Free Republic

Subtitle: The Matter of the Mississippi River. A not inconsequential percentage of Article V opponents, like those in the John Birch Society, identify as Anti-Federalists. They question the 1780s need for the vigorous government of our Constitution. Those familiar with the era know of Shays’ Rebellion. According to modern Anti-Federalists, Shays’ was the pretext for nationalists like George Washington and James Madison to justify the 1787 Philadelphia Convention. There were other problems facing the infant United States to which the Articles of Confederation proved inadequate. For instance, most of the great European and New World ports were closed to American...

Why ISIS Isn’t Going Anywhere The Islamic State is not just a name, it’s a mission. July 4, 2017 Daniel Greenfield Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical left and Islamic terrorism. ISIS has been defeated. That’s the official word out of Iraq. But don’t count it out just yet. We beat ISIS twice before. Once in its previous incarnation as Al Qaeda in Iraq and in its even earlier incarnation as Saddam Hussein’s regime whose Sunni Baathists went on to play a crucial role in ISIS....

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday signed a law offering a hectare (2.5 acres) of land for free in Russia's Far East. The move, which is open to all Russian citizens, aims to boost the population and the economy in the vast remote region. Estimates by Russia's Minister for the Development of the Far East, Aleksandr Galushka, predicts that the project could increase the region's population to 36 million people, from the current 6.4 million. According to the bill, the land will be free of payment or tax for five years and may be used for any lawful purpose. However,...

A tale of two countries, one spurred to greatness by manifest destiny, the other crumbling under the weight of liberal anarchism The Kurds are surging in Iraq again. Kurdish fighters are successfully attacking both the Islamic state and other terrorist factions in Syria and Iraq; as we saw with the Kurdish capture of many Iraqi villages two days ago. The recent Kurdish push in Iraq occurs in spite of Turkey’s President Erdogan and his counterproductive air campaign against Kurdish fighters. To make matters worse Kurdish hopes for autonomy rights in Iranian held areas will more or less cease to be...

Manifest Destiny in the Bible? America Is Modern Babylon, Said David Wilkerson Julio Severo comments on David Wilkerson’s prophetic revelations about America’s “destiny” in his book “Set the Trumpet to Thy Mouth.” By Julio Severo A solid majority of Americans would now be comfortable with a president who is gay or lesbian, according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll. A full 61 percent of respondents reported being “enthusiastic” or “comfortable” with a gay or lesbian president. Meanwhile, Americans comfortable or enthusiastic about an evangelical Christian president received a more tepid 52 percent approval. This study comes on...

The Left has been atwitter in the wake of President Obama's Libya speech, seizing upon his assertion of America's "responsibility to protect" as evidence of a heartfelt belief in American exceptionalism. Of course, what has made America exceptional has been its political and economic liberty, not some esoteric calling to police the world. That said, the topic prompted Salon's Glenn Greenwald to question whether America is exceptional at all. The pervasiveness of this exceptionalism isn't really surprising. It's a common human desire to believe that one is special, unique, better than all others. Few people aspire to ordinariness. We view...

A Mormon television star stands in front of the Lincoln Memorial and calls American Christians to revival. He assembles some evangelical celebrities to give testimonies, and then preaches a God and country revivalism that leaves the evangelicals cheering that they’ve heard the gospel, right there in the nation’s capital. The news media pronounces him the new leader of America’s Christian conservative movement, and a flock of America’s Christian conservatives have no problem with that. If you’d told me that ten years ago, I would have assumed it was from the pages of an evangelical apocalyptic novel about the end-times. But...

Millions of Hispanics, mostly poor and uneducated, have immigrated to America illegally since the early 1990s. Most are Mexicans and most of them are high school dropouts.  Compared to what they might have had in a slum or impoverished rural area of Mexico or Central America, these immigrants have done well here. It has been different story for their neighbors -- middle-class Americans. For them, illegal immigration has often meant a deterioration of their neighborhoods, public schools, and their quality of life -- especially across America's Southwest. Some have watched their culture erode: It's not uncommon to see Mexican flags flying...

Last Monday began the PBS Series, "WE SHALL REMAIN" with their first Episode "After The Mayflower". The ones that will get my attention begin next week, Monday April 20th, 2009, and especially the April 27th "Trail of Tears" episode which will feature "The Ridge", the Cherokee leader and his clan who I wrote about in "Jesus Wept" An American Story. It will be VERY interesting to see how PBS deals with this situation or if they will be overtaken with the usual political correctness and historical rumor. My story is taken from documented records as well as family letters saved...

Yuma, Ariz., farmers should exhale a small but short-lived sigh of relief over the news from Union Pacific that the railroad has backed off its initial plans to jointly bid with the Hutchinson Port Authority on a proposed port and rail line at Punta Colonet, Baja Calif., Mexico. The proposed gargantuan-sized port would, in part, import foreign-made goods for distribution by rail to stores across the United States. While Union Pacific had originally planned to bid on the railroad puzzle piece, the railroad focused, in part, on potential routes from Mexico into the U.S. through Yuma, Ariz. Unfortunately, among the...

Robert W. Kagan FP: Robert Kagan, welcome to Frontpage Interview. Kagan: Thanks. I appreciate your inviting me. FP: I want to get your thought on the terror war and on the recent report made by the Iraq Study Group. But let's first talk about your new book. What motivated you to write it? Kagan: I suppose my interest in the history of American foreign policy began when I worked as a speechwriter for George Shultz in the Reagan years. Although many, especially the so-called "realists", dismissed Reagan as some kind of aberration from American foreign policy -- just as...

It's said that a picture is worth a thousand words. I only have room for about 700 here so let me be more concise. Just the other day, an editorial cartoon, set in the 1600s, depicted a rowboat full of Pilgrims coming ashore in the New World and encountering a group of Indians constructing a log wall to keep them out. Standing next to a boulder marked "Plymouth Rock" (in case you didn't get it) on the shoreline, one of the Indians, with his arms folded in an unwelcoming position and a disapproving frown on his face, blocked their way....

How much do you know about the U.S.-Mexican War of 1846? http://www.mysanantonio.com/salife/stories/MYSA051606.01P.mxwar.1162a2d9.html http://tinyurl.com/jywhy Web Posted: 05/16/2006 12:00 AM CDT Elaine Ayala Express-News Staff Writer For many, knowledge about the U.S.-Mexican War of 1846-1848 runs from nonexistent to sparse. Funny, given that without that major U.S. conquest, we might be living in Mexico, not Texas. Americans' knowledge of that crucial period may be limited to the U.S. takeover or purchase (depending on your perspective) of what today is the Southwestern United States ranging from Texas to California. But like many historical events, things were a lot more complicated than that. The...

Lord, Keep our Troops forever in Your care Give them victory over the enemy... Grant them a safe and swift return... Bless those who mourn the lost. . FReepers from the Foxhole join in prayer for all those serving their country at this time. .................................................................. .................... ........................................... U.S. Military History, Current Events and Veterans Issues Where Duty, Honor and Countryare acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated. Our Mission: The FReeper Foxhole is dedicated to Veterans of our Nation's military forces and to others who are affected in their relationships with Veterans. In the FReeper Foxhole, Veterans or their family members should...

If Jefferson Davis could reach from the grave to co-sponsor congressional legislation, he would presumably want to plug the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act. He would love the idea of creating a new government separate and distinct from the federal government — without firing a shot. That the enterprise is premised on a blatant racialism might please him too.

Will people be living on the moon in our lifetime? Better yet, can Americans do what they do best -- exploit a resource for all its money-making potential -- on the moon? If those at last week's Las Vegas Space Conference have their way, the answers to those questions is a resounding yes. Don't let the topic throw you. These folks aren't sporting aluminum helmets and drinking Tang between discussions of Star Trek episodes (although the television program did occasionally come up in casual conversation). These are hardcore geeks who are united in realizing the full potential of the moon....

George Kennan died last week; he was perhaps the architect of the Cold War, or at least he was the one who articulated the philosophy thereof most candidly, in a long article in Foreign Affairs magazine under the pseudonym 'X'. My interest in Kennan arises not from his Cold War credentials, but rather from another equally famous statement of his regarding America's strategic intention. Kennan appears to have said something along the following lines: 'The US has 6% of the world's population, but it enjoys 50% of the world's resources. US foreign policy is intended to keep it that way.'...

The original architects of the U.S. empire—long before its celebration by today’s neoconservatives—understood the importance of legitimacy in the neo-colonialist enterprise. In order to achieve some degree of legitimacy, it was important to create a native stooge—what some call a “comprador”—heavily dependent upon American power to govern in the interests of the U.S. government. In Iraq we have had the proverbial “Three Stooges,” as in the movies, often beating up on each other. The first of these was Saddam Hussein, who was essential in helping evict the British from control in Iraq and then in attacking Iran, but who became...

The American people having derived their origin from many other nations, and the Declaration of National Independence being entirely based on the great principle of human equality, these facts demonstrate at once our disconnected position as regards any other nation; that we have, in reality, but little connection with the past history of any of them, and still less with all antiquity, its glories, or its crimes. On the contrary, our national birth was the beginning of a new history, the formation and progress of an untried political system, which separates us from the past and connects us with the...

In the movie Terminator 2: Judgement Day, the very buff-and-ready Sarah Connor pulls out her K-Bar from her belt holster and carves "No Fate" in to a park bench somewhere in the Desert Southwest. This is further explained in the movie to mean "No fate but what we make." What a pithy, yet profound, statement. Much of the Left complains that Bush's policies vis-a-vis Iraq do not reflect reality. To play off the above notion, I will say that there is no reality but what we make. The Germans bombed Pearl Harbor (sorry - I was channeling John Belushi aka...