Free Republic

Liberals have long lamented the existence of two nations in America. They are right to do so today, but in a way they never meant. It is not the divide between rich and poor which soon will be causing serious pain on the left. Sarah Palin's pending nomination for Vice President is exposing the depth of the cultural divide between Middle America and the leftists who have taken over the education, media, and cultural establishment of our country. The announcement of Palin's selection by Senator McCain last Saturday reportedly triggered outright laughter in newsrooms across the land, a nearly unanimous...

Today's article on smoking restrictions and the "wellness" movement makes no mention of a politically incorrect truth: some people smoke because they find net positive benefits in it. Nicotine is not just an addictive drug, it is a powerful drug which affects the mind in ways that are often positive. Now let me add that I do note advocate people taking up smoking. I have no financial interest in tobacco, have never owned a tobacco stock, and if tobacco companies have advertised on American Thinker, I have not noticed it. (I would not get rid of their ads if they...

The prospect of John McCain as Republican nominee is inspiring sometimes angry resistance from millions of conservative stalwarts. Ann Coulter's famous support for Hillary Clinton threatens to spark a wave of conservative "suicide voters" if the Arizona Senator gets the nomination. Other Republicans, variously called insiders, party pros, elitists and worse, blithely assure us the alienated base will come around in the end and vote for McCain and the GOP ticket, particularly if Hillary Clinton is the alternative. Assuming McCain gets the nomination, I am not so sure. It could go either way. Anger at McCainAnger has been a consistent...

America’s Left and the political party it calls home, the Democrats, have been seized by anger ever since the disputes of the 2000 presidential election, with its razor-thin margin, judicial intervention called forth by Gore, and the ultimate victory for President Bush. Intoxicated by the endocrine-like jolts of energy, the Left has become addicted to anger. The Left has been self-administering a daily dose of derision, bile, and venom in an effort to keep its energy levels high in the face of a continued Republican hold on the presidency and Congressional majorities. But these are dangerous drugs. Whatever satisfying kick...

I have always seen George W. Bush in a different light than almost all of his opponents, and even many of his supporters. He is a trained strategist, an MBA graduate of Harvard Business School, where he learned that the point of having a strategy is to win when it counts, not just to feel good about yourself at every moment of the process. When it counts, right at election time, Bush tends to come out much better than his enemies assumed he would. The positions they embraced when they thought he was down and out turned out to be...

As a conservative, and back in 1988, while working as a college professor at a college where conservatives were ignorant slime who should hide under rocks, I heard Rush Limbaugh for the first time, and realized I was not alone. Over the years, his has been the one voice that has always sustained me, and, once in a while, has moved me to tears as he eloquently championed the hope and spirit of America and of her true heroes. As his leftist, hate-America, critics tried to shut him up, first by demonizing him, then by subsidizing his radio competitors and...

Today, a different kind of line was crossed. The Times has messed with Texas. You don’t tug on Superman’s cape, you don’t spit in the wind, and most of all you don’t mess with Texas if you have even a shred of common sense. KTRK-TV, the ABC affiliate in Houston has caught (hat tip: Austin Bay) the New York Times Company slurring Houston’s rescue efforts in a sneaky yet stupid maneuver. How do like this for the first sentence in a story about Houston’s sheltering efforts on behalf of the evacuees, by Houston-based NYT reporter Simon Romero?: “No one would...

There is only one country missing from the list of nations: India. Where the hell is India?

We live in an age in which few important conflicts can be described accurately and economically, which is to say, bluntly. Race and religion are obvious examples of domains in which condescension-masquerading-as-sensitivity must be employed. So too, the realities of world power. Ask any journalist, almost anywhere, and she will tell you that the world is a lamentably “unipolar” power construct, with hyperpower America lording it over the rest of the world’s nations, all of them consigned to second-class (or worse) membership in the community of man. Such an arrangement is deemed unnatural, exploitative, unduly hierarchical, and inherently unstable. By...

I find myself stunned by the magnitude of the quick victory President Bush has won on tort reform, with the new bill, now awaiting his signature federalizing most class action lawsuits. No longer will judges and juries in obscure rural counties of Illinois, Mississippi and Alabama be able to award hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars to nebulous classes of supposedly injured consumers or shareholders, at the expense of productive corporations, on the thinnest of evidence. Instead , the federal judiciary, which used to be so beloved of the Democrats when it was intervening in Southern elections, will...

A prominent president, one who commands enormous resources and can influence the lives of many women, has recently made disgusting sexist comments. No, not Lawrence Summers of Harvard, who merely had the temerity to suggest as a possible hypothesis, and in a non-public academic seminar, that women might not go into hard sciences in large numbers because, on average, their brains might not be quite wired for it, and because many women choose to focus their energies on raising children rather than on their careers. And for doing what academics are supposed to do – freely entertaining hypotheses and investigating...

SatireThe failure of the Bush Administration to seek a Declaration of War following the 9/11 attack is once again causing problems, in the wake of the recent Supreme Court rulings on the rights of detainees.  The lack of an official war status has had other serious consequences, hampering diplomacy, and encouraging politicians and the public to lose sight of the serious peril with which we are confronted.That’s why I urge President Bush to seek a Declaration of War. With France.War with France has many benefits and a relatively small downside. First, the benefits.Much has been made of the failure of...