Free Republic

One hundred years ago, Woodrow Wilson was leading a counterrevolution against the Constitution. Unfortunately, he was doing it from the White House, as President of the United States. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Wilson was one of the early leaders of the so-called Progressive Movement, which was an open conspiracy against the Constitution from the start. Former President of Princeton University, he had the haughty attitude of superiority that marks so-called “Progressives” to this day. He was so sure he was so much smarter than the Founding Fathers, who laid the careful foundations of the...

It has been said a number of times in recent years that the U.S. is undergoing a period of flux, a state of rapid churning on the political-social level with any number contradictory trends appearing and vanishing while few permanent changes are evident. After 2013, this may no longer be the case. Events of this past summer indicate that a new political paradigm is settling in -- one in no way friendly toward American life as we now understand it. This new system was outlined by Dr. Angelo Codevilla in his 2010 book, The Ruling Class. Codevilla saw clear signs...

One of the leading lights of the science fiction world, editor and author Frederik Pohl, passed away this weekend after a career that defined the genre for decades... Pohl was known for his mind-bending, often satirical novels (many co-authored with longtime collaborator C.M. Kornbluth), his editing acumen, his science fiction criticism, and his witty, fascinating blog, which he was updating right up until his death...

Alas, Brave New Babylon By Matt Bracken 1. THE REGAL INN MOTOR LODGE I used to be a history teacher at a private Christian school in Louisiana. I was in my mid-thirties then, unmarried and unattached. It was June and I was on a road trip, cruising up Interstate 81 through the northeastern corner of Tennessee in my Maxima. I was going to spend the month in Pennsylvania, hiking another 300 miles of the Appalachian Trail. The trail ran 2,200 miles from Georgia to Maine, and over previous summers I’d hiked it in sections, from south to north. After a...

It was too little, too late. Washington Post correspondent Dan Balz, whose new book Collision 2012 provides in-depth reporting and analysis of the last presidential election, says the Romney campaign’s failure to humanize Mitt Romney was an important factor in sealing the candidate’s loss. Balz tells “The Fine Print” that the more he reported on the campaign, the more “baffled” he became by the Romney team’s “inability to humanize Mitt Romney throughout the entire campaign.” ...

Marilyn Monroe called Jackie Kennedy at the White House and confessed she was having an affair with her husband, to which the First Lady responded 'that's great... I'll move out and you'll have all the problems,' according to an explosive new book. In 'These Few Precious Days: The Final Year of Jack with Jackie,' author Christopher Andersen claims Jackie 'knew everything' about Jack's cheating and turned a blind eye, but his relationship with Marilyn 'seemed to bother her the most.' And she was right to fear the bombshell actress, because Marilyn's sights were firmly set on becoming the President's second...

The surrender of General Cornwallis at Yorktown, 1781 Photo: courtesy Library of Congress Britain’s loss of America in the War of Independence (1775-1783) is typically attributed to the failings of its key political and military decision makers who were, in Andrew O’Shaughnessy’s words, “associated with opposition to progress and with attempting to introduce an authoritarian style of government”. They have, he writes, become cartoon figures of incompetence and mediocrity in a story with an inevitable ending, “as history progresses towards modernity”. Not any more. In this fascinating, well written and extensively researched study of 10 of those British decision makers...

Reza Aslan, a religious scholar with a Ph.D. in the sociology of religions from the University of California and author of the new book, “Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth,” went on FoxNews.com’s online show Spirited Debate to promote his book only to be prodded about why a Muslim would write a historical book about Jesus.

Reza Aslan, author of the new book, “Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth” has been interviewed on a host of media outlets in the last week. Riding a publicity wave, the book has surged to #2 on Amazon's list. Media reports have introduced Aslan as a “religion scholar” but have failed to mention that he is a devout Muslim. His book is not a historian’s report on Jesus. It is an educated Muslim’s opinion about Jesus -- yet the book is being peddled as objective history on national TV and radio. Aslan is not a trained historian.

I am starting "The Guns of August: The Pulitzer Prize-Winning Classic About the Outbreak of World War I"

What can literary fiction teach us about recent revelations that the National Security Agency has aggressively been gathering massive amounts of data on American citizens? The novel one usually turns to, of course, is George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, with its terrifying vision of the Thought Police. Even President Obama, in response to questions about the NSA, has been forced to deny that the government has engaged in “Big Brother” tactics. Orwell’s book, however, isn’t the most compelling or accurate literary prediction of modern surveillance. That award goes to a less obvious title: J.R.R Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Tolkien’s most...

By the end of last week, "The Cuckoo's Calling," by the debut mystery novelist Robert Galbraith, was as good as dead. Bookstores with unsold copies on hand were contemplating shipping them back to the publisher. Reviews, while generally positive, had tapered off. According to Nielsen BookScan, which tracks about 85 percent of print sales, only about 500 copies had sold in the United States since the book went on sale in April. Then J K Rowling, easily one of the most bankable authors on the planet, admitted over the weekend to The Sunday Times of London that she — and...

By now almost everyone will have heard the news — J.K. Rowling, the author of the "Harry Potter" series of books and one of the most successful writers ever, published a low-selling but highly praised detective novel under the name Robert Galbraith earlier this year. The story was broken last night by Richard Brooks, the arts editor of the UK's Sunday Times. It's clearly a huge scoop — but how exactly did Brooks manage to crack the literary world's best-kept secret?

Mark Levin's new book - "The Liberty Amendments: Restoring The American Republic"

James O’Keefe is back. His new book Breakthrough chronicling his undercover video takedowns of ACORN, NPR, and local election officials who ignore voter fraud is being published today. He also has a new video out that should embarrass two companies who distribute government-paid-for “Obamaphones” to people who claim they lack cellular service. Company reps are seen handing them out to O’Keefe allies who say they will sell them for drug money, to buy handbags, or to pay their bills. No objection is heard. O’Keefe will appear on tonight’s O’Reilly Factor to discuss just how much of a scam the $2.2...

Conservatives have long suspected there is discrimination against conservative professors in academia, and now there is evidence to prove it. Sociology professor Neil Gross, a self-described liberal, reveals the results of surveys showing this bias in his new book, Why Professors are Liberal and Why do Conservatives Care? Sociologist George Yancy asked professors if they would be more or less likely to hire someone if they were a Republican, evangelical or fundamentalist. Three-quarters said political affiliation would not affect their hiring decision. But the one-quarter that did say it would influence their decision virtually all said they would favor a...

OSLO, NORWAY: It may sound like an unlikely No. 1 best-seller for any country, but in Norway — one of the most secular nations in an increasingly godless Europe — the runaway popularity of the Bible has caught the country by surprise. The Scriptures, in a new Norwegian language version, even outpaced "Fifty Shades of Grey" to become Norway's best-selling book. The sudden burst of interest in God's word has also spread to the stage, with a six-hour play called "Bibelen," Norwegian for "the Bible," drawing 16,000 people in a three-month run that recently ended at one of Oslo's most...

It is not really news that Victor Davis Hanson has written another outstanding and eye-opening book. He has done that before and repeatedly, on a variety of subjects. The subject of his latest book, "The Savior Generals" is given in the subtitle: "How Five Great Commanders Saved Wars That Were Lost— From Ancient Greece to Iraq." As both a military historian and a classicist scholar, Victor Davis Hanson is one of the few people qualified to cover such a wide sweep of history. As someone whose depth of knowledge and insight are already familiar to readers of his syndicated column,...

Untitled by Mark Levin [Hardcover]

EDITOR'S NOTE: For the last half of the twentieth century, Antony Flew (1923-2010) was the world's most famous atheist. Long before Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris began taking swipes at religion, Flew was the preeminent spokesman for unbelief.However in 2004, he shocked the world by announcing he had come to believe in God. While never embracing Christianity—Flew only believed in the deistic, Aristotelian conception of God—he became one of the most high-profile and surprising atheist converts. In 2007, he recounted his conversion in a book titled There is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His...