Free Republic

“Never before in our history have Americans been called upon to face three grave threats to our very existence any one of which could destroy us. We face a disintegrating economy, a weakened defense, and an energy policy based on the sharing of scarcity.” - Ronald Reagan Time to Recapture Our Destiny (RNC Address - July 17th, 1980) The story goes that Governor Reagan, while strategizing with his political allies in a Beverly Hills Hotel in early 1980, found the moment opportune (as he so often did) to make a point. Leaning over to Dick Allen, his soon-to-be national security...

Where have all the cowboys gone? We never thought we would see it happen. Thanks to the greatest president of my lifetime. He spent his life fighting the greatest evil of the 20th Century. HERE IS A SHORT YOUTUBE VIDEO THAT MEMORIALIZES THE EVENT

Obama preached to his flock yesterday and what he said would surprise many people with a little knowledge of history (a class Obama clearly flunked). He said that the Soviet Union collapsed because we negotiated with them.....stop laughing, let me finish.....and that Iran really isn't that big of a threat: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ew5qP2oPdtQOk, history lesson. The USSR collapsed because their economy collapsed. That collapsed because they tried to keep up with Reagan and the defense build up along with the "star wars" program. Then he goes on to say Iran and the US have common interests? Is he freakin insane? We neither...

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...

SDI: A destroyed satellite attests to the prowess of U.S. technology and our ability to defend ourselves. Democrats said it wouldn't work. Adversaries say it's provocative. Somewhere Ronald Reagan must be smilingRarely is military technology put to so public a test with so much riding on its success or failure. With the whole world watching, a modified Standard Missile-3 was launched Wednesday night from a Navy cruiser in the North Pacific, its target a spy satellite in a decaying orbit headed to Earth full of hazardous hydrazine fuel. Deputy National Security Adviser James Jeffrey discounted any comparison with an anti-satellite...

Stalin (and his ilk) were constantly scrubbing history to fit their agenda. It is said, in fact, that in the USSR, the future was known...it was the past that was always changing. Today's American left are driven by the same impulse, and will use whatever means at their disposal to do the same thing. Fortunately, American liberty prevents them from getting away with as much as Stalin could...though if they had the power afforded them by the totalitarian system to which their core ideology is always slouching, they surely would. Using the three pillars of information dissemination—academia, entertainment, and the...

In 1984 a book was published with the title New Lies For Old. It was written by Soviet KGB defector Anatoly Golitsyn. The book claimed that the Soviet Union had a secret long-term strategy to disarm and defeat the United States through a controlled collapse of the Soviet empire that would take place in the last decade of the twentieth century. In the book's most remarkable chapter, titled "The Final Phase," Golitsyn accurately described the future of the Soviet bloc. Communism would give up its monopoly of power in Russia, he explained, as apparent freedom and democracy would be introduced....

Former Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.) may be violating Federal Election Commission (FEC) laws by failing to report funds raised in the second quarter, which ends tomorrow — giving his probable presidential campaign a one-month fundraising advantage over his rivals in the third quarter. Republican or Democratic rivals could file a complaint against Thompson if he enters the 2008 presidential race and it becomes apparent that he spent the month of June campaigning rather than wrestling with the decision to run. Thompson is operating under the “testing the waters” clause of FEC laws, allowing him to raise money, travel and conduct...

Jeff Miller is a friend of Fred. Florida’s First District congressman couldn’t wait for former U.S. Sen. Fred Thompson to officially enter the presidential race to declare his allegiance. Thompson has formed a committee to explore his options and is expected to state his intention to seek the presidency sometime in July. Miller, R-Chumuckla, sent a letter to supporters June 20 backing the Republican from Tennessee. “Now that he has established his exploratory committee and a decision to run appears imminent, I want to make my endorsement of Senator Thompson for President official,” Miller said. In the letter, Miller calls...

After John East, a stalwart conservative from North Carolina, entered the U.S. Senate in 1981, wags began referring to Jesse Helms as "the liberal senator from the Tar Heel state." We are reminded of this tale as Republican activists rush to encourage, if not yet fully embrace, the presidential candidacy of Fred Thompson, the former senator from Tennessee. The Republican base is evidently unimpressed or uninspired (or both) by the conservative credentials of the top three Republicans (John McCain, Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani) seeking the 2008 presidential nomination. Mr. Thompson's most-oft-cited conservative credential is his 86.1 percent lifetime (1995-2002)...

SPRINGFIELD — He hasn’t announced if he’s running for the presidency yet but that isn’t stopping a group of Illinois Republicans from backing former U.S. Sen. Fred Thompson for the job. Members of Illinois Citizens to Draft Fred Thompson gathered in the Capitol on Friday said they expect the deep-voiced Tennessean to announce for the presidency soon and when he does they want the campaign off to a quick start. To help their cause they have begun urging Illinoisans to go online and register as a Thompson supporter at the group’s website. Former head of the Illinois Republican Party, Donald...

The Speech That Brought Down a Wall Monday, Jun. 11, 2007 By ROMESH RATNESAR The four most famous words of Ronald Reagan's Presidency almost were never uttered. Twenty years ago, on the morning of June 12, 1987, Reagan arrived in Berlin, on the occasion of the city's 750th birthday. He was scheduled to speak on the Western side of the Brandenburg Gate, for years the city's symbolic dividing line. His speechwriters had drafted an address intended as much for Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, with whom Reagan was forging a close relationship, as for the 20,000 people who gathered to hear...

Twenty years ago today Ronald Reagan stood in front of the Berlin Wall at the Brandenburg Gate and gave the speech heard 'round the world. Our friend Peter Robinson was the man who wrote the speech. He tells the story behind the speech in his terrific book How Ronald Reagan Changed My Life. Peter has kindly condensed his account for Power Line readers today: In April 1987, when I was assigned to write the Brandenburg Gate address, I spent a day in Berlin with the White House advance team, the logistical experts, Secret Service agents, and press officials who went...

Supporters of Fred Thompson are seeking to raise $4.6 million to help launch the former senator and "Law & Order” star’s expected run for president in 2008. A group called the First-Day Founders got the ball rolling when all 100 members each donated the primary maximum of $2,300 on June 1, the day Thompson’s exploratory committee filed with the Tennessee secretary of state, allowing the committee to begin fundraising. If the First-Day Founders come through with their fundraising efforts, "Thompson presumably would start off with $4.6 million in ‘seed money,’” The Hill newspaper reported. "Speculation has been rampant as of...

Twenty years ago this very day, President Ronald Reagan destroyed the Soviet Union. On the morning of October 12, 1986, it seemed as if the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. were on the brink of sweeping reductions in their nuclear arsenal. President Reagan's refusal to abandon SDI caused the talks to collapse. This locked the Soviets into continuing an arms race that they could not afford, could not win, and could not abandon, dooming their empire to eventual collapse. The results of the SDI program President Reagan refused to abandon could well save our lives from North Korean aggression.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has a suggestion for those who still doubt we should be building a missile defense system. In my interview with him last Thursday, Mr. Rumsfeld said, "All anyone has to do is read the words of the leadership in [North] Korea and Iran, and look to their behavior with respect to the development of ballistic missile technologies and nuclear capability." Even for those of us who have been supporters of missile defense since President Reagan announced it in 1986, Mr. Rumsfeld's mild admonition is good advice. Examining Mr. Rumsfeld's examples -- Kim Jong-il's North Korea and...

The great American consumer has been written off so many times in the last couple of years, just like the rest of the economy. But he/she is alive and kicking. Another great story never told. Retail sales came in at 1.4 percent for July, way above Wall Street expectations, while core sales excluding autos, gas, and building materials — a number that feeds directly into GDP — increased 0.6 percent. Over the past 3 months core sales rose 6.7 percent at annual rate, and in the past year they’re up 7.4 percent. Excluding autos alone, sales have gained 9.2 percent...

I remember 1989 and 2001. I remember how in 2001 Bill Clinton was scrambling around like some great booby trying to find his legacy. Ronald Reagan, a humble man, let his legacy speak for itself in 1989. That year the Berlin Wall came down and Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, East Germany and Romania tasted freedom after decades of bitter Soviet occupation. After the better part of a year trying to convince us how great he was for us, we still only remembered Bill Clinton for his romp with Monica Lewinsky. One might argue that that was all he deserved to be...

What the new literature on the Gipper won't tell you. Over the past several months, Nancy Reagan has quietly been alerting friends and family that the health of her husband Ronald Reagan, the nation's 40th president, is failing rapidly due to Alzheimer's. Reagan will turn 92 on Feb. 6, and the signs seem to suggest that he won't be with us for very much longer. It is not uncommon, when such circumstances involve a national figure, for the media to prepare tributes and obituaries in anticipation of the event. But in the case of Ronald Reagan, the magnitude of this...

As Washington insiders pore over the latest low job-approval ratings for George W. Bush, and as aficionados of British politics ponder the latest low ratings of Tony Blair, let's take a longer look at the political ebb and flow in America and Britain over the last quarter century or so. There is a certain parallelism.In the late 1970s, both countries experienced something like collapse -- a collapse of the Keynesian economics dominant in the post-World War II years, a collapse of the accommodationist foreign policy prevailing since the setback in Vietnam.From that collapse arose two improbable leaders on the political...