Free Republic

With the midterm elections fast approaching, the panic over Iraq seems more intense than ever. That country, the thinking goes, is a hopeless mess, and there could be a precipitous American withdrawal, especially if the Democrats win. But doing so would leave the silent majority of Iraqis hostage to the most vicious extremists, abandoning those Iraqi leaders who have championed liberal democratic values. One of them is Mithal al-Alusi, a 53-year-old Sunni Arab who won a seat in parliament last December after having served as director general of the National Commission on de-Baathification. Mr. al-Alusi ran on a platform of...

Coiffed, groomed and impeccably suited, Mithal al-Alusi cuts an imposing figure at this trendy hotel. In the empty bar lounge, he makes himself at home to a breakfast of fresh fruit, strong coffee and a constant flow of cigarettes. The leader of the Democratic Party of the Iraqi Nation is in town to promote his vision for a new Iraq and accept an accolade from an unlikely sponsor – the American Jewish Committee – who honored him with a Moral Courage award at their annual dinner last week. His act of courage was an attempt to break Iraq's long-standing taboo...

America, weÂ’re told from a young age, is all about democracy, and democracy is all about choosing whom you want to be your representatives and holding them accountable. This seems like an entirely uncontroversial idea, but a surprising number of Republican politicians would like to do away with this right, and return the country to an older era when Americans didnÂ’t directly elect their representatives in Washington.Until 1913 and the ratification of the 17th Amendment, Americans didnÂ’t actually elect senators, state legislators did. The change seems unquestionably positive, but Rep. Jeff Flake, the front-runner for the Republican nomination for a...

How often have you heard people refer to America as a Democracy? When was the last time that you heard America referred to as a Republic? There is a very good reason that our Pledge of Allegiance refers to our country as a Republic and there is a very good reason that our Declaration of Independence and our constitution do not even mentioned the word "democracy". Many people are under the false impression our form of government is a democracy, or representative democracy. This is of course completely untrue. The Founders were extremely knowledgeable about the issue of democracy and...

The Obama administration treated the creation of "democracy" in the Middle East as a Good Thing. Ironically, those who created the United States of America viewed democracy with fear— and created a Constitutional republic instead. Everything depends on how you define democracy. In its most basic sense, democracy means majority rule. But there can be majority rule in a free country or in a country with an authoritarian or even a dictatorial government. In this age of sloppy uses of words, many people include freedom in their conception of democracy. But whether democracy leads to freedom is an open question,...

To understand how we got to the point that spending hundreds of millions of dollars to support a government run by people who have been at war with us for almost a century is a policy that most foreign policy experts endorse, it helps to take a brief trip back in time. In the last century, our big three wars, the two we fought and the one we didn’t, were against enemies who were seen as being distinguished by a lack of democracy, with the Kaiser, the Fuhrer and the Commissar embodying the antithesis of the American system.The Democratic Party,...

The finger pointing and the blame game of Washington gets old, but a messy representative democracy is better than an efficient dictatorship. This past weekend, I toured Washington with my 5th-grade son, Robert, his classmates and their mothers. I've been to Washington more times than I can remember, but each visit fills me with hope and inspiration. It's not just the city, which in the summer is hot, humid and buggy and in the winter can be bone-chilling (as it was this weekend), but it's what the city stands for: a city created to house the federal government of...

... “we have always understood that when times change, so must we; ...fidelity to our founding principles requires new responses to new challenges: ...preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action.” ...New Labour trick of claiming that something can only be safeguarded by embracing its opposite: individual freedom requires submitting to the collective will. ...we can afford to support both the old and the young...our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it. ...Warning to America: it didn’t work out. Obama made no attempt to explain how support at both these...

I was searching random things the other day and I ran across this little gem. I mentioned it on my radio show, WHWDRadio this Wednesday and I’ll share it with you today. Helpless plug, I know. LOL These eight steps were written in 1787 by Professor Alexander Tyler. The United States was in the planning process of a young and fragile Democracy. So, this Professor took a look at the past and tried to map out the evolution of a Democracy. He determined a time line for these eight steps and an estimate of how long the process would take,...

Executive Summary:On March 21, 2012, a group of Army mutineers appeared on Mali's national television station to declare that they had ended President Amadou Toumani Toure's regime and put in place the “National Committee for the Return of Democracy and the Restoration of State” (CNRDR). In the days following the coup, the leader of the CNRDR – Captain Amadou Sanago, a virtually unknown junior officer, has shown an inability to command discipline from his troops – who have looted the capital. The disappearance of President Toure and the factional infighting of the Army have made the country defenseless against AQIM’s...

Egyptian democracy activist Michael Meunier says President Barack Obama needs to stand up to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Meunier, a Coptic Christian, is head of the Al Haya Party in Egypt and leader of the U.S. Copts Association. After spending many years studying and working in the United States, Meunier returned to Egypt in 2007 and ultimately participated in the Tahrir Square protests that brought down the regime of Hosni Mubarak in 2011. On Dec. 19, in between round one and two of voting on Egypt’s recently passed constitution, Meunier visited The Daily Caller to discuss what he sees...

HANOI, Vietnam -- It has been 50 years since President John F. Kennedy ordered U.S. "advisers" to South Vietnam to help battle the communist North and 37 years since the end of that divisive war and the country's unification under Communism. Today, Vietnam is fighting a war with itself. A local TV program reminds a visitor of Chinese propaganda "operas" circa 1970. Performers, some wearing military garb with a backdrop of missiles and an American B-52 bomber going down in flames, commemorate the 1972 Christmas bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong ordered by President Richard Nixon. Banners and posters in the...

“This is what democracy looks like!” That’s a popular protest chant among liberals. It could be heard at many “Occupy” gatherings. It’s a staple at union-backed protests. We all know that in a democracy, sometimes things go your way, and sometimes they don’t. The big question is, how will you react? For example, many conservatives were disappointed by the results of last month’s elections. Despite high unemployment, sluggish economic growth and an unpopular health care program, a majority of voters returned a staunchly liberal president to office. But just as there are no permanent victories, there are no permanent defeats....

Democracies sometimes reject freedom. It's MY constitution.Egypt has a new new democratically elected dictator and Venezuela still has her old one. Since they were elected by majorities of the voters they must be good democratic rulers who give the majority what they want. Suppose the majority want to have blasphemers' heads removed? Suppose the majority want to have money taken from the rich because they have been told that will help the poor? Giving the majority what they want is democratic and an effective way to get elected again. Individual freedom? Freedom is unnecessary in some democracies and may even...

This week the Michigan legislature passed a “right-to-work” law making the state the 24th to allow workers to abstain from joining a union without losing their jobs. Opponents of the new law are incensed. Jimmy Hoffa, Jr., president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, predicted “civil war.” “What we have here is a betrayal of democracy,” Hoffa claimed. “This law will allow workers to decline becoming members of a union even if the majority of their fellow employees vote that they should join the union. It puts individual rights ahead of the collective right to compel everyone to participate.” Hoffa...

Brussels has sworn in two municipal officials from a new Islamic party who want to implement Sharia law. A YouTube video shows one of the men, Redouane Ahrouch, taking the oath of office in Brussels, followed by a protestor pointing out Ahrouch's plans to turn Belgium into an Islamic state. The critic disrupted the ceremony, shouting that Ahrouch will undermine democracy with his plans to implement Islamic law. Ahrouch has admitted he's taking a gradual approach, saying it may take decades to enforce Sharia. But he said the process has now begun. The Gatestone Institute reports Ahrouch created a 40-point...

It would be tempting to attribute the disaster spreading across the Middle East to a brief flirtation with democracy snake oil, but for the better part of the last century the political class of the United States could talk of nothing else. Nearly every war was fought was to spread democracy, protect democracy or worship at the altar of democracy. For much of the 20th Century it was the working assumption of the sort of men who got up to give speeches in crowded halls that it was democracy that made America special. But it is not so much that...

It would be tempting to attribute the disaster spreading across the Middle East to a brief flirtation with democracy snake oil, but for the better part of the last century the political class of the United States could talk of nothing else. Nearly every war was fought to spread democracy, protect democracy or worship at the altar of democracy. For much of the 20th century it was the working assumption of the sort of men who got up to give speeches in crowded halls that it was democracy that made America special. But it is not so much that democracy...

The recent election loss at a time when every economic indicator over the previous four years should have catapulted Romney to victory, started me to seriously think; not think about Romney’s failures, not about what the conservative movement should have done or about two parties which were once upon a time closer at their furthest distance than they were even in FDR’s time (and that says a lot). In fact other than 1860 we have never been so dissimilar and as a people, so divided. A thought often wonders about its origin as much as what it is about; something...

President Barack Obama narrowly defeated Gov. Mitt Romney in the popular vote 51 percent to 48 percent. In the all-important Electoral College, the difference was larger, with Obama winning 303 electoral votes and Romney 206. Let's not think so much about the election's outcome but instead ask: What's so good about democracy and majority rule? How many decisions in our day-to-day lives would we like to be made through majority rule or the democratic process? How about the decision to watch a football game or "Law and Order"? What about whether to purchase a Chevrolet Volt or a Toyota Prius?...