Free Republic

It would be amusing, were it not so pathetic—as the cliché goes—to watch the pundit class attempt to explain the rise of Donald Trump. No doubt, Trump is populist, but these analysts fail to recognize one very basic fact: Trump is a pissed-off rich guy financing his own populist campaign, and, as such, there has never been anyone like him in American history. Comparisons to Hitler, even acknowledging the dictator's initial (and very short-lived) populist approach, conveniently omit that it was the Nazis who violently broke up demonstrations—just as the anti-Trump forces are doing today. Full marks if you recognize...

The New Deal’s executor held many positions similar to those of to one Donald J. Trump. ________________________________________________ Imagine a U.S. president who is bombastic, egotistical, and just a little racist. He worries opening the borders will mean an influx of undesirables. He implements capricious executive orders, and seems more concerned with his own power than with the Constitution. He’s often called a fascist by people who know what the term means. No, I’m not talking about Donald Trump. I’m talking about Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Debate raged last December about whether President Trump would be a fascist. Steve Horwitz and Martin...

Anyone have strong enough stomach and information junkie brain to dare watch with me?

The president has nominated attorney J. Mark McWatters for the bank board. However, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), chairman of the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, has said he's "in no hurry" to hold a hearing or a vote on the nomination. Other pending confirmations take precedence, he said.The last of the 2015 lobbying reports are in, and the top corporate spender turns out to have been the Boeing Company, at $21.9 million. Not coincidentally, the aerospace giant also outranks thousands of other firms in profiting from the subsidies doled out by the Export-Import Bank. Last year, Boeing benefitted...

America, if you don't stop all this obsession with Bubba's pee-pee and start focusing your short attention span onto Hillary's HEALTH and the question of who will be her Vice-presidential pick--you know, the person who will really rule you for eight more years?--then you've been dead so long, you don't even stink anymore. Franklin Delano Roosevelt's physical weakness due to polio was stifled in the press, but it was well know to the domestic ruling class and to hostile world leaders. Stalin was well aware of FDR's physical weakness, and whether or not Stalin used it to manipulate FDR, hundreds...

Over a year ago, I went looking for a book--any book--on the 1932 presidential election. In case you haven't noticed, I'm a bit of sucker for books about presidential elections. (Imagine my dilemma: I despise Karl Rove, yet he's got new book out about the 1896 election!) I couldn't find anything other than something that looked rather amateurish and plenty of court history about the New Deal. I wanted something that dealt in detail with the campaign, especially FDR's messaging. Not having found anything good, imagine my joy when I saw that my favorite campaign historian, David Pietrusza had a...

One thing is clear as we watch candidates from both major political parties scramble for the presidential prize in 2016—the stakes are very high. And national security issues are finally getting the kind of attention they always warrant in this dangerous world. Many candidates for the highest office in the land—and most of those who make it to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue—tend to prefer talking about their "domestic vision."  Bill Clinton's mantra, "It's the economy, stupid," comes to mind. But they eventually find themselves facing issues of war and national security, whether they like it or not. It's just a guess,...

If any groups should be given priority for entry to the United States from the Middle East, it is Christians and Jews, especially women and children, who are targeted for extermination by Isis and other Arab groups in the Middle East Donald Trump’s proposal to TEMPORARILY prevent Muslims from coming to the USA at this time is more liberal than the approach of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the other prevailing “liberals” of his era, as well as later self-proclaimed “liberals” and “progressives.” Franklin D. Roosevelt and his fellow “liberals” interned Japanese Americans who were already in this country. The Trump...

Donald J. Trump on Tuesday defended his call to block all Muslims from entering the United States, casting it as a temporary move in response to Islamic State terrorism, and invoking President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s actions toward Japanese, German and Italian aliens during World War II as precedent. Mr. Trump, who is handily leading the Republican presidential field in almost every poll nationally and in primary states, spoke in a string of interviews with television morning show hosts, as Democrats fumed over his proposal and Republican reactions ranged from outraged to tepid. (snip) In a tense exchange with Joe Scarborough...

Franklin Delano Roosevelt loved to keep secrets. He didn't want the public to know he was bound to a wheelchair, so he went to elaborate lengths to hide his inability to walk on his own. And when he was dying, his doctors hid it from the public. Even Roosevelt himself didn't want to know. Secrets of a different sort lie at the heart of two new books about Roosevelt the candidate and Roosevelt the president, with a special guest appearance by Adolf Hitler, before he became der fuehrer. David Pietrusza's 1932: The Rise of Hitler and FDR--Two Tales of Politics,...

The Democratic National Committee cannot tolerate Republican rhetoric against the Obama administration's Syrian refugee plan. Rejecting these migrants is equal, in Debbie Wasserman Schultz's eyes, to America's turning away Jews in 1939, forcing them back into Nazi territory. "We have seen this movie before. In May 1939, the SS St. Louis left Hamburg, Germany carrying more than 900 passengers, nearly all of them Jewish and seeking refuge in the United States. Our country turned them away, and many who were sent back to mainland Europe were killed in the Holocaust. Instead of learning from that mistake Republican candidates and politicians were...

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam. Former Democratic President Woodrow Wilson may be purged from his alma mater, Princeton University. The old “Schoolmaster of Politics”, as he was known for his academic background at Cornell, Bryn Mawr, Wesleyan and finally president of Princeton U, has been thrown under the bus by its current president for being a politically incorrect progressive. Also known as a plain old racist. Woody was indeed a racist. Though even on his worst day he was still about 40% less racist than...

2015 is drawing to a close, so unless some dark horse comes out of absolutely nowhere, Chris Matthews has a lock on the DisHonor award for the year's worst analogy. On this evening's Hardball, Matthews argued that we shouldn't blame Islam for ISIS terrorist attacks since, after all, FDR, despite despising Mussolini, "never declared war on the Catholics." Just a little difference: Italian fascism had no ideological affinity with Catholicism. To the contrary, it was rooted in notions of the revival of the Roman Empire of the Caesars. In contrast, you can't spell ISIS without "Islamic." To say that we...

How a Soviet mole in FDR's inner circle triggered Pearl Harbor – and its dire relevancy to our conflict today. ... On December 7, 1941, 353 Japanese aircraft delivered a shocking blow .. Nearly seven years later, Harry Dexter White, a senior official in the Roosevelt Administration, appeared to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities . Numerous witnesses, including Whittaker Chambers and Elizabeth Bentley, had implicated White in involvement with the Communist Party and the Soviet Union. ... Harry Dexter White, a Harvard PhD and Assistant Treasury Secretary, had played a major role in creating the World Bank...

A high school teacher who has worked in Oregon and Manhattan is determined to pass on his history of the Great Depression. “By the end of Roosevelt’s first two terms in office, nonagricultural private-sector workers had the right to organize unions and the National Labor Relations Board was created to enforce that right,” Adam Sanchez writes in the Fall 2015 issue of Rethinking Schools. “The unemployed had access to a new, permanent system of unemployment insurance, and the elderly could rely on social security.” “Millions of people were put back to work through federal jobs programs.” Sanchez, who teaches at...

It may look like a fixer-upper at first glance, but what is buried beneath scrubby little Oak Island might just make its estimated $7 million price tag worth the investment. Oak Island, in Nova Scotia, is famous for its Money Pit, a mystery that has endured two centuries, claimed six lives and swallowed up millions in life savings. The Pit was discovered in 1795 by a local boy named Daniel McGinnis who, spotting an unusual clearing in the earth under one of the island's oak trees, was prompted to start digging. The discovery of layered planks, mysterious stone slabs, and...

What lies at the bottom of the Money Pit? Imagine yourself walking through the trees of a wooded island rumored to hide buried pirate treasure. Suddenly you come across a depression in the ground. It's roughly circular and there's a tree standing above it with a branch that has been cut and appears to have been used as a pulley. Your imagination is fired and hope soars. You run off to get your friends and digging equipment. You and two friends return the next day, shovels in hand, ready to claim your prize. The digging is easy. The dirt...

FULL TITLE: Genetic test proves President Harding DID father a love child with mistress who he would have sex with in a West Wing closet One of the sauciest legends of the White House has finally been proven true, thanks to DNA testing. Relatives of President Warren G Harding revealed to the New York Times on Wednesday that he did indeed father a daughter in 1919 with his longtime mistress Nan Britton, after receiving the results of a genetic test linking them to the son of the love child. Rumors of Harding's infidelity became tabloid fodder in 1927, when Britton...

“A republic madam, if you can keep it.” What did Ben Franklin mean by his famous retort at the close of the 1787 Federal Convention? Here’s a clue: Voting every two years is insufficient effort to keep a republic. Franklin and his convention peers knew that unlike tyrannies and absolute monarchies, republics required the people’s active participation. This wasn’t a new concept; our Framers were well aware of Roman and Greek republics, all of which amended and improved their unwritten constitutions as changing times warranted. It was from their love of liberty and dread of consolidated power the Roman Republic...

It was 88 years ago this month that President Calvin Coolidge handed out strips of paper (that he cut himself) to members of the press during a brief conference with these words: I do not choose to run for President in 1928. This stunning event took place at the Summer White House in the Black Hills of South Dakota on August 2, 1927. The implications of Coolidge not actively seeking the Republican presidential nomination for 1928 reverberate to this day. While the terse phrasing appeared to leave the door open for a draft movement, the result was that Herbert Hoover...