Free Republic

... Was it right for President Harry S. Truman to order the use of atomic weapons? As Al Smith used to say, let's look at the record. By the summer of 1945, Japan was clearly beaten, and yet it fought on with unmatched ferocity and tenacity. The last two major operations of the Pacific war, the battles for Iwo Jima and Okinawa, were also the bloodiest. Between February and June of 1945, more than 72,000 Americans were killed, wounded, or lost in action. Japanese losses were even worse: 21,000 dead on Iwo Jima and 94,000 killed in the battle for...

... Bruce Cumings’s “Korean War,” [is] a powerful revisionist history of America’s intervention in Korea. Beneath its bland title, Mr. Cumings’s book is a squirm-inducing assault on America’s moral behavior during the Korean War, a conflict that he says is misremembered when it is remembered at all. It’s a book that puts the reflexive anti-Americanism of North Korea’s leaders into sympathetic historical context. Mr. Cumings is chairman of the history department at the University of Chicago and the author of “The Origins of the Korean War,” a respected two-volume survey. He mows down a host of myths about the war...

NEW YORK, MAY 28, 2010 (Zenit.org).- Pave the Way Foundation has received permission from the Vatican's semi-official newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, to publish online its archived editions from 1938 to 1945. The New York-based foundation, a non-sectarian organization whose mission is to identify and try to eliminate obstacles between religions and to initiate positive gestures in order to improve interreligious relations, has been working to discover the facts regarding Pope Pius XII and his efforts to help Jews during World War II. As part of this effort, it has been working to retrieve and publicize as many documents as possible to...

I've written and produced video about the liberal whitewashing of black history for years, as has the Reverend Wayne Perryman, as has Frances Rice, as has Larry Edler, as has David Barton of Wallbuilders for even providing physical documentation, as well as many others. I've also said someone in the mainstream media would 'reveal' this revised history to the nation and act as if he or she discovered it. Despite the truth being out there for years, it’s probably not going to explode until some big shot news anchor gives us an “explosive expose” bringing us all those facts first,...

(CNSNews.com) - Conservative legal experts say a federal district judge in Wisconsin had no legal basis for declaring the National Day of Prayer unconstitutional – and predict the decision cannot stand. “If the National Day of Prayer is unconstitutional, then the Constitution itself if unconstitutional,” Mathew Staver, president of Liberty Counsel and dean of the Liberty University School of Law in Lynchburg, Va., told CNSNews.com. The judge agreed with the atheist group, and based her decision, in part, on the fact that atheists “feel” marginalized by the law, which directs the president to declare a National Day of Prayer. Rep....

John McCain — who built his political persona and his 2008 presidential campaign around the claim that he’s a “maverick” — told Newsweek recently: “I never considered myself a maverick.” When POLITICO asked McCain about the contradiction at the Capitol this week, the Arizona Republican grew visibly irritated and snapped: “I’ve been called a thousand things. It’s absolutely ridiculous.”He said 48 percent of the homeowners in his state are underwater on their mortgages. He said he’s always “done what’s best for my state and the nation.” Then he said it again, adding, “People can consider me whatever they want.” And...

Political Content in this week’s new movies plus some old dvds and newly released blu-rays… new movies: Date Night, Letters To God… old dvds: Babel, The Strangers, The Brothers Bloom, The Mist, The Ninth Gate, Kingdom of Heaven… new blu-rays: The Relic, Jade

WASHINGTON, Nov. 13 (UPI) -- President Bush took the first step in a historic reduction of strategic nuclear weapons Tuesday, slashing the U.S. stockpile by two-thirds and winning a commitment from Russian President Vladimir Putin to "try to respond in kind." In a joint news conference at the White House on the first day of a three-day summit meeting, Bush said he had informed Putin "that the United States will reduce our operationally deployed strategic nuclear weapons to a level between 1,700 and 2,200 over the next decade." "Current levels of our nuclear forces do not reflect today's strategic realities,"...

The nation’s public school curriculum may be in for a Texas-sized overhaul, if the Lone Star state’s influential recommendations for changes to social studies, economics and history textbooks are fully ratified later this spring. Last Friday, in a 10-to-5 vote split right down party lines, the Texas State Board of Education approved some controversial right-leaning alterations to what most students in the state—and by extension, in much of the rest of the country—will be studying as received historical and social-scientific wisdom. After a public comment period, the board will vote on final recommendations in May. Don McElroy, who leads the...

Compare these two screenshots I just took. Notice the word I highlighted in my google search. Brecht Forum is a communist group. It's not on wikipedia anymore. I had to shrink the text to be able to capture the whole page so you could see what's happened here. Not hard to figure out. I originally figured I'd just post the google cache for you to see, but that's been cleaned also.(or more likely, the wipe occurred long enough ago that the cache cached the newer page)

Communism was very popular in our grand parents day. He begins with talking about the Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden in 1939. And then there was a large march in the Hamptons. But the main word that puts it all in perspective is "Progressive." Progressives were in both parties. Just remember that when you hear progress and social justice, watch out.

In the days of the Soviet Union, children in schools learned that Russians invented the airplane and the refrigerator. They learned there was no God and that the glorious days of the union began and ended with Marxism. History texts were rewritten to eliminate any mention of Holy Mother Russia, the Orthodox Church, the Czars or Peter the Great. The new understanding of the world included “equality,” “fairness” with no differences in gender. Women worked the same as men. Children were raised in government day care and educated by the state. Loyalty to the Communist Party was demanded above family....

To the young Tom Hanks, history was as dull as an algebra equation. For Hanks — a classic baby boomer, born in 1956 — World War II was just a string of long-ago muzzle flashes in black-and-white. Yet he did have a more direct connection to the global cataclysm. His father had been a U.S. Naval mechanic (second class) in World War II. But Amos Hanks wasn't the type to tell his son tales of bravery and sacrifice. "Growing up, I always knew Dad was somewhere in the Pacific fixing things," Hanks says. "He had nothing nice to say about...

When it debuted the left instantly hailed it as an anti-war masterpiece. The book "The Last Train from Hiroshima," a popular history of the WWII A-Bomb drops on Japan, quickly accumulated much acclaim. This was "gleaming" wartime history according to The New York Times. It was so poignant and solemn that moviemaker James Camereon was said to be considering making a movie based on the book. It wasn't long, though, before major questions about the veracity of the tale were raised. The author of the book, Charles Pellegrino, used the experiences of at least three participants in the bombings at...

There is some histographical debate concerning the legacy of the California progressives. More pessimistic historians are inclined to believe that subsequent conservative administrations wiped out most progressive gains. Corporate domination of state politics, banished under the reign of Johnson, returned. During the 1930s and 1940s, corporate lobbyist Arthur Samish dominated state politics, at one point publicly posing with a ventriloquist's dummy to gleefully demonstrate that he was the puppet master who manipulated the hapless legislature. Governor Earl Warren admitted “On matters that effect his clients, Artie unquestionably has more power than the governor.” 1 Although Sammish was eventually imprisoned in...

He may be the president who governed during the Civil War, freeing the slaves, but under a new curriculum proposal for North Carolina high schools, U.S. history would begin years after President Lincoln, with the presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes in 1877. State education leaders say this may help students learn about more recent history in greater depth. "We are certainly not trying to go away from American history," Rebecca Garland, the chief academic officer for North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, told Fox News. "What we are trying to do is figure out a way to teach it where...

A state board of only 15 people will vote on whether to revise U.S. textbooks to omit references to Daniel Boone, Gen. George Patton, Nathan Hale, Columbus Day and Christmas. The Texas State Board of Education will also vote on a proposal to substitute the term "American" with "global citizen." Mathew Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, is warning Americans to speak up before only eight people, with a majority vote, have a chance to literally rewrite American history. He appeared on the "Huckabee Show" to explain why the board's vote matters to the rest of America. Staver said...

Memory Hole Gets Crowded Malcolm A. Kline, February 9, 2010 Marxists believe that he who controls the past controls the future. It’s hard not to see that philosophy at work in the actions of various state boards of education around the country. Nevertheless, whether by accident or design, students who have not been taught, for example, the Constitution, will find it difficult to label anything unconstitutional. When my stepson was in high school, he was assigned the task of writing his own constitution. I suggested that he cut and paste the original to see if the teacher would notice. He...

Lady Elizabeth Butler's painting 'The Remnant of an Army' depicts Dr William Brydon, sole survivor of the British retreat from Kabul in 1842 As both Britain and America are plunged into an orgy of tortured introspection over what we are doing in Afghanistan, a further very important factor needs to be fed into the discussion, because it helps to explain not only why we have got into such a tragic mess but also why our armed intervention in that unhappy country is doomed. What we are hardly ever told about Afghanistan is that it has been for 300 years the...

It’s bad enough that President Obama could not be bothered to attend the celebrations marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. But Hillary Clinton’s refusal to even acknowledge the role played by Ronald Reagan in the Wall’s demise as well as the downfall of Communism was highly insulting towards one of the greatest figures of our time, and reeked of petty and partisan mean-spiritedness. The Secretary of State’s remarks yesterday in Berlin completely erased from history the huge contribution played not only by President Reagan but also by the United States in confronting the Soviet Empire....