Free Republic

Diss Establishment You had to feel bad for Bush. McCain’s complaints about the role of money in politics were proving so magical that even New Jersey Senate candidate Jim Florio–than whom no one has less standing to complain about rigged political processes–wanted a piece of the action. Florio gave a lecture at Princeton in which he attacked his primary opponent Jon Corzine simply for having more money than he did, and promised to "wreck the system that is currently in place that is putting so much emphasis on money." Like most charismatic political crusades, McCain’s antiestablishment shtick either sings to ...

The Bunker McCain’s Money There is something deliciously appropriate about William Kristol’s hysterical embrace of Sen. John McCain. Kristol and McCain have for some time been two of the most pernicious figures in American politics. They fell in love last year as the bombs were dropping on Belgrade. Every 15 minutes or so one or the other would be on the box demanding the death of yet more Serbs and the introduction of "ground troops." For some years now Kristol had been searching for some larger-than-life man who would succeed in realizing his puerile dream of "national greatness." McCain clearly ...

In the Evil Compound "It seems the Council will not discuss Iraq today," an annoyed journalist from the Middle East said to me as I made my way to the United Nations Security Council chamber. It was Jan. 20, and Sen. Jesse Helms was visiting the Security Council at the invitation of Richard Holbrooke, the smooth-talking U.S. ambassador to the world body. "They are having a voluntary inquisition session led by an old man." Helms–who lunched with top UN officials at the Waldorf Astoria after addressing the Council–has of course been the Senate’s most outspoken critic of the UN and ...

The hills are alive with the sound of humbug Politics OLD the gluhwein! Cancel the skiing holiday, darling: St Anton's out. And waiter, take back the sachertorte and the wienerschnitzel and hurl it into the strasse. Rip down those erotic Klimts, students of Europe, and let's show the Austrians we really care. Let's show Vienna what we think of the disgraceful way they have decided to run their own country. Lord Hurd, hand back that shocking green loden coat to the Tyrolean peasant from whom you bought it; and I cannot believe Lord Sainsbury will allow his shelves to be ...

To be Absolutely Frank Would the U.S. Go to War Over Austria? by Francis X. Rocca Jörg Haider has said that Waffen SS veterans deserve "honor and respect," that the Third Reich had "an orderly employment policy," and that the Nazi concentration camps were "punishment camps." By themselves these statements ought to make him only slightly less respectable than Pat Buchanan. Haider has apologized for the remarks. He has made PR visits to Israel, Washington (where he visited the Holocaust Museum and met with the Congress on Racial Equality), and New York (where he appeared on stage at a Martin ...

Retort From New Hampshire Dubya connects while McCain imitates Fred Tuttle. by Mark Steyn We were at the Elks Lodge in Littleton and George Dubya Bush was working our table. And by "working" I don't mean the Steve Forbes glassy-eyed "Hmm. Mark. That's an interesting name. How do you spell it? M-A-R-K? Hmm" receiving-line routine. Dubya is a busy guy -- speeches to give, foreign countries to mispronounce -- but he gives effortlessly and generously, rubbing the small of my assistant's back, and locking her mom in a clinch at least thrice as long as any of his TV debate ...

Clinton Scandals, Stage III: The Buff Moment by Ron Rosenbaum What the hell was that all about? I think we may have just arrived at Stage III in the Natural History of National Scandals: Call it the Huh? Moment. It’s exactly two years after the Monica feeding frenzy first exploded, two years since the Presidency of Bill Clinton seemed to hang by a thread, virtually driven from the White House by Matt Drudge. And now it’s exactly one year after the Senate trial, after the whole bad-taste carnival of a case wound up in the gilt-encrusted Senate Chamber, a place ...

The Cast-Iron Age Charles S. Maier's Story of the long 20th Century Gustav Seibt There are amazingly few interpretations offered for the history of the 20th Century. The most successful was the term the "short" 20th Century, offered by Eric Hobsbawm, which covers the epoch from 1914/17 to 1989. This term has the conciseness of a continuous and above all clear history with a start and an end, between the primal catastrophes of the First World War and the Soviet experiment on humanity at the beginning and the victory of the liberal world market and representative democracy at the ...

Waking to a false dawn of freedom without duty It was a great circus and a terrific party; but now what are we going to do with this shiny new century of ours? All you need is love, they sang in the dome as the new year arrived. In the clichés that rained down with the fireworks, the invocations of peace and tolerance, we heard once again the echo that has sounded since the enlightenment, the belief that reason and progress will dispel prejudice and bring about universal brotherly love. We know now that this optimism was facile. The ...

Churchill’s Greatness by Leo Strauss, for the Editors The convention of selecting a man of the year, decade, or century is one of the more annoying features of the modern age. But one has to live in one’s time. And in this case, we are happy to observe the convention, because it offers us the occasion to honor what deserves to be honored, and to recall what deserves to be recalled. Winston Churchill is the man of our century. The character of his greatness has never been more concisely limned than in these remarks by the political philosopher Leo Strauss ...

Freud and a Century of Psychobabble Joseph Sobran He never lets you down. A reporter asked: "How much of the pain you went through last year was self-inflicted and how much due to excesses by other people – political, and Mr. Starr's excesses, sir?" Clenching his jaw, Bill Clinton replied snappishly: "Well, the mistake I made was self-inflicted, and the misconduct of others was not." Clinton was guilty only of a "mistake," victimizing only himself, while Kenneth Starr and the Republicans were guilty of injurious "misconduct." Presidents have to make many tough decisions, such as whether to drop their trousers ...

Freud and a Century of Psychobabble Joseph Sobran He never lets you down. A reporter asked: "How much of the pain you went through last year was self-inflicted and how much due to excesses by other people – political, and Mr. Starr's excesses, sir?" Clenching his jaw, Bill Clinton replied snappishly: "Well, the mistake I made was self-inflicted, and the misconduct of others was not." Clinton was guilty only of a "mistake," victimizing only himself, while Kenneth Starr and the Republicans were guilty of injurious "misconduct." Presidents have to make many tough decisions, such as whether to drop their trousers ...

The entire planet is turning middle class - but beware of the barbarians A bourgeois world An intelligent observer, writing before Christmas in 1899 about the prospect of the coming century, would have missed some very important developments, particularly the technological advances of the past 60 years, but others he might well have foreseen. Contemporary commentators did foresee the prospect of a Russian revolution, the threat of a German attempt to dominate Europe, the decline of the British Empire, the emergence of the United States as the world's leading power, the development of the automobile industry, the invention of ...

'The conflict in Chechnya is full of paradoxes and distorted parallels with Stalingrad - and the civilians are likely to pay the same terrible price' When Russian officers talk of turning Grozny into a huge bomb crater, they seem to forget their own history. In 1942 the Luftwaffe's massive air raids on Stalingrad turned the city into the perfect killing ground where the Red Army was able to ambush its Wehrmacht attackers. The present conflict in Chechnya is full of paradoxes and distorted parallels with the past. Grozny and the Maikop ollfields had been Hitler's real objective in the ...

My father had two prized possessions: a scrapbook full of newspaper clippings about the Irish Catholic who didn't make it to the White House in 1928, and a huge framed photo of the Irish Catholic who did in 1960. J.F.K. once joked that after Al Smith lost to Herbert Hoover, whose slogan was "A vote for Smith is a vote for the pope," the New York governor had to cable the pope: "Unpack." President Kennedy added that after he refused to help the U.S. Catholic bishops get federal aid for parochial schools, the pope cabled him: "Pack." Jack Kennedy's ...

"It is scarcely the same thing to put a man on the moon as to put a bone in your nose." Now, before you think Pat Buchanan has stumbled on a new applause line, this point was actually made a few years ago by the late William Henry III. A Time magazine theater critic and essayist, Henry wrote a wonderful book called In Defense of Elitism. Sadly, he died — at the age of 44 — just before it was published, so it got less attention than it justly deserved. I am invoking Henry because last Friday I wrote ...

George Szamuely THE BUNKER Laws of Return Liberal outrage invariably follows a familiar, dishonest trajectory. And nothing is more familiar and dishonest than the stodgy old New York Times. Last week the Times ran a profile of Jorg Haider, leader of Austria’s right-wing Freedom Party, now–following October’s elections–the country’s second largest party. The reporter made the obligatory horrified shiver as he pompously proclaimed that Haider’s "appeal against ‘overforeignization’…carries connotations of Goebbels." But what can one expect? Haider is an Austrian. And Austrians, as we are often enough told, are a morally retarded, not to say sinister, people. "The lingering suspicion ...

Why is Steve Forbes running? The richest guy in the race is the only Republican bigshot who's getting poorer The Gun Owners of New Hampshire dinner is always a fun affair, but especially in a presidential year. Four of the six Republican candidates were there, along with assorted state bigwigs, plus various sponsors from Smith & Wesson to Pete's Gun and Tackle Shop in Hudson, N.H. Five members of the Gun Owners' Action Campaign of Massachusetts were invited to take a bow, which they did, to tepid applause. "They're the last five gun owners left in Massachusetts," scoffed the ...

George W. Bush is taking it on the chin, on grounds that he is not the brightest bulb. But whence comes this idea that the president must be the smartest cookie in the land? It dates back to the New Deal, when central planning became fashionable. Central planning assumes the government -- particularly the head of state -- knows more than anyone else. Shouldn't freedom lovers question this assumption? Clinton has played the smarty-pants chief executive very well. Recall how the press swooned, just after the 1992 election, when he gathered all the country's policy "experts" (read: left-wingers) in ...

Fourteen months ago in this space I wrote that Gov. George W. Bush of Texas would be our next president. He has the name, the convention delegates (Texas and Florida, where his brother is governor, have 221 of the 996 delegates needed to nominate), and the Rolodex needed to get the nomination. Then the voters in November will render the final negative judgment on the Clinton/Gore ethic, and Bush will win. What’s not to like? It is still the likely outcome. After all, Bush has raised a $60-million war chest, assembled a credible group of advisers, and is laying out ...