Free Republic

During a lengthy interview with the editorial board of the Washington Post on March 21, presidential candidate Donald Trump revealed the names of a team chaired by Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) that is advising him on foreign affairs. They are Keith Kellogg, Carter Page, George Papadopoulos, Walid Phares, and Joseph E. Schmitz.Another key point of discussion during the Trump interview with the Post was the candidate’s views on the U.S. role in NATO, which the candidate criticized mainly on economic grounds, as he suggested reduced American participation. “We certainly can’t afford to do this anymore,” Trump said, adding later: “NATO is...

South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham parades as a conservative. But he and his ideological confrere, Arizona Republican Senator John McCain, are neoconservatives. The distinction is important because neoconservatism has become a dominant force among many elected officials and media pundits.What is neoconservatism? The man who always claimed to be the “godfather” of the movement is Irving Kristol. In his 1995 book Neonconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea, he wrote, “We accepted the New Deal in principle, and had little affection for the kind of isolationism that then permeated American conservatism.” He also bared the roots of his political and...

After years of running up against unconstitutional federal education mandates imposed on states using bribes and bludgeoning from Washington, D.C., a group of parents and grassroots education activists from across America is launching a fresh effort to shut down the U.S. Department of Education once and for all. The mission: "Stop Fed Ed." In the crosshairs is everything from dumbed-down "standards" such as the Obama-backed Common Core nationalization of schooling and associated federal testing regimes, to the deeply controversial federal data gathering and data mining encouraged and financed largely by the feds. The group hopes to pressure Congress into ending...

National Review's scathing indictment of Donald Trump will do very little to dissuade most Republicans from supporting him for the GOP presidential nomination, conservative pundit and acclaimed documentary filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza tells Newsmax TV. "I don't think this is going to dent Trump's real support," D'Souza said Friday on "The Steve Malzberg Show." ... "It is good for intellectual conservatives to weigh in on this. Their points are not entirely invalid. Also, National Review historically has had a role of, you may say, policing the right. Even in Buckley's day," he said. "There was a John Birch Society, there were...

In American politics the nation of Russia, especially as personified in its leader Vladimir Putin, becomes all things to all men.To American leftists, Russia is a neo-fascist, violently nationalist country that ruthlessly suppressed minority groups, especially homosexuals. To the American Right, Putin is the second coming of Stalin who is working to subvert good old-fashioned American values around the world.In line with the latter narrative, a certain Christian Gomez recently published an article on The New American website, the flagship of the John Birch Society, supposedly revealing that the Russian government is the real power behind the ISIS terrorist group,...

Some people are of the unfortunate opinion that the John Birch Society is militantly patriotic and a supporter of this nation's military. That is not the case, especially not now. The JBS always was a front group for the European right wing and our own domestic Jew-haters. It was the "blue lodge" for recruiting decent conservatives and, by exposing them a little bit at a time to the classic anti-Jewish line, to eventually recruit them into the anti-Semitic movement proper. But at least when I was a member some thirty years ago the Society's publications didn't openly take potshots at...

“Politics makes strange bedfellows.” That was 19th-century author/editor Charles Dudley Warner’s famous take on the vagaries and queer alliances that typify the so-called art of statecraft. But the odd lineup of forces on the recently concluded Iran nuclear deal takes some explaining beyond the truism embedded in Warner’s observation.The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that was announced on July 14 is a deal that was brokered by the United Nations Security Council, the European Union, Iran, the Obama administration — and most importantly of all, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the private “think tank” that has been the...

"The Freedom Index: A Congressional Scorecard Based on the U.S. Constitution" rates congressmen based on their adherence to constitutional principles of limited government, fiscal responsibility, national sovereignty, and a traditional foreign policy of avoiding foreign entanglements. The percentages below are cumulative scores based on key votes from 1999 through June 2015. Click on a senator's or representative's name to get a detailed breakdown of his or her voting record. (See abysmal records at link)

SEE: Critical of Obama’s past actions, GOP now wants to give him more power on trade ”Republicans have consistently railed at President Obama’s exercise of his executive authority, disparaging him as “an emperor” who has ignored Congress on immigration, climate and Cuba. Now that they fully control the Congress, those same Republicans critics are on the verge of handing the president expansive new powers to circumvent those who want to stand in his way on trade. GOP leaders in both chambers are close to introducing legislation that would grant the administration broad authority to finalize one of the largest free-trade...

Soros, Birchers fight constitutional fix to limit Obama, Congress Convention of States March 16, 2015 A nationwide drive by mostly conservative states to throttle President Obama and Washington's grab for more power and taxes is running into an odd left-right combo of opposition: Liberal financier George Soros and the conservative John Birch Society. Documents provided to Secrets show that the Soros-backed Montana Budget and Policy Center recently urged the state's lawmakers to reject the so-called "convention of states" pushed by advocates such as radio talk show host Mark Levin as a way to pass constitutional amendments limiting the power...

Not bothering with an "exploratory committee," Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has jumped with both feet into the 2016 presidential race. Cruz openly identifies with the Tea Party, and has done so since before his upset victory in the Republican primary for the U.S. Senate in 2012, when he garnered big-name endorsements from then-Texas Congressman Ron Paul, Senator Rand Paul, former Senator Rick Santorum, and then-Senator Jim DeMint. In his speech anouncing his candidacy Monday at Liberty University in Virginia, Cruz offered the students and faculty of the conservative Christian college some red meat: Imagine abolishing the IRS.... Imagine a president...

Of the many people I've met over the last two years who are opponents of an Article V Convention of States to Propose Amendments to the Constitution, one of my greatest regrets is that there are many with whom I would most likely agree on virtually every other issue in modern-day political discourse. Many of them, however, almost proudly admit that their positions on a COS are rooted in a decades-old fear of the unknown and an inability to trust their fellow citizens, while most COS proponents put their faith in stringent, new safeguards and an optimistic view of the...

Christopher Hitchens got a chance to analyze the Tea Party in 2011, the same year cancer took his life. In a Vanity Fair article titled "Tea'd Off," the great polemicist explains that populist movements like the Tea Party are a reaction to social and political change. Hitchens writes that before the Revolutionary War costumes, America had seen a somewhat similar phenomenon with the John Birch Society: The John Birch Society possessed such a mainstream message--the existence of a Communist world system with tentacles in the United States--that it had a potent influence over whole sections of the Republican Party. It...

Friday, 27 June 2014 12:30 “After America Comes North America,” Gen. Petraeus Boasts Written by Alex Newman “After America Comes North America,” Gen. Petraeus Boasts Former general and CIA chief David Petraeus (shown), a key figure in the globalist Council on Foreign Relations and the shadowy Bilderberg network, boasted at a recent conference that the United States of America is set to be merged into the continental regime being erected under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Speaking at the Margaret Thatcher Conference on Liberty last week in London, the ex-commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Iraq essentially...

The John Birch Society describes itself as a constitutionalist organization, yet it is highly critical of a very important component of the Constitution. The JBS does not like Article V’s provision that allows the States to unilaterally propose and ratify amendments to the Constitution. George Mason demanded that this provision be included in Article V because he correctly forecast the situation we face today. He predicted that Washington, D.C. would violate its constitutional limitations and the States would need to make adjustments to the constitutional text in order to rein in the abuse of power by the federal government. Current...

Conner contends that today's tea party is the modern-day rebirth of the John Birch Society. They share a worldview, she says. The same paranoid distrust of government. The same desire to protect the rich. The same cruel streak that blames the poor for their poverty and seeks to deny government help on that basis. The same willingness to believe all manner of bizarre claims against political leaders they don't like.

The city of Sanford, Florida, already has a secret law-enforcement plan to deal with potential riots and unrest in the wake of a possible acquittal of George Zimmerman. Miami has efforts to keep the peace underway as well. Across America, pundits and analysts have been warning that a “not guilty” verdict in the controversial case could set off an explosive wave of deadly violence rivaling the mass riots that ensued following the 1992 Rodney King trial. If mayhem does strike, analysts say the establishment media, President Obama, and assorted race-profiteers would bear much of the blame. Well before the verdict...

The Freedom Index: A Congressional Scorecard Based on the U.S. Constitution rates congressmen based on their adherence to constitutional principles of limited government, fiscal responsibility, national sovereignty, and a traditional foreign policy of avoiding foreign entanglements. The percentages below are cumulative scores are based on key votes from 1999 through 2013. Click on a senator's or representative's name to get a detailed breakdown of his or her voting record. Senators: Sen. Rand Paul, Kentucky - 93%Sen. Ted Cruz, Texas - 90%Sen. Mike Lee, Utah - 90%Sen. Ron Johnson, Wisconsin - 86%Sen. James Risch, Idaho - 84%Sen. Jeff Flake, Arizona...

A cancer is eating away at a once Grand Old Party, and if the party doesn't wake up and take precautions, it may wind up only a shadow of its better self -- a hollowed-out refuge for haters and paranoids and the kind of ideological parasites that can reduce a major party to a minor one. The historian Richard Hofstadter spoke of a "paranoid style in American politics," and noted its "sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy." He called it "an old and recurrent phenomenon in our public life," one that it isn't confined to left or right....

“Anyone who embarks on a study of Abraham Lincoln … must first come to terms with the Lincoln myth. The effort to penetrate the crust of legend that surrounds Lincoln … is both a formidable and intimidating task. Lincoln, it seems, requires special considerations that are denied to other figures.” — Robert W. Johannsen Lincoln, the South, and Slavery Indeed, it would not seem a safe time to critique the wisdom, motivations, and character of Abraham Lincoln. Steven Spielberg’s reverential motion picture epic Lincoln fills screens across America. The public increasingly accepts him as America’s greatest leader. Academics from the...