Free Republic

In the American Left’s vision of contemporary war, the West brings too many advantages in science, technology, and wealth. Why does Biden play Iranian poker with American and Israeli lives? Answer? He envisions war sort of like affirmative action, in which the less accomplished belligerent is allowed all sorts of concessions for the sake of equity. Israeli and American military capability, and particularly their missile defenses, are seen as unfair, almost like high achievers’ top SAT scores that are seen as unearned and used to privilege some over others and therefore must be countered or dropped. Given Iran’s and its...

By unleashing war in the Middle East and targeting Israel, Iran may soon learn that Israel, or America, or both might retaliate for a half-century of its terrorist aggression. The theocracy of Iran has been the world’s arch-embassy attacker over the last half century. So it has zero credibility in crying foul over Israel’s April 1 attacks on its “consulate” in Damascus and the killing of Iran’s kingpin terrorists of the Revolutionary Guard Corps there. Remember, the world was first introduced to the Iranian ayatollahs by their violent takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1980. Iranian surrogates next...

For over six months, the anti-Israel, pro-Hamas protests have accelerated, and now are predictably incendiary and violent. Recently, they have jumped the shark with unapologetic chants of “Death to America”. Or so a cheering crowd in Michigan chanted in homage to the late king of all Western-hostage-takers, the murderous Ayatollah Khomeini. And the huckster speaker revved them up by quoting Malcolm X that America is “one of the rottenest countries that has ever existed on this Earth.” (Does such a condemnation of fellow Americans presage mass reverse migration of unhappy Middle Easterners back to the West Bank, Gaza, and Iran?)...

Will Biden’s feebleness still earn him sympathy? Or will it devolve to the point that the public concludes that Joe Biden would not be able to keep any job in America—except the U.S. Presidency? We have seen enough of the Biden-Trump race so far to predict what lies ahead over the next seven months of the campaign. Currently, the polls are about dead even. Trump, however, for now enjoys small leads in the majority of the fickle swing/purple states that will likely decide the election. So here is what we should expect: BidenBiden has three major vulnerabilities and three major...

How odd it is that America is wasting billions of dollars hiring DEI czars and electing woke politicians, who so often accuse others of a multitude of sins, largely as a way of enriching themselves. When ideology replaces meritocracy or provides immunity from the consequences of illegal behavior, systemic mediocrity follows. Under toxic National Socialism, Stalinism, and Maoism, millions of cronies and grifters mouthed party lines in hopes that their approved ideology would allow them to advance their careers and excuse their lawbreaking. The same thing has happened with the woke movement and the now-huge Diversity/Equity/Inclusion conglomerate. Grifters and opportunists...

The long-awaited Great Fundamental Transformation finally got its moment, crashed, and now has torched the nation—middle-class Americans most of all. In 2021, Joe Biden was elected after a bitterly fought campaign that deposed the incumbent Donald Trump. Democrats eventually captured, for a time, both the House and Senate, ensuring the most left-wing government in modern American history. Americans were then set to witness a great experiment. For the first time in their lives, a truly radical socialist program would supposedly fundamentally transform the way America dealt with the border, immigration, the economy, race relations, foreign policy, energy, law enforcement, crime,...

<p>Why are those controlling President Biden using him to advance so much of a destructive agenda that it will likely end America as we know it?</p><p>If someone wished to destroy America, could he do anything more catastrophic than what we currently see and hear each day?</p>

What are we to conclude about these contradictory wars and American attitudes toward them? The more democratic and defensive the power, the more Americans support it—but only up to a point. When Russia invaded Ukraine, Americans overwhelmingly supported Ukraine—as they did with Israel after October 7. No wonder: Ukraine was surprise attacked by Russia, and Israel was by Hamas. It seemed an easy binary of good versus evil: both the attacked Ukraine and Israel are pro-Western. Both their attackers, anti-Western Russia and Hamas, are not. Now everything is bifurcating. And the politics of the wars in America reflect incoherence. Both...

In Obrador’s view any country that would open wide its border, welcome in 10 million foreign nationals, without legal sanction, without audit, without even processing, deserves the contempt he extends. In a recent 60 Minutes interview, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador—who prefers to be known as AMLO for short—issued to the Biden administration blackmail demands that sounded more like existential threats. AMLO warned the U.S. that the current influx of some 10 million illegal aliens through the southern border will most certainly continue—unless America agrees to his ultimatums. One, Obrador says the U.S. must now send $20 billion in...

From civilian casualties, the use of disproportionate force, and international biases, the mainstream narrative of the Gaza conflict often obfuscates the truth behind lies. "Occupied Gaza.” Prior to October 7, there were roughly two million Arab citizens of Israel but no Jewish citizens in Gaza. Gazans in 2006 voted in Hamas to rule them. It summarily executed its Palestinian Authority rivals. Hamas cancelled all future scheduled elections. It established a dictatorship and diverted hundreds of billions of dollars in international aid to build a vast underground labyrinth of military installations. So Gaza has been occupied by Hamas, not Israel, for...

At the nexus of most of America’s current crises, the diversity/equity/inclusion dogma can be found. The southern border has been destroyed because the Democratic Party wanted the poor of the southern hemisphere to be counted in the census, to vote if possible in poorly audited mail-in elections, and to build upon constituencies that demand government help. Opposition to such cynicism and the de facto destruction of enforcement of U.S. immigration law is written off as “racism,” “nativism,” and “xenophobia.” The military is short more than 40,000 soldiers. The Pentagon may fault youth gangs, drug use, or a tight labor market....

In the last four years, the Biden administration has violated every historical canon critical to ensuring legal immigration enriches the United States. Some 8 to 10 million illegal aliens from all over the world, as expected, have flooded across the border since Joe Biden took office. A demagogic candidate Biden, remember, in 2019 invited those massing at the southern border to “surge” into the United States without specifying they first needed legal sanction: “We immediately surge to the border all those seeking asylum.” In contrast, we know legal immigration is America’s great strength, but it has always depended on a...

A cynical public now expects any accused prominent leftist to remain unindicted, while any non-leftwing target will be indicted, convicted, and jailed—for the same alleged offenses. In 2011, then Homeland Security Advisor to President Obama, John Brennan, swore before Congress that drone-targeted assassination missions near the Pakistani border had not led to “a single collateral death.” That was an obvious lie with grave consequences, given that Brennan was sworn under oath and was one of the top officials in the US national security community. Yet there were no subsequent repercussions. In fact, the opposite occurred. Brennan was subsequently rewarded with...

Anytime ideology and dogma trump merit, logic, and safety, the result is predictably dangerous. America needs to recalibrate its priorities to protect the lives and aspirations of its citizens. The horrific murder of Laken Riley by a repeated felony offender and illegal alien Jose Ibarra, 26, a Venezuelan citizen, was preventable—had federal immigration laws simply been enforced by the Biden administration. When called out in his recent State of the Union address, President Biden referenced the deceased Ms. Riley. But Biden misidentified her as “Lincoln Riley”—the USC football coach! Biden only accurately noted that she “was killed by an “illegal.””...

The defense of those destroying democracy is that they are doing it to prevent others from doing what they would do, should they have been on the receiving end of exactly what they are now doing. Joe Biden has claimed that his opponents are assaulting democracy on the basis of the January 6, 2020, buffoonish riot. Aside from the fact that storming the Capitol Rotunda sometimes is apparently deemed permissible—as in the recent pro-Hamas takeover of it—or aside from the fact that disrupting a federal government proceeding is deemed exempt—as in the recent pro-Hamas throng that blocked the route of...

If Trump can praise those he defeats, call for unity, and campaign in 50 states in non-Republican strongholds, then he can win. President Joe Biden is declining at a geometric, not an arithmetic, rate. His cognitive challenges are multifaceted. His gait is shaky. His daily use of stairs now risks the chance of a tenure-ending fall. Even when he sticks to the teleprompter, he so slurs his speech, mispronounces words, and glides his syntax that at times he becomes as incomprehensible at the podium as he is unsteady in his step. He now speaks a strange language foreign and untranslatable...

Military specialist and historian Victor Davis Hanson said Barack Obama, who once expressed the desire to serve his third term “in my basement in my sweats” acting as Joe Biden’s puppet master, is doing just that and is in complete control of the United States. Hanson has a reputable background. He is a professor of Classics Emeritus at California State University, Fresno, and Senior Fellow in Residence in Classics and Military History at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He is also a renowned columnist for Tribune Media Services and teaches military history and classical culture courses at Hillsdale College.

Societies do not always collapse from a lack of wealth, invasion, or natural catastrophes. But they are so paralyzed by their fear that the road to salvation becomes too painful to even contemplate. "We can bear neither our diseases nor their remedies.” So shrugged the ancient historian Livy (59 B.C.- A.D. 17) of the long decline of Roman national character that, in his age, finally ended the Roman Republic. Like a patient whose medicine proves worse than the disease, Livy lamented that the Romans knew that they had become corrupt and lawless. But the very contemplation of the hard medicine...

As this year’s election nears, expect Russia! Russia! fantasies to heat up again to mask a failing administration and its indefensible record. Collusion about CollusionThe more candidate Trump in 2016 trolled the Clinton campaign (e.g., “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing, I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press”), the more the irate left bought into hysterical conspiracy theories. Finally, the left became completely unhinged after the 2016 victory. An Obama-era Pentagon lawyer published an essay exploring the chance for a military coup. Retired lieutenant colonels called...

We are entering a dangerous era in America. The left is waging lawfare with the implicit message to political opponents: either keep quiet or suffer the consequences. One state prosecutor and one civilian plaintiff have already won huge fines and damages from Donald Trump that may, with legal costs, exceed $500 million. Trump awaits further civil and criminal liability in three other federal, state, and local indictments. There are eerie commonalities in all these five court cases involving plaintiff E. Jean Carroll, Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, New York Attorney General Letitia James, federal special counsel Jack Smith, and Fulton...