Free Republic

The Democratic Party could soon be taken over by a leftist who has never formally been a member (even if he signed a pledge to govern as a Democrat should he make it to the White House). If it’s any consolation to Democrats, it’s a version of the same wrenching dislocation that has beset the center-left throughout the Western world. One reason Bernie Sanders winning the Democratic nomination is entirely imaginable is that it wouldn’t be a freakish occurrence outside the experience of other advanced democracies. In fact, it would be entirely consistent with the travails of traditional center-left parties...

A former Israeli armed forces chief who opinion polls show poses the toughest challenge to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's bid for re-election next year formally established a political party on Thursday. Details about Benny Gantz's Israel Resilience Party, leaked to local media after it was registered, give little indication of its ideological tilt. Along with preserving Israel as "a Jewish and democratic country", the party pledged unspecified changes to priorities in national security and the economy. Polling has predicted an easy win for Netanyahu in the April 9 election, with his rightist Likud party taking around 30 of parliament's 120...

With final results in from Sunday’s national elections in Italy, the depth of the defeat for the left can be fully appreciated with the resignation of the leader of the Democratic Party (PD) and the severely diminished presence of the center-left coalition in Parliament. According to the Italian media, elections left the PD “prostrate” while the center-left coalition itself has “disappeared” from the electoral map charting political predominance across Italy’s 20 regions.

Bolshevik Begats by: Malcolm A. Kline, May 07, 2008 If you wonder why your professors cannot let go of their pet theories no matter how badly they work out when practiced in the real world, you will find part of the answer in A Conservative history of the American Left by my predecessor, Daniel J. Flynn. “From persuasion to politics, politics to revolution, and revolution to a long march through the institutions, the Left’s methods for transforming society have evolved,” Flynn writes. “The ends, though, have remained more or less the same.” “A brotherhood of man, human perfection, complete equality,...