anti-human philosophy entered...

For decades, federal officials have ignored the pleas of American citizens to secure our borders against an immense, ongoing migration invasion that includes not only millions of “common variety” illegal aliens, but also drug traffickers, terrorists, and other violent criminals. Now, under the pretense of providing security, the Bush administration is adopting an outrageous policy that, in effect, does away with our borders with Mexico and Canada altogether. Regular readers of THE NEW AMERICAN know that this magazine has been warning that this direct assault on our nationhood was coming, that it is part and parcel of the NAFTA-CAFTA-FTAA process....

Air America, the liberal radio counterpart to Rush Limbaugh, is now asking its listeners to send in money, leading some analysts to say the network is "crumbling." The network, featuring voices including Al Franken and Janeane Garofalo, has developed a program where people become "associate" members by contributing cash.

If there’s an upside to Katrina, it’s that the Republican agenda of tax cuts, Social Security privatization and slashing government programs is over. President Bush’s disapproval rating now stands at 52 percent, and two in three Americans give him a thumbs down on handling hurricane relief. At the heart of the problem is Bush’s disdain for government. It may be too much to predict an upsurge of progressive government, but the environment and issues of poverty, race and class are back on the nation’s radar screen. The proper role for government will be debated as we move toward the next...

Well, if 9/11 is one bookend of the Bush administration, Katrina may be the other. If 9/11 put the wind at President Bush's back, Katrina's put the wind in his face. If the Bush-Cheney team seemed to be the right guys to deal with Osama, they seem exactly the wrong guys to deal with Katrina - and all the rot and misplaced priorities it's exposed here at home. ..snip.. Besides ripping away the roofs of New Orleans, Katrina ripped away the argument that we can cut taxes, properly educate our kids, compete with India and China, succeed in Iraq, keep...

New car came with three-month trial of XM Radio. In order to create my own "custom XM channel lineup," I studied the program guide. My concern is with terms XM Radio used to describe the right- and left-leaning talk channels. The link should bring up the channels XM offers. Look in the TALK section. Am I being too sensitive here? Why is the description for "America Right" -- Conservative Talk, and that of "America Left" -- Progressive Talk? What happened to the term Liberal? If Conservative is used to describe one, then the clearest opposite for the other is Liberal,...

E-mail Author Send to a Friend <% printurl = Request.ServerVariables("URL")%> Print Version March 02, 2005, 7:50 a.m. Seeing RedDemocrats, the progressive party no more. By Gary Andres Is President George W. Bush the new face of progressive reform in American politics and do Democrats now don the mask of the status quo? Some observers, particularly liberals, scoff at this idea, but growing evidence suggests. Bush's platform has a long pedigree in the morally based progressive tradition in American politics. The media have largely missed this developing reversal, largely because it refuses to acknowledge Bush's motivation to help people by...

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. - The leaders of the environmental movement were livid last fall when Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, two little-known, earnest environmentalists in their 30's, presented a 12,000-word thesis arguing that environmentalism was dead. It did not help that the pair first distributed their paper, "The Death of Environmentalism," at the annual meeting of deep-pocketed foundation executives who underwrite the environmental establishment. But few outside the movement's inner councils paid much attention at first. Then came the November election, into which groups like the Sierra Club and the League of Conservation Voters poured at least $15 million, much of...

Interview with Thomas E. Woods, Jr. EDITOR'S NOTE: In addition to his other endeavors, the well-known Catholic writer Thomas E. Woods, Jr. has authored several books recently, ranging in topics from contemporary Catholicism to American History. His latest work, the recently reviewed The Church Confronts Modernity: Catholic Intellectuals and the Progressive Era, discusses the efforts of American Catholics in the early decades of the 20th Century. I asked Dr. Woods to share some of his thoughts on the subject. —PWM Seattle Catholic (SC): The title of this book, The Church Confronts Modernity, identifies both a struggle and its primary participants....

BOOK REVIEW The Church Confronts Modernity: Catholic Intellectuals in the Progressive Era (Thomas E. Woods, Jr. - Columbia University Press) reviewed by Walter M. Hudson As readers of this journal are aware, modernist control on preconciliar history has for decades been seemingly uncontested in Catholic universities and intellectual circles, continuously reinforced in the pages of journals such as Commonweal and America, and rigorously defended by the likes of Garry Wills and former Archbishop Weakland. The "resistance" to this intellectual paradigm has too often relied on a faulty ultramontanism that Newman warned us about over a century ago. But the modernist...

To the American mind, the most formal connotation of the term progressive is the Progressive Movement, a period of reform that ranged from the late 1800s to the end of World War I. Unlike its predecessor, the Populist Party, Progressivism was not a movement of farmers or manual laborers. Its guiding lights were college-educated men who were consequently steeped in the post-Enlightenment collectivism that had taken hold of the universities both here and in Europe. Among its apostles were economists who adopted the "organic" collectivism of the German historical school, sociologists and historians who interpreted Darwin according to the social...

Review: The California Republic: Institutions, Statesmanship, and Policies by Brian P. Janiskee (Editor), Ken Masugi (Editor) [Rowman & Littlefield] With the release of The California Republic – edited by Brian P. Janiskee, assistant professor of political science at Cal State-San Bernadino and Ken Masugi, director of the Center for Local Government at the Claremont Institute – those seeking to understand California’s politics, its culture, and its history have found an indispensable source. Made up of a wide-ranging collection of essays that originated in a scholarly conference hosted by the Claremont Institute, California Republic is complemented by additional contributions. The volume...

This column may be the most futile of my long career. I am about to plead for Saddam Hussein's life. I do so not because I have the slightest doubt that he is a killer, responsible for taking the lives of many thousands, but because sparing his life would send a message to the world that judicial death -- so often abused -- is no longer acceptable. Such a day will come, no doubt about it. The death penalty is already illegal in most of Europe... President Bush has already endorsed the death penalty for Hussein. "I think he ought...

Plans are underway to observe the 2nd anniversary of the September 11th atrocities. This time around there will be less ceremony, something simpler and planer. In the squeaky voice of New York City's least illustrious Mayor, [t]his will be the second time that we as friends, as families, and as one community, will gather to remember a tragic day which has become synonymous with not only great sorrow and loss, but also courage and resilience. O.K., there's no gainsaying these words. But where, in all the possible reactions to an act of war against innocent civilians on our own shore,...

Playing Pool S.F. has great swimming pools, but political insanity makes them all but useless to families and kids BY MATT SMITH When diagnosing complex societal malaise, the simplest and most obvious symptoms can be telling. Where beat cops solicit bribes, there's corruption all the way to the top. Where people support leaders with a brutal past -- the Augusto Pinochets, the Efrain Rios Montts, and the Kurt Waldheims of the world -- social critics aptly fret over culturewide inhumanity. Where citizens contemplate leadership by movie stars -- Reagans, Beattys, Schwarzeneggers, etc. -- one sees polity in the thrall of...

In an article in the Wall Street Journal, on October 5, 2001, Francis Fukuyama declared that his "end of history" thesis remains valid twelve years after he first presented it shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Fukuyama’s core argument was that after the defeat of Communism and National Socialism, no serious ideological competitor to Western-style liberal democracy was likely to emerge in the future. Thus, in terms of political philosophy, liberal democracy is the end of the evolutionary process. To be sure, there will be wars and terrorism, but no alternative ideology with a universal appeal...

The Hive (Reprinted from SOBRAN’S, June 1999, page 3) Twenty years ago, I was struck by the way various sorts of political “progressives” — Communists, socialists, liberals, “civil libertarians,” “moderates,” “pragmatists” — all spontaneously cooperated with each other. It wasn’t a conspiracy; there was obviously no central direction. But the pattern was too clear to be denied. The word “left” was a dead metaphor; it said nothing interesting about the people it referred to. So I used the metaphor of an insect hive, which captured the way such people moved in harmony and communicated with each other. In a beehive,...

What is happening to American institutions requires both art and science. From its churches to its educational system, from the government and political party system to the military, an invasive form of totalitarian groupthink has been artfully and successfully applied to those institutions. Most artistic endeavors require technique of some sort. Even developing an irrational system results in an irrational populace that no longer depends on absolutes or basics or standards. That is true in everything from math and science to literature and government to personal behavior. That is why our U.S. Constitution is now "flexible." With no absolutes, it...