Free Republic

At the risk of being called cold or harsh, let me begin by saying every American has a right to his/her opinion on just about any issue. Including guns. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let me add this: the people playing partisan politics on the graves of the 17 innocent dead people from Douglas High School are despicable. I don’t care what age they are. Over the last couple of weeks, a variety of conservative voices have gotten in trouble for insinuating that the anti-gun protesters coming out of Douglas High School seem far too practiced...

While some bemoan Punch and Judy politics the real issue tearing apart the country aren’t the stark ideological differences between Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals, but rather the divide between those who want enforcement of federal immigration law and those who defy and obstruct the enforcers. This is an issue — and a debate — that has been percolating for years, though it arguably only came into full focus with President Donald J. Trump’s signature campaign promise to “build the wall.” In time, building a wall along the border of the United States and Mexico became a euphemism for...

I'm already dreading it. On Sunday, March 11, at 2 a.m., daylight saving time, the practice of moving our clocks forward one hour in the spring and backward one hour in the fall, will commence. When I wake on March 11 at my regular time - which will depend on the pub I was drowning my DST sorrows at the night before - I will be short by one hour. I will be in a stupor, for the most part, until November, when I must set my clocks back one hour - at which time I will officially resume my...

To the surprise of many, conservative columnist George Will penned an unflattering article about Rev. Billy Graham after he passed away last month. To the chagrin of others, the article, titled, “Billy Graham: Neither Prophet nor Theologian,” was carried by the historically conservative National Review. How might Rev. Graham have responded to an article like this?In 1957, as reported by Collin Hansen for Christianity Today, Graham’s gospel crusades in New York City were met with serious opposition.“Leading the charge against Graham,” Hansen writes, “was none other than Reinhold Niebuhr, the venerable professor at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. In...

Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. The plague of Islamic terrorism is based on “grievances” against Israel—so says Al Azhar, the world’s most prestigious madrasa (or Muslim “university”) that co-hosted Barrack Obama’s 2009 “A New Beginning” speech.  During a recently televised Egyptian interview, Ahmed Al Tayeb—Al Azhar’s grand imam, once named the “most influential Muslim in the world”—said: I have noticed that they are always telling us that terrorism is Islamic. All those mouthpieces that croak—out of ignorance or because they were told to—that the Al-Azhar curricula are the cause of terrorism never...

t’s easy in California to find a home, hide behind fences, cocoon in one’s abode, and come out only to travel the freeways to work. Finding community in many neighborhoods is rare. People are unlikely to know the names of more than two or three families on their street. Laughing along with sitcoms and crying at disturbing news seems to be our most common way of connecting, but it isn’t very satisfying. I’m no different, having a distant relationship with most of my neighbors. I may wave, but I get my needs met for community at my church, through professional...

Ronald Reagan was the protectionist Donald Trump might want to be, yet didn’t provoke market panic or a trade war. Reagan slapped import quotas on cars, motorcycles, forklifts, memory chips, color TVs, machine tools, textiles, steel, Canadian lumber and mushrooms. There was no market meltdown. Donald Trump hit foreign steel and aluminum, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell more than 600 points on Thursday and Friday. Reagan was no genius administrator ( Herbert Hoover was) so that’s not the difference. Though he promised Michigan auto workers help with Japanese imports and was grateful when they voted for him, he...

President Trump’s Thursday decision to begin the process of keeping his campaign promise to protect the American industrial base by imposing tariffs on imported steel and aluminum has seemingly gotten everyone in a tizzy, oddly uniting Big Business, top globalists, the IMF, the GOP Establishment and even liberal Democrats, all of whom never agree on anything yet are united that this particular decision will mean nothing short of an economic apocalypse for the United States.Truly, to hear these folks tell it we’re looking at an economic scenario to rival the bleak hellscape of The Walking Dead, minus the zombies...

I was thrilled September 5th 2017 when President Trump announced, through Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the end of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Even though illegal aliens and the enabling political class assembled in front of the Edward Roybal Federal Building to denounce this decision. The building name is telling. That Roybal moniker has controlled East Los Angeles-LA County politics for decades. Daddy Roybal passed on his House seat to daughter Lucille, and she still pushes mass immigration at the expense of American citizens.That legacy is coming to an end.The small gathering of progressives and hostile liberals cried...

They tell us that our uppity refusal to quietly submit to abuse and subjugation, both figurative and literal, makes us bad people. Not only can we live with that, but we should celebrate it.When the liberals and their squishy-soft allies in Conservative, Inc., start moaning about your dreadful incivility, that’s a clear indicator that you are doing something right and that you need to double down. Civility, once properly understood as a means to an end rather than an end in and of itself, has morphed from an aspiration into a political/cultural gimp suit designed to prevent you from effectively...

Last week I made brief appearance on a TV news show out of New York. The subject was censorship on Twitter. GrrrGraphics lost 2,000 in the sudden and silly ‘Russian bot purge,’ but we gained most of them back (and more) by the next day. We knew people who were banned for no particular reason other than their connections to conservative leaders on social media. Tweeting pro-Trump messages is intrinsic proof of Russian bots, right? Hillary thinks it is. Such anti-Russia hysteria also diverts attention away from her crimes.We are one of the few to obtain the coveted blue check...

It’s been almost half a year since Germans went to the polls and completely disrupted the old guard of politics in that country. The Christian Democrats party (CDU) of Chancellor Angela Merkel suffered losses across the board and also saw their former partners in the Social Democratic Party (SPD) split away from them. At the same time, Alternative for Germany (AfD) made major gains, largely based on growing opposition to Merkel’s open borders policy regarding primarily Muslim migrants entering the country. Since that time, Merkel has been unable to form a majority coalition and the nation has been effectively left...

Looking for Hate in the Wrong PlacesExpanding on the growing institutional campaign to use gender-neutral pronouns, the University of Tennessee has confected up some new ones: Students are increasingly coming to college ill prepared to do the work required, and the (overstaffed) administrations are still piddling about inventing new ways to tongue-tie pupils, ignoring that the English language – unlike, for example, Romance-based ones, Hebrew, Greek, and German – is remarkably devoid of gender specificity except for the basic pronouns, which clarify meaning. Try this out with zhee: Tom and Mary went to school. Zhee passed; zhee flunked out. Who?...

While the Supreme Court heard oral argument, last week, in Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the court of public opinion focused not so much on the constitutionality of the law in question, i.e. justice, but instead on the partisan impact of the decision, i.e. politics. The case concerns Mark Janus, a child-care specialist for the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services, who refuses to join the union. Nonetheless, by state law, Janus is forced to pay “agency fees” to AFSCME. Those agency fees are 78 percent of what a union member pays in...

One of the ironies of trade protectionism is that tariffs and import quotas are what we do to ourselves in times of peace what foreign nations do to us with blockades to keep imports from entering our country in times of war. Or consider that we impose sanctions on U.S. enemies such as North Korea, Russia and Iran because we want them to feel the economic pain of being deprived of imports. But now we are imposing sanctions on our own country by punishing with tariffs in order to make Americans more prosperous. If ever there were a crisis of...

In a development that’s reflective of the widening chasm of viewpoints on the treatment of illegal aliens in America, a big city mayor, Oakland’s Libby Schaaf, issued a public warning of impending Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) immigration sweeps.The arrests went forward anyway, netting more than 150, including several wanted for serious and violent crimes. Acting ICE boss Tom Homan wasted no time in calling the mayor the equivalent of a gang lookout and pointing to the difficulties ICE faces in “sanctuary” jurisdictions like Oakland and San Francisco, saying, “Because these jurisdictions prevent ICE from arresting criminal aliens in the...

Two political scientists specializing in how democracies decay and die have compiled four warning signs to determine if a political leader is a dangerous authoritarian. The leader shows only a weak commitment to democratic rules.He or she denies the legitimacy of opponents.He or she tolerates violence.He or she shows some willingness to curb civil liberties or the media. “A politician who meets even one of these criteria is cause for concern,” Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, both professors at Harvard, write in their important new book.“With the exception of Richard Nixon, no major-party presidential candidate met even one of these...

David Brody and Scott Lamb's latest book, The Faith of Donald J. Trump, A Spiritual Biography, published by Harper Collins, is an absolute joy to read. It chronicles the history of the 45th president’s faith in two parts. The first takes the reader down memory lane, following the footsteps of Trump’s grandparents and parents to understand the cultural and religious influences that shaped his Christian worldview. The second focuses on Trump’s more recent statements about God, faith, forgiveness, and personal relationships with Christian leaders. It details interviews with Trump during and after his successful presidential campaign, controversial statements, and...

There was a simple reason why Donald Trump won the 2016 election. It wasn’t because Vladimir Putin was changing votes (though he didn’t.) It wasn’t because evangelicals voted for him in necessary numbers (though they did.)The reason I felt strong enough about it the week of the election that I drew a map predicting how he would win—which states—and was correct, was far simpler than the wildest conspiracies you’ve heard. He connected with working people, and they trusted him. Particularly they trusted him in states with a lot of empty production plants. Like making a solemn vow, they trusted him...

Democrats, in a feat of political exploitation unrivaled in the 21st century, are now using the kids from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School to sign fundraising emails. Part of me had hoped the party of grave-dancing would find using children in this way would be a bridge too far, but the rest of me knew they didn’t have it in them to be tactful, decent people. After all, every left-wing activist group had, one day after the shooting,  started sweeping into town to organize what they and their fellow travelers in the media all claimed was an “organic, grassroots” response...