Free Republic

The title "Dorothy Day and the American Right" promises a merciful brevity, along the lines of "Commandments We Have Kept" by the Kennedy brothers. After all, the founder of the Catholic Worker movement and editor of its newspaper lived among the poor, refused to participate in air-raid drills, and preferred Cesar Chavez to Bebe Rebozo. But there is more to the "right" than a dollar bill stretching from the DuPonts to Ronald Reagan, just as the "left" is something greater than the bureau-building and bomb-dropping of Roosevelts and Kennedys. Maybe, just maybe, Dorothy Day had a home, if partially furnished...

Anti-war presidential candidate Ron Paul says his campaign is about "restoring the vanishing American dream." And he is criticizing what he calls "the cartel controlling the banking and monetary system" in the United States. Fresh off his third-quarter fundraising surprise of $5 million, Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul says the libertarian "revolution" he has started is growing across America. Paul told conservative activists at the "Defending the American Dream Summit" in Washington, DC, that the conference would be more aptly called the "Defending the Vanishing American Dream Summit." The Texas congressman said his Republican rivals often talk about a "flat...

Just two years ago, conservatives were in a triumphalist mood. George W. Bush’s supporters trumpeted him as the man who had won more popular votes for president than anyone else in the history of the Republic. With Republicans also adding to their majorities in both houses of Congress, America seemed to have become, as The Economist’s Adrian Wooldridge and John Micklethwait dubbed her in the title of their 2004 book, The Right Nation. No one would have anticipated that in January 2007 a cover story in Commentary would be asking, “Is Conservatism Finished?” There were conservative pessimists—especially among the few...

Anyone who believes that opponents of Muslim extremism are necessarily defenders of tolerance should see my e-mails from last week. I strongly condemned the violent reaction of many in the Islamic world to the now-notorious cartoons of Mohammed printed in a Danish newspaper, but also stressed that the cartoons were wrong, that Muslims had a case and that as a Christian I have little in common with western secularism. There was much support, but to hundreds of others I was either an idiot or a liar. How ironic that alleged defenders of free speech should abuse a journalist for, well,...

One of the “lost causes” to which libertarians are attached—and one of the most important—is that of the “isolationist” Old Right. As used by the late Murray Rothbard, among others, the term “Old Right” refers to a loose coalition opposed to the New Deal in both its domestic and foreign aspects. While not following a strict party line, Old Rightists largely spoke from the ground of classical liberalism and classical republicanism. This earned them epithets like “conservative” and “reactionary” since those two outlooks were rooted in actual American life. Having something to conserve made them “conservatives”—a terrible thing from the...

One of the “lost causes” to which libertarians are attached—and one of the most important—is that of the “isolationist” Old Right. As used by the late Murray Rothbard, among others, the term “Old Right” refers to a loose coalition opposed to the New Deal in both its domestic and foreign aspects. While not following a strict party line, Old Rightists largely spoke from the ground of classical liberalism and classical republicanism. This earned them epithets like “conservative” and “reactionary” since those two outlooks were rooted in actual American life. Having something to conserve made them “conservatives”—a terrible thing from the...

NOTE: On July 27, 2003, The Dallas Morning News announced that Howard Dan Smoot, former FBI agent and conservative activist, had died at a Tyler, Texas, hospital on Thursday, July 24. The following article, taken from The New American, is a review of Smoot's autobiography. The review itself is a mini-biography of this pioneer conservative spokesman. BOOK REVIEW Reprinted with permission from The New American magazine, March 7, 1994People Along the Way: The Autobiography of Dan Smoot, Big Sandy, TX: Tyler Press, 1993, 306 pages, paperback. What is it that marks a man for success? Why is it that only...

November 7, 2002 ONE CHEER FOR THE REPUBLICANS by Thomas Fleming The Emerging Democratic Majority has to be the most hapless title of the decade. The New Republic's John Judis (or his publisher) had obviously timed the book to coincide with the Democratic Party's stunning congressional gains in the mid-term elections. If Scribners hasn't remaindered the book by now, they had better move quickly. As a leftist, Judis used to be a perceptive social critic, but as a left-liberal, he cannot see beyond the end of the New Republic's masthead. The old Judis knew that liberalism was a bankrupt ideology...