Free Republic

“Democratic Party elites such as those on CNN are not just angry but genuinely confused by the fact that American voters don’t obey them.” — Glenn Greenwald. What’s most amazing about the fiasco that was the French Revolution is that it happened at exactly the same time that the United States successfully organized themselves into an orderly and effective government following the American Revolution. George Washington was elected and sworn-in by April of 1789, with the backing of an exemplary constitution assembled by the best minds in the land. The Bastille fell in July that same year. France then fell...

We are in a Jacobin Revolution of the sort that in 1793-94 nearly destroyed France. And things are getting scary. The Democratic Party vanished sometime in 2020. It was absorbed by hard-left ideologues. They were bent on radically altering, or hijacking, existing institutions to force radical, equality-of-result agendas that otherwise do not earn majority support. The American people want affordable power and fuel and energy autonomy. They do not want a Green New Deal that results in dependence on the Middle East. They want fiscal sobriety, not a permanent stagflationary economy marked by bank failures, soaring interest rates, crony capitalism,...

Cultural revolutions are insidious and not just because they seek to change the way people think, write, speak, and act. They are also dangerous because they are fueled by self-righteous sanctimoniousness, expressed in seemingly innocuous terms such as “social activism,” “equality,” and “fairness.”The ultimate aim of the Jacobin, Bolshevik, or Maoist is raw power—force of the sort sought by Hugo Chavez or the Castro dynasty to get rich, inflict payback on their perceived enemies, reward friends, and pose as saviors.Cubans and Venezuelans got poor and killed; woke Chavezes and Castros got rich and murderous.Leftist agendas are harder to thwart than...

In 1781, 27-year-old King Louis XVI of France sent his navy and troops to help America gain independence from Britain. In return, France gained very little, except an enormous amount of debt. On the verge of financial collapse, France then experienced a terrible famine in 1788. The people blamed the King. Anti-monarchists referred to Queen Marie Antoinette as Madame Déficit. According to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, when she was told the people did not have bread, her reply was: "Let them eat cake." On July 14, 1789, an anarchist mob went through the streets of Paris and stormed the the Bastille Fortress...

Consider a few facts: Donald Trump is in the White House, despite winning almost three million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton. The Senate, the country’s most powerful legislative chamber, grants the same representation to Wyoming’s 579,315 residents as it does to 39,536,653 Californians. Key voting rights are denied to citizens in the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and other United States territories. The American government is structured by an 18th-century text that is almost impossible to change. These ills didn’t come about by accident; the subversion of democracy was the explicit intent of the Constitution’s framers. For James Madison, writing...

Well, that escalated quickly. The rise of “democratic socialism” has been one of the key developments in the Democratic Party in recent years, first with the popularity of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and more recently Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s primary win over party mainstay Rep. Joe Crowley in New York. One of the ways the movement is presented is with the claim that this is not your grandfather’s socialism -- or the socialism of the former Soviet Union, Venezuela or other failed states. It’s more “Scandinavian health care” than overthrowing the bourgeoisie. But now a democratic socialist writer is leveling with voters,...

The Left can't allow itself to be consumed by debates about antifa. We need a proactive program and patient organizing. The events in Charlottesville have remained in the headlines for the last few weeks for a variety of reasons. Surprise at the audacity of a torch-light procession of neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klan sympathizers, and “alt-rightists” in an American city, coupled with the murder of social justice activist Heather Heyer during a counterdemonstration, fueled the initial coverage. President Trump’s abhorrent response to the tragedy and local struggles against Confederate statues kept it alive. And frequently dimwitted debates about the merits of...

Marxists of the 21st century (not an oxymoron; they exist) have identified a new threat to the glorious proletariat revolution: PokemonGo. Of course, this is par for the course. The Soviet Union banned The Lord of the Rings. Leftist hero (and murderous thug) Che Guevara worked to suppress Jazz music in communist Cuba. The People's Republic of China censored Back to the Future because the regime thought that time travel undermined law and order. And on and on. Now Marxist sympathizers at the socialist magazine Jacobin think the new Pokemon-themed iPhone app—which is currently being enjoyed by millions of people...

Jacobin, a new socialist magazine, has published an essay advocating destroying the U.S. Constitution. The magazine, which was launched in 2011 and is published four times a year, is the creation of Bhaskar Sunkara. Sunkara, 26, is the son of immigrants from Trinidad and Tobago. He lives in Brooklyn. …

In yesterday’s oral arguments in Obergefell v. Hodges (better known as the “gay-marriage case”), the solicitor general of the United States committed a classic “Kinsley gaffe”: He accidentally told the truth. Normally, in any argument about the next legal step of the sexual revolution, the accusation or even implication that there’s a slippery slope is grounds for outrage. Not only shouldn’t we explore the legal implications of expanding the definition of marriage, the very attempt is homophobic. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

Robin Hood was not a jacobin nor a socialist, robbing from the rich and giving to the poor. But here, I will highlight where he was transformed into one. The title of the book is: "Robin Hood: A Collection of All the Ancient Poems, Songs, and Ballads, Now Extant Relative to that Celebrated English Outlaw ; to which are Prefixed Historical Anecdotes of His Life", authored by Joseph Ritson, who was sympathetic to Jacobinism. This book was first printed in 1795. This book is a collection of his works, which means that he was spreading this filth around in who...

Conservative student group Turning Point USA caused a stir last week by posting pages online from a textbook used at the University of South Carolina. The book calls Ronald Reagan “sexist” and says conservatives “take a basically pessimistic view of human nature” — one in which “people are conceived of as being corrupt.” Several avowed conservatives balked not just at the negative portrayal of Reagan but also at the idea that the conservative persuasion contains a measure of pessimism. On this point, the textbook is right and they are wrong. Russell Kirk was the man credited by William F. Buckley...

Ever since 9/11, the president of the United States has been urging the use of American power to spread the allegedly universal principles of “freedom and democracy” throughout the world. On his recent European tour President Bush solicited the support of Europe in this cause, saying, “our ideals and our interests lead in the same direction.” What that direction is had been tellingly indicated just a few days earlier by Condoleezza Rice. Speaking in Paris, she said that the founders of the American and French republics were inspired by the same values, a statement that implied common origins in the...

To the Editor: Spectator, now for the second time in less than a year, has succeeded to quote me in a remarkably decontextualized and inflammatory manner. In Margaret Hunt Gram's report on the faculty teach-in against the war in Iraq (March 27, 2003), I am quoted as wishing for a million Mogadishus but with no indication whatsoever of the perspective that framed that remark. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that your Staff Editorial in the same issue, denouncing the teach-in for "dogmatism," situates me in particular as the premier example of an academic "launching tirades against anything and everything American."...