Free Republic

“Republics they say are ungrateful. . . . The people that create or build to make victory possible . . . are war profiteers to be subjected to suspicion, to be investigated, to be harassed.” Thus spoke Andrew Higgins, the inventor of the Higgins boats that were so essential to the U. S. D-Day landings in WWII. Eisenhower called Higgins “the man who won the war for us.” But when the war was won, Higgins was socked with an IRS investigation and then was largely forgotten. I grew up in Nebraska, where Higgins was born and raised, but I never...

One of the benefits of studying history is that we can see what worked and what didn’t work in the past. That helps us put the present in perspective. My larger point is that many ideas that are fashionable today will be discarded and in the dumpster thirty years from now. In fact, my task as a teacher is often to explain to students how it is possible that so many people in a given generation could have believed something that today is obviously so silly. Let’s look at some examples.

Sleeping With The Enemy Malcolm A. Kline, July 14, 2010 A large chunk of the blame for the ever-deteriorating state of education goes to some of academia’s favorite targets. “Republicans have been asleep on the schools,” author and activist David Horowitz claimed at a July 9, 2010 breakfast on Capitol Hill sponsored by Hillsdale College. “We don’t have a conservative educational reform movement.” Horowitz authored the Academic Bill of Rights and founded Students for Academic Freedom. “Curricula in virtually every liberal arts college are dedicated precisely to social change,” Horowitz writes in his recent pamphlet Barack Obama’s Rules for Revolution:...

Massive federal spending. Presidents Roosevelt and Obama responded similarly to the crises. They talked about balancing the federal budget, but instead resorted to massive spending. Earlier presidents, like Cleveland and Harding, cut spending when the nation was threatened with economic hardship. Hoover was the transition president, running deficits with record spending on public works, the first federal welfare program, and the first large-scale federal farm program. The results were budget deficits and 25 percent unemployment.

President Obama has often remarked that the Great Recession (2008–10) is the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression. It’s interesting to study the many parallels between the Great Recession and the Great Depression.

Something ominous is happening within the Democratic Party, and Barack Obama will soon have to start paying attention. For weeks now, James Carville has been railing against the Obama administration’s handling of the oil spill in the Gulf. On Tuesday, Ed Rendell, Governor of Pennsylvania, added further fuel to the flames by issuing a warning. If Obama did not start pulling troops out of Afghanistan in July, 2011 as promised, he predicted that there would be a political insurrection within the party and that the President might face a primary challenge. It is in no way surprising that the Republicans...

When they teach American government and the history of the early American republic, political scientists and historians have a puzzle to explain. There is, within the American constitution, no mention of political parties. And yet it is impossible to make sense of American politics in and after the early republic without reference to parties. Moreover, the parties that did emerge in the United States bear only a faint resemblance to the parties that existed in England and on the European continent prior to the American civil war and even less to the parties that exist on the other side of...

On Wednesday, if all goes as planned, President Barack Obama will sign the financial-reform bill crafted by Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut and Congressman Barney Frank of Massachusetts, sponsored by the Democratic Party in both houses, and supported by three Republican Senators – Scott Brown of Massachusetts and Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine. When the bill is signed, we will be told, as we have repeatedly been told in the last few months, that the measures included within it will prevent future financial crises of the sort that we have suffered from over the last two years.

Character often is the act of standing for principle when it is unpopular to do so. The flurry of federal spending in the U. S. during the last decade has shown very little character on display. Therefore we can benefit by revisiting an example of a president showing character under pressure.

What’s the alternative to the Fed? Hayek, in a lecture delivered to the Gold and Monetary Conference in 1977, proposed “free banking,” the privatization of the money supply: "As a result [of new research], I am more convinced than ever that if we ever again are to have a decent money, it will not come from government: It will be issued by private enterprise, because providing the public with good money which it can trust and use can not only be an extremely profitable business; it imposes on the issuer a discipline to which the government has never been and...

No surprise. The Siena College presidential poll–a ranking of 44 presidents by 200 historians–put Franklin Roosevelt in first place. In other words, the man who, during his first two terms, gave us nonstop double digit unemployment–and 20 percent unemployment toward the end of his second term, is ranked ahead of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and all other American presidents.

David Horowitz will deliver this month’s “First Principles on First Fridays” lecture, sponsored by Hillsdale College's Allan P. Kirby, Jr. Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship in Washington, D.C. It will take place on Friday, July 9, from 7:30 to 8:45 a.m. at Ebenezers Coffee House, located at 201 F Street, N.E. Coffee, fruit, and pastries will be served. The lecture topic will be "Rules for Radicals: What Constitutional Conservatives Should Know About Saul Alinsky"

When, in The Federalist, Alexander Hamilton writes that “energy in the executive is a leading character in the definition of good government,” he refrains from asserting that energy in the executive is the leading character in the definition of good government. He is right to deploy the indefinite, rather than the definite, article. Had he chosen the latter, Thomas Jefferson’s accusations would have been on the mark: our first Secretary of the Treasury really would have been a monarchist of sorts.

Happy news! The economic summit this week rejected President Obama’s idea for a global stimulus. But the notion that a second stimulus in the U. S. will work better than the first is alive and well among the president’s advisors. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and others have compared our current economy with that of the Great Depression in this way: In 1937, they argue, the U. S. cut back spending and a recession ensued. Therefore, we need to pump more federal dollars into the current economy to keep us from experiencing another recession on top of the one we are...

Earlier this month, I posted a piece documenting Barack Obama’s incapacity as an executive. I followed up with a brief examination of Bobby Jindal’s record as Governor of Louisiana and, then, with a short discussion of a display of vigor and dispatch on the part of Chris Christie, Governor of New Jersey – both of whom nicely illustrate what Alexander Hamilton had in mind when he wrote in The Federalist that “energy in the executive is a leading character in the definition of good government.” Today, I will take a brief look at Mitch Daniels, Governor of Indiana.

In his recent cover story for The Weekly Standard, Matthew Continetti praises CNBC’s Rick Santelli effusively for erupting against Barack Obama’s redistributionist policies on 19 February 2009 in such a fashion as to inspire the Tea Party Movement. Then, he blasts Fox News commentator Glenn Beck for seizing upon the current crisis as an opportunity for urging on the part of his fellow Americans a serious reconsideration of the country’s first principles.

On Wednesday, I posted a piece, drawing attention to what is now obvious even to Maureen Dowd: that, as an executive, Barack Obama is woefully incompetent. In that piece, I noted the propensity of the American people for electing to the Presidency men with ample executive experience – as generals, governors, cabinet secretaries, and the like. I remarked as well on the poor performance of the four Presidents they elected who did not have prior executive experience; and I suggested that it is time for the Republicans to ask who, in their number, has demonstrated a willingness and an ability...

In politics, temperament matters – it matters a great deal, as Barack Obama has unwittingly shown us time and again. Some women and men love to posture, talk, debate, and negotiate. Temperamentally, they are suited for a legislative role. It is said – only partly in jest– that, in Washington, DC, the most dangerous space to occupy is that which lies between a United States Senator and a microphone.

IN PRESIDENT Obama, conservatives face the most formidable liberal politician in at least a generation. In 2008, he won the presidency with a majority of the popular vote—something a Democrat had not done since Jimmy Carter's squeaker in 1976—and handily increased the Democrats' control of both houses of Congress. Measured against roughly two centuries worth of presidential victories by Democratic non-incumbents, his win as a percentage of the popular vote comes in third behind FDR's in 1932 and Andrew Jackson's in 1828.

Yes, the BP oil spill is a disaster. And BP needs to reach in its deep pockets to compensate businesses and restore the Gulf Coast. But should BP set up an “independently administered fund” to cover claims for people and businesses in the Gulf Coast damaged by the oil spill? That is the current proposal by the Obama administration–that BP set up a large fund that will be, in effect, administered by government officials, who will listen to people presenting financial claims from the oil spill.