Free Republic

PRESIDENT'S ESSAY The 2004 Essay: The Conscience of a Conservative by Barry Goldwater Foreword by Edwin J. Feulner, Ph.D. Among the many analyses about the 2004 Republican National Convention, one offered by the eminent conservative columnist George F. Will caught my eye. "Barry is back," he wrote, referring to Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, who won the Republican presidential nomination forty years ago but was then crushed by President Lyndon B. Johnson in the general election, receiving only 38.5 percent of the popular vote and carrying just six states. Notwithstanding his resounding defeat in the fall of 1964, wrote Will,...

Just a year ago, Italian troops in Iraq were bleeding and dying. On Nov. 12, 2003, a truck crashed into the Italian headquarters in the southern city of Nasiriyah. A car bombing swiftly followed. At least 19 Italian soldiers and eight Iraqi citizens were killed. Scores more were injured, some critically. Back at home, Italy had a day of mourning for the victims, but refused to see itself as a victim. Defense Minister Antonio Martino met with the families of two of the dead soldiers. "They didn't shed a tear that day," he says. "They were proud of what their...

In an election year, voters are bombarded with high-blown rhetoric and plenty of statistics. And the numbers are often as contradictory as the prose. The challenger wants us to believe things are awful, while the incumbent needs us to believe things are rosy, or at least getting better. So let’s step back from the world of stump speeches and debates and ask the old Ed Koch question: How are we doing? When it comes to the economy, the objective answer is: Very well. On Oct. 1, the federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released its final pre-election jobs report....

This is a repost.Under the British parliamentary system, members of the minority party act as "shadow ministers." They basically pretend to hold the same posts they would if their party were in power. It's an effective way for voters to find out what the opposition party would do if it could call the shots. Here in the U.S., the 24-hour news cycle provides us with an unofficial shadow government. Virtual shadow ministers include former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who advises the Kerry campaign. Also among their number-until a recent incident at the National Archives-was former National Security Advisor Sandy...

There's a reason so many people buy lottery tickets despite the astronomical odds against winning: They believe that if they just had more money, their problems would vanish. But it seldom works out. Take the way we've treated education policy. Since 1965, federal spending on education has quadrupled, from $25 billion then to an inflation-adjusted $108 billion in 2002. States have clearly won the spending lottery. But what about the students? By most measures, student achievement has remained flat during the last three decades-hardly a winning ticket. At some point, you'd think we would slow down, catch our breath and...