Free Republic

When, in November 2016, Nikki Haley was nominated U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Professor Charles Tiefer of the University of Baltimore reacted with outrage. "No one in the United Nations," Tiefer said, "will think that Haley is someone to talk to who will be either knowledgeable or close to the president." Tiefer must feel a bit stupid right now.

Is there an enduring American character? For those who view our nation as at a tipping point, the question is urgent. Others scoff, “Why?” After all, if the American character is truly enduring, it will endure — the ship eventually will right itself to the extent it is off course. And if not, history will inevitably evolve it into something better, right? My friend Mark Levin would counter that this is the wrong way to look at it. The foundation of Americanism, he posits, is natural law. That does not just spontaneously appear, nor passively persevere. Understanding our natural-law roots,...

...He did even worse; he launched a campaign of punitive lawsuits against anyone who criticized him. He has sued Mark Steyn, National Review Online, and climatologist Dr. Timothy Ball. Mann shot himself in the foot with that last. For several years, Mann had refused to produce his data for the court (in support of his own case), claiming that it was “proprietary.” After missing a February 20th deadline, he now finds himself in contempt. Under Canadian law, the court is now required to dismiss the suit. John O'Sullivan goes into detail: "The defendant in the libel trial, the 79-year-old Canadian...

To believe, in the 1980s, that Ronald Reagan was going to blow up the world may have been merely peculiar. To believe so today is a symptom of raging Reagan Derangement Syndrome. And yet here we are, with The Reagan Show, a new documentary rehashing the paranoid style of Reaganography, set for limited theatrical release on June 30 and video-on-demand release shortly thereafter. The continuing popularity of President Reagan is a source of profound irritation and unease to liberals. To assuage their pain, they have gone back to their initial rationalization for how Reagan became so beloved: He cheated. Though...

The LGBTQ+ Equality March has little to no basis in reality. Another week, another protest against the president. Russian hookers and pathetic attempts at infrastructure week aside, the never-ending cavalcade of self-aggrandizement has to be the most annoying feature of Trump’s America...  But the upcoming LGBTQ+ Equality March has little to no basis in reality. At the beginning of the century, Hillary Clinton was proudly declaring that marriage is between a man and a woman on the Senate floor while Barack Obama was doing so in the pages of The Audacity of Hope. Donald Trump did the same in a...

It’s magic: What can’t his nefarious powers not do? As a Nazi, President Trump has proved lackluster. The brownshirts and concentration camps that Hollywood types warned us to expect haven’t materialized. As an authoritarian, too, Trump is falling short of expectations: When judges defy his executive orders, he doesn’t send in the goon squads. He simply sends out a couple of tweets. Liberals these days, especially showbiz types, are subtly altering the way they frame Trump. They can’t plausibly identify anything he’s actually done as an outrage to the Republic. So they’re internalizing the supposed Trump threat, claiming injury to...

Fresh on the heels of a budget deal that fully funds Planned Parenthood, Donald Trump has signed a religious-liberty executive order that — if reports are correct — is constitutionally dubious, dangerously misleading, and ultimately harmful to the very cause that it purports to protect. In fact, he should tear it up, not start over, and do the actual real statutory and regulatory work that truly protects religious liberty.

"Second, where Le Pen fetishizes national division, Macron speaks of patriotism joined to opportunity. Even as words alone, this is a political narrative that France desperately needs. As Andrew Hussey explains in his 2014 book, The French Intifada, many young French Muslims feel that their citizenry exists on paper only — that when it comes to education, opportunity, and respect, their country has no interest in them. American conservatives should be alarmed by that sentiment. The glory of American patriotism is its combination of shared opportunity and personal responsibility. Indeed, American Muslims’ patriotism is proof that Le Pen is wrong....

Kate O’Beirne was part of National Review’s world before she joined the staff. When she became the magazine’s Washington editor in 1995 her resume already included stints at Senator Jim Buckley’s office, the Reagan administration, and the Heritage Foundation. She served NR in that position for eleven years and then became president of National Review Institute for six more.

If you follow the news with any diligence beyond reading the loudest early headlines and social-media clickbait, you are wearyingly familiar with the pattern of heavily-hyped “hate crimes” (ranging from violent crimes to nasty notes on restaurant receipts) that turn out to be “false flag” hoaxes, frequently perpetrated by the very sorts of left-leaning folks who make the stories go viral in the first place.

Why Baptists Should Support Muslims’ Right to Build Mosques Given the shift in American demographics, it might not be long before the Baptists are once again a powerless minority. And this time, it might be Muslims before whom they are pleading for ‘soul freedom.’

The billionaire brothers are pulling out all the stops in support of President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee. Pity the interns who answer the phones in Colorado senator Michael Bennet’s office. Concerned Veterans for America estimates that as of March 2, it had connected with 80,000 Colorado supporters, urging them to phone Bennet’s office in an effort to convince him that he should support Judge Neil Gorsuch’s nomination to the Supreme Court. CVA is leading the Koch brothers’ network of libertarian-leaning advocacy groups in its effort to maximize pressure on senators to confirm Gorsuch.

If Orwell were alive today, he'd be more concerned with the world's genuine dictatorships than with the Trump administration. On April 4, almost 90 art-house movie theaters across the country will show 1984, the British film starring John Hurt, as a form of protest against President Trump's stated desire to defund the National Endowment for the Arts. The theaters say they "strongly believe in supporting the [NEA] and see any attempt to scuttle that program as an attack on free speech and creative expression through entertainment." The George Orwell novel on which the film is based, you'll recall, is the...

Ideas and values should matter more than tribal identity... Unfortunately, many conservatives have embraced this sort of binary thinking: If it angers the Left, it must be virtuous. Undoubtedly, that's a crude shorthand for political thinking. It means you never have to check the ideas of the speaker, you merely have to check how people respond to him. That's dangerous. It leads to supporting bad policies and bad men. The enemy of your enemy isn't always your friend. Sometimes he's your enemy. Sometimes he's just a dude sitting there minding his own business... The logic of "if he melts snowflakes,...

<p>As president, he cut a grandiose figure. He was a braggart and a frequent liar. He was suspicious of other countries, frequently saying, “Foreigners are not like the folks I am used to.” He had a reckless disregard for limits. He belittled and browbeat others to intimidate them and give him what he wanted. Historian Robert Dallek said that he “viewed criticism of his policies as personal attacks” and opponents of his policies “as disloyal to him and the country.”</p>

He did his country a great service, but he also broke the law. If Donald Trump doesn't understand now, he will eventually. Integrity and truth ultimately do matter, and if he wants to be a successful president, he's going to have to appoint people to high office who won't violate the public's trust. That means appointing more men like Neil Gorsuch and James Mattis. And it means keeping David Petraeus out of the White House... It's no understatement to say that by the September 2008 -- when he turned over command in Iraq to General Raymond Odierno -- he was...

Sorry #NeverTrumpers, but you don”t get to dismount your high horse and celebrate the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch today. This is NOT your victory, this is ours!There is a gobsmacking level of pontificating self-righteousness visible from the collective proletariat within your crony-conservative movement who made the decision to formulate their political argument from a position of opposition.Perhaps it would be different if you framed your antagonism from a position of advocacy, but that wasn’t the direction you chose. No, you chose a specific position of opposition as clearly evident within your chosen mantra “Never Trump”.Perhaps it would be...

I often thought they could teach me something. they are so clueless and marginalized. They hate it. Bye bye Nation Review.

Apparently Kevin Williamson at National Review has jumped over that deadly lemming cliff, along with millions of Trump-maddened New York liberals. Williamson writes in NR today that "My own view is that Donald and Ivanka and Uday and Qusay are genuinely bad human beings and that the American public has made a grave error in entrusting its highest office to this cast of American Psycho extras. That a major political party was captured by these cretins suggests that its members are not worthy of the blessings of this republic ..." ​Apparently NR editors didn't read this piece, or worse, they...

Rolla, Mo. - There are many summer camps, something for everyone. But there's no other camp quite like this: an explosives camp. A hands-on explosives camp. Such a thing would seem impossible in modern America. These days, kids ride their trikes in protective gear. So, the very idea of explosives camp is thrilling... Explosives Camp is an offering of Missouri University of Science and Technology -- formerly known as the University of Missouri-Rolla, formerly known as the Missouri School of Mines and Metallurgy. Rolla is midway between St. Louis and Springfield (Springfield, Mo., that is)... Here in Rolla, the explosives...