Free Republic

I share some of the sentiments of Jay Nordlinger’s Corner post expressing confidence that some day in the future there may be hope for California conservatism. That’s why I continue to live in the house that I grew up in, despite vast changes in the nature of the rural community I was born into. But I would take sharp issue with Jay’s statement that current critics of the direction of the state are somehow either prejudicial or dispirited: A lot of us conservatives have long written it off. California is too changed: too brown, too illegal, too bloated, too listless....

After eight years of budget cutting, Britain is looking less like the rest of Europe and more like the United States, with a shrinking welfare state and spreading poverty. PRESCOT, England — A walk through this modest town in the northwest of England amounts to a tour of the casualties of Britain’s age of austerity. The old library building has been sold and refashioned into a glass-fronted luxury home. The leisure center has been razed, eliminating the public swimming pool. The local museum has receded into town history. The police station has been shuttered. Now, as the local government desperately...

If you love the United States Constitution, then by definition you love government. That's what the Constitution does. It creates a government. What we as Tea Partiers do not love is progressivism or any other movement and/or ideology that seeks to pervert the Constitution and build government that will control every aspect of our lives. Loving government doesn't mean loving big government. We do not love big out of control bloated disrespectful government. But anti-government means anarchy, and Tea Partiers are not anarchists. Anarchists do not love the United States Constitution. This is ground where we cannot under any circumstances...

Conservative syndicated columnist George Will wrote this week that Vice President Mike Pence has “become America’s most repulsive public figure.” Why does Will think Pence deserves this absurd slur? Apparently, the columnist has found the vice president guilty of the heinous crime of being a decent man.

You are driving through downtown, and you see a homeless woman standing on the corner. You think, "I hope she is getting some help." You drive on. There are two sources for help for that homeless woman: charity and welfare. Let's examine them, how they work, and their effects on her and the rest of us. First, charity. There are many charitable organizations in every locality, taking voluntary donations from private citizens, churches, and businesses and aiding people in need. But let's look at charity on a more personal level. Let's say you, sitting in your car observing the homeless...

Conservatives are keeping quiet about their beliefs. The dominant force in America and many other Western countries today is fear of the Left.This is a result of the fact that the most dynamic religion of the past 100 years has been neither Christianity nor Islam. It has been leftism. Whoever does not recognize this does not understand the contemporary world. Leftism — in its incarnations, such as Marxism, Communism, and socialism; expressed through egalitarianism, environmentalism, and feminism; in its denigration of capitalism and Western civilization, especially America and Israel; in its supplanting of Christianity and Judaism; through its influence on...

< snip of beginning> Goldberg’s answer is so simple it seems too easy, and yet so difficult it seems unachievable. We need to teach and experience gratitude for what we have been given, which means reacquainting ourselves with the philosophical and scientific roots of the Miracle and then passing them on to our posterity. So much is arrayed against this effort, and yet we Americans, we tribal Americans, do long to belong to the American tribe. In his pathbreaking book, Goldberg makes it clear all we need do to find our place is to understand that we are the beneficiaries...

Ok, I have to admit that he fooled me too.Liberal coffee and beverage corporation Starbucks has had a really, really tough week by anyone’s standards. The firestorm after the arrest of two black loiterers at a Philadelphia store led to the usual weeping and gnashing of teeth by racial grievance mongers who quickly bullied the chain into announcing a shutdown of around 8,000 of their stores for mandatory racial bias training.A viral video by a black man who goes by the handle Hotep Jesus made the rounds in which the man – whose real name is Bryan Sharpe –...

Fifty years separate us, now, from 1968 and the two momentous legacies of the then soon to ending failed presidency of Lyndon Johnson: The declaring of war on America’s supposed domestic ills in the form of the “Great Society” programs, and the aggressive military intervention in a real war in Vietnam. Both of these “wars” reflected the arrogance and hubris of the social engineer who believes that he has the power and ability to remake and direct society in his own preferred image. The Vietnam War still leaves a searing memory of a military conflict ten thousand miles away from...

The Atlantic‘s firing of Kevin Williamson over his views on abortion sent political Twitter abuzz this week. Conservatives and libertarians generally condemned the cowardice involved, and the swarming pushback from progressives captured the pitch-perfect drone of the hive mind.Perhaps there is a lesson here. Despite having achieved their goal, progressives felt it necessary with a torrent of widely-varying but equally flimsy rationales in support of the firing. Here is a handy guide to the seven most common (and dumbest) attempted defenses of the firing.1. National Review Doesn’t Hire Progressives. This response is based on the faulty premise that The...

The Golden State is losing its glitter, rapidly. California has the nation's highest poverty rate. homelessness is rampant. State officials are focused on protecting illegal immigrants from deportation rather than reversing the flight of the state's middle class. Actor and model Fabio, an immigrant, weighs in on California's decline.

I’m at a loss.What is the point of a social conservative movement that remains on the sidelines for the toughest and most important fights? What good are social conservative donors when they appear to concede the most important battles for religious liberty? One of the most significant races in the country — the Pennsylvania gubernatorial race — is happening right now. Yet, so far, the social conservative movement has paid it little attention. Why is this race important? The leading Republican candidate in the race, Scott Wagner, openly supports so-called SOGI “non-discrimination” legislation — code for discrimination against Christians — and opposes...

Conservatism is, in a sense, an acknowledgement of and a surrender to the truth. We conserve “what works,” those traditions, practices, and ideas that have long held the test of time—such as marriage being the union of one man and one woman, the idea that if a man doesn’t work, he shouldn’t eat, all men are created equal, life in the womb is real and precious—because they are rooted in the Truth... Because what is tried and true can sometimes be viewed as stale and boring, and because being moral is often difficult, conservatism is frequently presented with challenges that...

“Don’t you think this will be the year of the insurgent?“ Jeanne Ives said as she strolled across the lawn of the Illinois Statehouse. The state representative from Wheaton is challenging Gov. Bruce Rauner in the March 20 Republican gubernatorial primary. Rauner, who is self-funding his campaign, has more than $55 million in his war chest. Ives has raised about $3 million. Ives sees herself as leading a conservative insurrection against the governor. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that she uses military terms to describe this political fight. Ives was an Army officer and is a 1987 graduate of...

It’s been exactly a decade since William F. Buckley, Jr. died. Yet, surveying the ideological landscape, it feels more like a century. Watch an episode of his program “Firing Line,” and you’ll see what I mean. There, Buckley – in his uniquely aristocratic way – would debate guests on the issues of the day. Not try to shout each other down, or trot out a quick soundbite before three or four different people cross-talked over you, but actually debate. That may sound like a recipe for boredom, and perhaps by the cage-match mentality prevailing today, it was. But we’re talking...

I happened onto a piece by Bill Kristol in The Weekly Standard, wherein he links to "a short, powerful piece in National Review" by Rick Brookhiser, who "concludes that 'the conservative movement is no more. Its destroyers are Donald Trump and his admirers.'" I somewhat get the sentiment -- or at least I used to -- because during the GOP primaries, I fleetingly entertained a similar concern that Trump, whom I didn't consider a conservative, might undermine the conservative movement in the long run if elected. Presumably trying to console Brookhiser, Kristol writes: "Movements grow old. They eventually die....

Marion Le Pen gave her speech at CPAC today. My French is merely . . . aspirational, so I won’t opine on how representative it was of her as a political figure. And I have a warning for those who would warm to it uncritically. As my career grants me friendships with other conservatives across Europe, I notice the tendency in them and in myself to idealize or project hopes onto the conservatives in other nations. My Irish and English friends tend to be far more positive about Trump than I am. And I have been far more positive about...

National Watchdog Group Will Have Significant Presence at Conservative Grassroots Gathering – Including Two-day Livestream (Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today announced its participation as a major sponsor of the annual Conservative Political Action Conference ( CPAC), February 22-24, at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center, 201 Waterfront Street, National Harbor, MD. Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton is scheduled to appear on Sean Hannity’s Fox News program, which will be broadcast live from CPAC on Thursday, February 22, at 9 pm ET. Fitton will separately address CPAC attendees at 2:30 pm on Saturday. Judicial Watch will be broadcasting...

Headlines about liberal bias in higher education read like "The sun rises in the east." A weekend headline in the Boulder Daily Camera said "CU Boulder grapples with plummeting support of higher education among conservatives." The story analyzed a Pew Research study that showed right-of-center support for higher education dropping 18 points in just the past two years, with 58 percent of Republicans saying education has a negative impact on the country. Only 19 percent of Democrats feel the same. "CU administration is well-aware of the study's findings and agrees the results are a troubling sign of the times that...

I've just been reading on Breitbart a tirade against Bill Kristol, which features a comparison between this supposedly falling neocon star and the author's friend Tony, who landed in jail after stabbing his ex-wife's lover.  Just like Tony, who unsuccessfully tried to attract his divorced wife's attention, Bill, we are told, is going nuts in expressing his contempt for Donald Trump.  But like Tony, who in a fit of frustration destroyed his own life, Bill may be self-destructing as he disses a transformed conservative establishment. I'm not sure that this labored comparison works since I've no idea what the equivalent is in...