Free Republic

Charles Blow After November’s Republican rout, and after Republican Party identification hit a record low and the party’s approval rating reached a near-record low, many liberals openly hoped that the G.O.P. and its conservative tenets would go the way of the Whigs. Au contraire. A series of recent Gallup polls has actually detected an uptick in conservative sentiment across a broad range of measures. For example: • The party identification gap between Democrats and Republicans is now the smallest it has been since 2005. • There is a “renewed desire” for government to promote traditional values. • An August report...

This week I attended the Washington premiere of Michael Moore's "Capitalism: A Love Story." It was my first trip ever down the red carpet, and I was a bit disappointed that "Entertainment Tonight" wasn't there to comment on my wardrobe (black jacket over open-collared tattersall shirt) or get my reaction to the film ("Entertaining propaganda -- * *.") But, hey, it's not every day you get to watch a documentary about the housing crisis and Wall Street greed while sitting across the aisle from Frank Raines, the ousted chairman of Fannie Mae. Frank didn't stick around for the big after-party....

Bachmann focused her 15-minute speech on legislation authored by Paul in the House to audit the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve Transparency Act lists Bachmann as a co-sponsor, and the Congresswoman's call that the Federal Reserve, "Should be about protecting the soundness of our dollar, not inflating it, and not destroying it," drew chants of "End the Fed," in the crowd. In her introduction of Representative Paul, Bachmann lauded the former GOP presidential candidate, who is now joined by Bachmann in his "Thursday Liberty Luncheon" in D.C. - a luncheon in which issues of monetary policy and getting more liberty...

Asked why she attracts such scorn, Bachmann says it's a combination of sexism and envy. "They want to make sure no women, no woman becomes president before a Democrat woman," she says, "and so they're doing everything they can to, I think, sabotage women like Sarah Palin, perhaps women like myself, or similarly situated women, to make sure that we don’t have a prominent national voice." An answer that suggests a shot at the White House is within her ambitions. The mention of Palin, that other pin-up of the immoderate right, is not surprising. But actually Bachmann's views on healthcare,...

That the political body, like the animal, is liable to violent diseases, which, for a time, baffle the healing art, is a truth which we all acknowledge, and which most of us lament. But as most of the disorders incident to the human frame are the consequence of an intemperate indulgence of its appetites, or of neglecting the most obvious means of safety; so most of the popular tumults which disturb government arise from an abuse of its blessings or an inattention to its principles. A man of a robust constitution, relying on its strength, riots in gratifications which weaken...

In light of the present conditions plaguing our country and what seems to be the disintegration of the Republican Party, Conservatives have been on suicide alert - all the way from the top to the bottom. As well as being ostracized from their own party, Conservatives have been labeled and slandered by the Democratic Left and its powerful Mainstream Media allies. For their ideals of moral accountability and responsibility, Conservatives are also despised by the socially dependent masses. In the midst of the current crisis – or rather, crises - and lack of conservative leadership, Rush Limbaugh has been appointed...

I have a nightmare. I have a nightmare that sometime before the 2010 elections, the scales will fall from your eyes and you will see us as we really are. I have a nightmare that you will read C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters and realize that it is not fiction. I have a nightmare that you will read Plunkitt of Tammany Hall and get firsthand instruction in how we steal elections. I have a nightmare that you will read Machiavelli’s The Prince and realize that we got there way ahead of you. I have a nightmare that you will...

When originally endeavoring to write an approximately 800-word opinion piece on Glenn Beck, I hadn’t taken into account what a truly difficult task it would be. I’ve no desire to alienate some of my many friends on the right currently embracing Beck. But I do have this terrible habit of usually speaking my mind. Glenn Beck deserves credit for what he is doing to hurt Obama — there is no question about that. But in thinking about the man overall as a media figure today, one allegedly aligned with the right, I also have serious concerns. I tried to do...

"We don't believe that human nature is perfectible; we're suspicious of government efforts to fix problems because often what it's trying to fix is human nature, and that is impossible. It is what it is. But that doesn't mean that we're resigned to any negative destiny. Not at all. I believe in striving for the ideal, but in realistic confines of human nature... The opposite of a common-sense conservative is a liberalism that holds that there is no human problem that government can't fix if only the right people are put in charge. Unfortunately, history and common sense are not...

German voters re-elected Chancellor Angela Merkel on Sunday and allowed her to ditch the center-left Social Democrats from her government and form a coalition with her preferred partner, the pro-business Free Democratic Party, instead, according to reliable projections. German Chancellor Angela Merkel won a second term in Sunday's federal election and will be able to form a government with the pro-business Free Democratic Party (FDP), dumping the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) with which she ruled since 2005 in an uneasy coalition, projections showed. She will have a comfortable center-right majority in the Bundestag lower house of parliament with an...

Merkel 'Heads For' New Coalition Angela Merkel said she wanted to be a chancellor "for all Germans" Chancellor Angela Merkel has been returned to power in Germany, exit polls suggest, after her conservative bloc won more than 33% of the vote. Mrs Merkel told supporters they had achieved "something magnificent", but said she wanted to be a chancellor of all Germans at a moment of crisis. Mrs Merkel's bloc now looks set to form a centre-right alliance with her preferred partner, the pro-reform FDP. She says the alliance will get Germany out of its worst crisis in 60 years. Her...

Sam Tanenhaus has just published a short book entitled The Death of Conservatism. Tanenhaus, who is the editor of both the New York Times Book Review and the paper’s Week in Review section, is a very intelligent man and a very good -writer; the author of a splendid biography of -Whittaker Chambers, he has been working on a similar volume about William F. Buckley Jr. for a decade or more. His new work, which is an outgrowth of an article he published earlier this year in the New Republic, assumes a more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger tone as it engages in a rhetorical autopsy...

COMMON SENSE CONSERVATISM Written by Sarah Palin Thursday, 24 September 2009 [Text of speech delivered at the CLSA Pacific Markets Conference in Hong Kong on September 23, 2009] You can call me a common-sense conservative. My approach to the issues facing my country and the world, issues that we'll discuss today, are rooted in this common-sense conservatism... Common sense conservatism deals with the reality of the world as it is. Complicated and beautiful, tragic and hopeful, we believe in the rights and the responsibilities and the inherent dignity of the individual. We don't believe that human nature is perfectible; we're...

Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and the 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee, delivered her first major international speech outside North America Wednesday in Hong Kong at an investor conference. The speech was closed to the media, but The Wall Street Journal reviewed a recording of the event. Here are some excerpts on various topics, from death panels to Chinese human rights.

Irving Kristol, Darwin Doubter, RIP If you’re ever given a choice between seeing one of two doctors about a health concern, with all else about them being apparently equal, you’d be well advised to choose the older one. Oh but won’t the young guy have all the latest techniques and therapies at his disposal, fresh from med school? Maybe or maybe not. What’s more likely, and more important, is that the seasoned practitioner will have wisdom and experience of the human condition. So too in the political world, where on the conservative side of the spectrum you have “neocons,” “paleocons,”...

The short story His TwitterI am going to give this guy the benefit of the doubt because twitter is a hard format to get your point across. But most of his twitter was mundane. In reading his comments, it seems there was a commonsense approach in Palin's speech. It seems from the twitter, that most of the speech was not earth shattering. But if she did say we needed to be cooperative with China when it came to the economic scuffle on the tires, it would be interesting to see what the full comments were. On the topic of...

If Matt Latimer’s new book had been released a few weeks ago, the Tea Party marchers would have hoisted him onto their shoulders and carried him -- laughing and cheering -- all the way up Capitol Hill. Laughing, because Latimer’s new book,Speech-less: Tales of a White House Survivor, renews conservatives’ license to chuckle at ourselves. Cheering, because it lifts the burden of George W. Bush from our shoulders. There are only two kinds of people who won’t like this book. First are the liberal media who tied the Gordian knot that binds conservatism to Bush. As Byron York reported in...

WASHINGTON – Former Miss California Carrie Prejean told a crowd of social conservatives Friday that she was a varsity jock in high school who got into beauty pageants just knowing that she is a strong woman with values. Her strength has carried her through the “junk” that followed after she responded during the Miss USA pageant that she believes marriage is between a man and a woman, she said. “There was something wrong with turning on the TV and seeing people mock me for my faith. For seeing people make fun of me for the answer I gave. Making fun...

...I could start a blog and fill it with such reflections without any trouble - as could most of you, I’m sure. Learning from our mistakes is the essence of being human - probably the major factor in the rise of Homo Sapiens. Don’t get too close to that mammoth or you won’t come home from the hunt. Going after a Saber Tooth cat alone is not a good idea if you want to pass your genes on to the next generation. Trial and error not only advanced human evolution, it forms the basis of modern science and has led...

it's Larry King. And he says to the columnist S. E. Cupp, "Would you admit there's racism of the black president? Obviously racism involved?" CUPP: No, I don't think so, and I think this speaks to sort of a generational gap. You know, my generation is not always so quick to jump to race. I think the Maureen Dowds and the Jimmy Carters tend to go there because that's what was always done, but my generation doesn't see racism in a Joe Wilson or racism at a tea party or a town hall. We're looking at the issues. These issues...

The huge “9/12” protest in Washington was the latest expression of discontent over President Obama’s leftward policy thrust. The discord is evident from the “Tea Party” movement to the chaotic “townhalls” on “healthcare reform.” The mainstream media and American left are thrown off by this, clearly wanting to dismiss it as a giant, petulant right-wing rant. Some “journalists,” as well as Democratic members of Congress, have described these genuinely concerned citizens in very demeaning terms, from “racists” to “Nazis.” I know why the left is dismissive: First off, it’s difficult to know if the protesters are mostly people who didn’t...

I hear that Rush Limbaugh is telling people that they have no choice but to drink the Republican Kool-Aid in the 2010 elections. Given the track record of the forces still in control of the Republican Party, this is tantamount to saying that we let the American republic go gently into the dark night of National Socialism.

The Laffer Curve is a simple idea: a government can’t raise taxes forever and expect to increase revenue along the way. Eventually you’re taking so much in taxes that people don’t have any reason to earn income. The argument is simple (and correct): if you have zero tax rate you get zero tax revenue. If you raise taxes just a bit, nobody will be discouraged from working, and you will collect some amount of revenue; therefore, the curve of revenue versus tax rate starts at zero and initially rises. But if the tax rate is 100%, nobody has any reason...

Cleon Skousen was a right-wing crank whom even conservatives despised. Then Beck discovered himOn Saturday, I spent the afternoon with America's new breed of angry conservative. Up to 75,000 protesters had gathered in Washington on Sept. 12, the day after the eighth anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks, sporting the now familiar tea-bagger accoutrements of "Don't Tread on Me" T-shirts, Revolutionary War outfits and Obama-the-Joker placards. The male-skewing, nearly all-white throng had come to denounce the president and what they believe is his communist-fascist agenda. Even if the turnout wasn't the 2 million that some conservatives tried, briefly, to...

How many times during the last eight years did you hear that George W. Bush was a dangerous right-wing extremist? Probably too many to count. What you heard less often were expressions of the deep reservations some conservatives felt about Bush's governing philosophy. Conservatives greatly admired Bush for his steadfastness in the War on Terror -- to use that outlawed phrase -- and they were delighted by his choices of John Roberts and Samuel Alito for the Supreme Court. But when it came to a fundamental conservative principle like fiscal discipline, many conservatives felt the president just wasn't with them....

High Profile Black Conservatives

We've been seeing so many great posts at American Thinker and praising them lately that it was inevitable that Thomas Lifson's great site would publish something with which we would disagree. And so it has with George Joyce's "Where's Sarah?" which was posted to AT's blog late Monday afternoon. Joyce, it seems, is so bummed by Mark Steyn's conjecture -- in an NRO op-ed that ObamaCare will probably get pushed through eventually -- that he's gettin' mighty nervous. Joyce wants Sarah Palin, warrior princess, to ride in on a white steed and save the day: In light of this remarkable...

I mean this in partial jest. Only black people can call each other the N word. Now, the only epithet that I'm aware of that is close to being on the same level of the N word is the C word for women. Don't ever use either word. However, the media's propaganda has gotten so over the top, and the politicians' pandering has too gotten over the top, that it's getting to the point to where "racist" is the epithet for conservatives.

The Next Reagan? Maybe By Peter Hannaford on 9.14.09 @ 6:08AM She's tall, blonde and looks you straight in the eye on meeting. You tell her about a local shipping port issue. She asks for more details and clearly understands the economic significance of the issue in the greater scheme of things. A few minutes later she's at the podium telling her personal story in an engaging way, then shifting to the very large problems facing the state. In clear, crisp fashion she tells her audience what she wants to do about them. She is Meg Whitman and she is...

What is a conservative? Allitt is not sure. This is odd because you’d think a man who wrote an entire book about conservatism would have provided an unambiguous definition. But Allitt is shy about this important matter, and, like Justice Stewart, is content to know it when he sees it. However, we cannot bypass this question—even though most readers will be satisfied that Allitt identifies all the usual conservative suspects—because when the alleged insult “You’re a conservative!” is hurled, we have to be know what it means. It cannot be that a conservative is one who wishes to see the...

RUSH: Rasmussen has released a poll. It's interesting. If we are to believe this, there can be no conclusion other than we are a conservative country. "'Progressive' is becoming more of a dirty word, but all political labels -- except 'being like Ronald Reagan' -- are falling into disfavor with many US voters, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. 'Liberal' is still the worst and remains the only political description that is viewed more negatively than positively. Being like Reagan is still the most positive thing you can say about a candidate. Just 15% of voters say...

Beleaguered Students, Bankrupt Pensions by: Sarah Carlsruh, September 10, 2009 This week’s Bloggers Briefing, usually a conservative affair, addressed the interests of two typically liberal groups: college students and union workers. Campusreform.org is an up-and-coming website that combines the social networking of Facebook with the informative powers of Ratemyprofessors. In the midst of overwhelmingly liberal college campuses, this site is a haven for conservative students. It gives them the opportunity to meet ideologically like-minded students, plan conservative events, and even blow the whistle on overly liberal college professors. Students, alumni, friends, and community members are welcome to join their campus’...

More Teachable Moments by: Malcolm A. Kline, September 09, 2009 The latest poll from the Chronicle of Higher Education shows that conservatives make up only 15 percent of faculty and staff at surveyed colleges and universities while most polls show that more Americans than ever before are identifying themselves as right-leaning. Given this dearth of Tories, it is hardly surprising that in the Washington Post outlook section on Sunday August 30, 2009, found two profs—One from Occidental College and the other from Harvard—who observed that “Ted Kennedy passed the liberal torch to Obama” and then urged “Let’s run with it.”...

The election of Barack Obama may actually be the best thing that ever happened to our nation, if he and the liberals don't destroy it first. Increasing evidence appears to indicate a significant shift to the right in this country, since Obama's victory last November. A recent Gallup poll shows that people who identify themselves as conservative outnumber liberals in every state in the Union. Witness the tea parties, the town hall meetings, and the rise in the sale of conservative books. Why the swing to the right? America is finally waking up and realizing that this country elected a...

I grew up in a storybook family. My parents, refugees from the urban jungle, felt like royalty in our little suburban home. They even referred to our lives as a fable, with a happily ever after ending. The problem for me was the disconnect between what my parents said and what I experienced. As a kid my life felt more like a Greek tragedy than a fairy tale. While my parents partied hardy, I was bored out of my gourd at home. When what you're told doesn't jive with your own eyes, you proceed in one of two directions. One...

September 03, 2009, 4:00 a.m. An Exaggerated DeathIn proclaiming the death of conservatism, Sam Tanenhaus misses several marks. By Peter Berkowitz In contrast to progressives, who converge in believing that the top priority of politics should be more equitable government distribution of opportunities and goods, conservatives differ, sometimes sharply, about the aims of politics. While almost all conservatives in America affirm the centrality of individual freedom, social conservatives concentrate on protecting religion and morality, economic conservatives on limiting government’s scope and size in accordance with free-market tenets, and neoconservatives on preserving the principles of sound government embodied in the...

In I Chronicles 13: 1-3 we read, "And David consulted with the captains of thousands and hundreds, and with every leader. And David said unto all the congregation of Israel, If it seem good unto you, and that it be of the LORD our God, let us send abroad unto our brethren every where, that are left in all the land of Israel, and with them also to the priests and Levites which are in their cities and suburbs, that they may gather themselves unto us: And let us bring again the ark of our God to us: for we...

My Announcement as a Candidate for Congress! Dear family and friends: I have decided to announce that I am a "Candidate" for the U. S. Congress, District 30, here in the State of Texas. I will make the "Announcement" public on 12 September 2009 at a Park located in Sunnyvale, Texas. Sunnyvale is a small town located just East of Mesquite, and I am inviting all my family and friends to be present. We will begin at 6p.m. in the evening and have the park scheduled until 10p.m., but I really feel that we can be through not later than...

A recent Sunday School lesson at our church pointed out that when making statements and plans for the future we should always say we will do this “if it is God’s will.” This brings to mind how much flack vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin took by members of the liberal media when she used the words “if it is God’s will” during a speech about a year ago. When John McCain announced that Ms. Palin was his running mate not many knew who she was. As time passed we learned some things about her. She was the governor of Alaska that...

TAKE ACTION... Filling out the form on the right and sending a letter to the Department of the Interior is the next stage of the "Drill Here, Drill Now" campaign. Here’s why:

Even if the former governor of Alaska fades away before the 2012 presidential election, David Frum thinks “the Palin problem is still with us.” And as long as that’s the case, Frum — the conservative pundit and former George W. Bush speechwriter — will be here, too. “Why were conservatives vulnerable to somebody like this?” Frum mused about Palin recently in an interview with POLITICO. “The things that prevented them from seeing her are all still there. And we see them during this health care debate.” It’s been seven months since Frum parted ways with National Review to launch his...

It must have all looked so appealing back in the winter.  Why not publish The Death of Conservatism by New York Times Book Review editor Sam Tanenhaus on September 1?  The book is, the Economist reviewer says, "an appeal for unilateral disarmament by the right."  It would appear just in time to celebrate the passage of health care reform, cap and trade, a robustly stimulated economy and the utter rout of the evil Republicans.  It all began when Tanenhaus published "Conservatism is Dead" in The New Republic in mid February.  He wrote that President Bush's presidency had failed because it...

Saw this article on supposed conservative intelletcual David Brooks and it was nauseating. This guy is the chief conservative columnist at the NYT and he makes Chris Matthews look like an amateur in his love for all things Obama. Among his greatest hits: That first encounter is still vivid in Brooks’s mind. “I remember distinctly an image of--we were sitting on his couches, and I was looking at his pant leg and his perfectly creased pant,” Brooks says, “and I’m thinking, a) he’s going to be president and b) he’ll be a very good president.” In the fall of 2006,...

Meacham: So how bad is it, really? Your title doesn't quite declare conservatism dead. Tanenhaus: Quite bad if you prize a mature, responsible conservatism that honors America's institutions, both governmental and societal. The first great 20th-century Republican president, Theo- dore Roosevelt, supported a strong central government that emphasized the shared values and ideals of the nation's millions of citizens. He denounced the harm done by "the trusts"—big corporations. He made it his mission to conserve vast tracts of wilderness and forest. The last successful one, Ronald Reagan, liked to remind people (especially the press) he was a lifelong New Dealer...

MAY ROBERT NOVAK REST IN PEACE! I wish we could organize a farewell column of folks in the streets of DC or anywhere in the USA for Mr. Novak! Organize! Organize!

When in 1962 Clinton Rossiter published a revised edition of Conservatism in America, he gave it the subtitle The Thankless Persuasion. A decade earlier, Raymond English had touched upon a similar theme in an article in The American Scholar titled “Conservatism: The Forbidden Faith.� Their point was that conservatism as a political philosophy runs against the American grain and thus will always play something of an incongruous and subordinate role in a revolutionary nation dedicated to equality, democracy, and restless change. While the conservative case for order, tradition, and authority may be useful as a corrective for the excesses of...

Mark Levin asked me to post the link to where you can download a pdf of the epilogue, 'A Conservative Manifesto,' from his book 'Liberty and Tyranny' from his web site. Feel free to spread the word. (For the benefit of the uninformed, the book is by a patriot. If you are a lib, it is far better than free government cheese. ;-)

(Excerpts from the introduction) I must have been forty years old before reading Frederic Bastiat's classic The Law. An anonymous person, to whom I shall eternally be in debt, mailed me an unsolicited copy. Reading Bastiat made me keenly aware of all the time wasted, along with the frustrations of going down one blind alley after another organizing my philosophy of life. "The Law" ... created order in my thinking about liberty and just human conduct. Bastiat's greatest contribution is that he took the discourse out of the ivory tower and made ideas on liberty so clear that even the...

excerpts.... When a portion of wealth is transferred from the person who owns it — without his consent and without compensation, and whether by force or by fraud — to anyone who does not own it, then I say that property is violated; that an act of plunder is committed. I say that this act is exactly what the law is supposed to suppress, always and everywhere. When the law itself commits this act that it is supposed to suppress, I say that plunder is still committed, and I add that from the point of view of society and welfare,...

Steve Ditko is one of the most innovative and influential comic book artists of all time. He co-created “The Amazing Spider-Man” (Ditko’s original and imaginative design for that character is an icon known world-wide) and worked on such well-known characters as The Incredible Hulk and Iron Man. His creative contributions to those characters during their early years helped secure their longevity and appeal over the decades. [SNIP] Originally included in the graphic novel, “Steve Ditko’s Static,” published by Robin Snyder and Steve Ditko in 1988, “In Principle” is chillingly more relevant today than it was when it was originally published....