Free Republic

Don't look for any happy ending here. Or any ending. The debate over the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) can be expected to last as long as there are isolationists and interventionists arguing over American foreign policy -- that is, approximately forever. Few if any conflicts illustrate the tragic nature of history so well, for there were no simple choices in Spain. There were more than enough heroes and villains, not-so-innocent bystanders and gawkers galore -- along with an endless supply of impossible choices. No one's hands were Ivory Soap clean, but curiously enough none were hopelessly dirty. Time, the great...

The notion that Donald Trump is some new phenomenon on the political scene is sadly mistaken. Would that he were. His type has been seen before -- all over Latin America, which may explain why the United States has prospered, and even remained a republic, while much of the rest of the continent has seen dictatorships come and go. Just abandon the foundations of republican government -- like the rule of law under an independent judiciary -- and there's little to prevent our becoming a banana republic too. Our current president toys with ruling by executive decree every time Congress...

Leaning on his cane, the old boy walked out his front door, took in the morning light, and was surprised. That's when the realization hit him: The weather's turned. It's cool. He felt it, but couldn't quite believe it, not at first. It had been a light summer this year, with plenty of rain and cooling breezes. It hadn't been unbearable, like some he had known. But still it had been summer in these latitudes: hot. And now... Fall had taken him by surprise. It shouldn't have. It happens every year. And every year it still surprises him. The suddenness...

"I think this is going to take some time," our president warned last Saturday as he took off for a vacation on Martha's Vineyard, maybe because he felt he had to offer some explanation as Iraq collapsed along with his foreign policy in general. What was once Iraq is now divided, like ancient Gaul, into three parts -- Shi'a, Sunni and Kurdish -- all of which are themselves crumbling. So now Barack Obama tells us that it may take some time to put Iraq together again after it fell apart in record time once he withdrew American forces there in...

So there I was, reading a guest article in our newspaper here in Arkansas and nodding not just in agreement but admiration. And why not? For the guest writer was going right down the list of points I'd made over the years in favor of civil unions as an alternative to homosexual marriage. Well put, I thought. Right on, amen, hallelujah and selah! Few things are as pleasing as seeing one's own opinions repeated by others; they seem even more convincing when their glory is reflected in another's words. Attaway, brother! Ye-e-es! Such is human vanity, or at least that...

Ham and eggs, dictators and plebiscites, tyranny and sham elections, they all go together. So it was wholly to be expected, which means it was wholly a surprise to our ever-alert administration, when the latest tsar decided Crimea was ripe for the picking and sent in the Cossacks (sans identifying insignia for now). As usual in these matters, the local bullyboys, formally known in press reports as militias, backed up the not very well disguised Russian troops. With that little formality out of the way, Vlad the Annexer ordered a plebiscite (and its usual result) for immediate delivery, specifically...

An Italian exchange student once asked me what he should know in order to understand America. The best I could come up with on the spot was the U.S. Constitution, jazz and baseball. Later it would come to me that to study each of those only in the abstract, as just a rule book or a series of notes on a page, would be less than useful to someone trying to understand America. The notes would be there, but not the music. The rules of the game would be there, but not the spirit. That spirit cannot be appreciated...

"Law sharpens the mind by narrowing it." --Edmund Burke . . Our governor here in Arkansas now has vetoed not one but two anti-abortion bills that made it past the state legislature this session. One bill sought to protect the unborn starting at the 20th week of pregnancy. The other would go into effect after 12 weeks' gestation if a fetal heartbeat could be detected. Both are now law, passed over the governor's objections. The Hon. Mike Beebe is ordinarily the most reasonable and agreeable of men -- even if he is a lawyer by trade and a politician by...

What? Do even Latin American caudillos die? Apparently, according to the latest and last medical bulletin on the health (or lack thereof) of Hugo Chavez, perpetually re-electable president of Venezuela. No doubt many Venezuelans are grieving at the news that he has proven mortal. It ought to be quite a wake or celebration, depending on which Venezuelans are observing the occasion. No doubt those of both persuasions will be sincere, as many Russians mourned the death of their generalissimo when Stalin left this vale of tears he had done so much to make even tearier. While others breathed a (very)...

Something is terribly wrong. Used to be, I could safely attend the annual Delta show at the Arkansas Arts Center here in Little Rock with serene confidence that I would never agree with the judge's picks. It gave me the feeling, hollow as it might be, that I marched to a different drummer from the cognoscenti's. For my taste in such things has long been irreparably bourgeois -- middle-class, middlebrow, middlin' in general. Even verging on the sentimental, and maybe not just verging. Andrew Wyeth's "Christina's World," Edward Hopper's "Early Sunday Morning," Charles Demuth's "I Saw the Figure Five...

"Cry Havoc!, and let slip the dogs of war." -- Act III, Scene 1, Julius Caesar Not that you haven't noticed, Gentle Reader, but the world is coming apart. Again. Beginning with the Middle East, where, to put it as diplomatically as possible, all hell is about to break loose on Israel's border with Hamasland, aka Gaza. You can see war coming by the rockets' red glare, hear the bombs bursting in air as the first deaths are tallied. How many more before the hurly-burly's done, the battle's lost or won? Hundreds of explosive-laden rockets have been fired at random...

Today's column is drawn from Paul Greenberg's remarks October 27 accepting the Human Life Foundation's annual Great Defender of Life award: Life is just full of surprises. What's an old boy from Shreveport, La., doing talking at the Union League club in New York City? In a hall adorned with portraits of Mr. Lincoln and members of his cabinet during The War. Our newspaper, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, has got to be one of the few left in the country, if not the only one, that still devotes a full editorial page every January 19 to celebrating the birth of Robert...

What can this be approaching across the sands of Iraq? It can't be. It's not possible. It's not found in this unnatural habitat ... and yet there is. It shows the outward signs, including some of the innate strengths and inevitable weaknesses and distinctive eccentricities of that rarest of creatures in those Mesopotamian climes: democracy. It must be a mirage, like so many other fleeting signs of hope over the chaotic years in Iraq. And yet it betrays at least a couple of the characteristic traits of a lumbering democracy: a free election (at least by Iraqi standards) and a...

With deep apologies to, and selected quotations from, Finley Peter Dunne, creator of the immortal Mister Dooley, Irish barkeep and political commentator who first noted that politics ain't beanbag. "I'll have a double," called Aloysius J. Hennessey as he pushed through the swinging doors of Riley's Royal I.R.A. Vegetable Bar and Grill. Looking around to make certain he was the only customer in the place, Hennessey added: "Make that a round for everybody!" Mr. Riley, sole proprietor and entire staff, eyed his first visitor of the morning warily. "Oh, 'tis a great thing t'be on yer side iv the bar,"...

LITTLE ROCK -- Have you noticed? The closer Election Day comes, the more conservative some blue-dog senators sound. Till they turn almost Republican red. Consider the case of Blanche Lincoln here in Arkansas. By the time the primary is held in May, this state's senior senator could be speaking at Tea Party rallies. A headline on the front page of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette said it all: "Pressure on the rise for Arkansas' Lincoln/ Amid criticism, she chides party, Obama." To quote the story's lede: "U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln distanced herself from Democrats over and over last week. On Tuesday, the...

This evening we light the first candle on the Hanukkah menorah, for it's the first night of this minor eight-day Jewish holiday that's become a major one over the years. There are blessings to be recited, songs to be sung, latkes to be eaten . . . . But just what does Hanukkah celebrate? Answer: A successful Jewish revolt against a Syrian empire ruled by the Seleucid dynasty of Greek kings some 2,200 years ago. Well, not exactly. The revolt was not so much against the Syrian emperor, Antiochus Epiphanes, as against his attempt to impose Hellenistic culture on ancient...

The headline on the front page made it sound like big news: UN nuclear chief sets Iran inspection. So? Another year, another inspection by the sleepiest watchdog on the planet, the United Nations' own Maxwell Smart -- the one and only Mohammed ElBaradei of the International Atomic Agency and Office of General Permissiveness. Director ElBaradei has just been to Tehran making nice with Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, where the two held hands for a ceremonial photograph and agreed that the UN's inspectors would soon visit Iran's latest no-longer-secret nuclear processing plant. This one is dug into a mountain outside the holy...

Dear Old Friend, It was wholly a pleasure to hear your theory about where the South ends, probably because any theory about the South will get a conversation going around dinner tables, at barber shops, in graduate seminars on Southern history, and just about anywhere else in these talkative latitudes. Your theory is that the South ends where the last monument to the Confederate soldier can be seen. This would mean that Bentonville, up in the far northwest corner of Arkansas, and known far and wide as the capital of Wal-Mart, qualifies as Southern. This might comes as a surprise,...

Gosh, what a surprise: A committee of their fellow senators has decided that Chris Dodd and Kent Conrad did nothing unethical when they took out loans from Countrywide Financial on the kind of favorable terms not available to us mere mortals without their financial or political standing -- or a personal connection to the head of Countrywide. The very Select Committee on Ethics did recognize that the whole deal looked bad, and gave its colleagues a gentle pat on the wrist for creating "the appearance that you were receiving preferential treatment based on your status as a senator." But in...

Tuesday, September 11, 2001. A day full of shock, anger, fear. And confusion. The country was under attack. And at first it wasn't even clear who had attacked us. The identity of the attackers became clear even as the fires still raged: This was the work of the same bunch of terrorists who had tried to topple the Twin Towers back in 1993. Back then the killers had been treated as defendants in federal court, with all rights and privileges pertaining thereto. They would be convicted only after a lengthy and arduous trial. As if theirs had been not an...