Free Republic

Editor's Note: In this section we entertain letters from the critics. Some readers are angry, some are not so angry, and others merely frustrated. January 1, 2006 Angry Reader:You, sadly, like many other conservative columnists, seem to have abandoned Conservatism for liberal Republicanism because you see no other choice under the current leadership.Conservatism, true conservatism, is hurting because so many people like you have turned their backs in favor of worshiping false idols.You want to portray this as some right-left American controversy based upon varying degrees of patriotism when what you're really perpetrating is the sellout of conservatism, while throwing...

The U.S. economy is headed toward crisis, and the political leadership of the country – if it can be called leadership – is preoccupied with nonexistent weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East. The U.S. economy is failing. The afflictions are serious. They could be fatal even if diagnosed and treated. America is losing the purchasing power of its currency and its ability to create middle-class jobs. Story Continues Below The dollar's sharp decline and projections of continuing trade and budgetary red ink are undermining the dollar's role as reserve currency. A number of central banks have announced that...

Democracies & double standards Posted: February 23, 2005 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2005 Creators Syndicate, Inc. "Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together," Edmund Burke admonished the haughty rulers of the British Empire of his time. Our American empire is suffering from a similar want of wisdom and plenitude of the hubris that cost George III his 13 colonies. Consider how this generation of politicians is undoing the great work of Ronald Reagan. When Reagan took office in 1981, the Soviet Union of the aging autocrat Leonid Brezhnev...

COMMUNIQUE: 24 February 2005 Beyond the Margins Toronto Sun columnist Eric Margolis crosses the bounds of ethical journalism. Opinion columnists perform an important public service when providing cogent arguments supported by factual information. This is true regardless of where the columnist falls out on the spectrum of opinion. But when a columnist regularly demonizes one side of the Arab-Israeli conflict ¯ while resorting to outlandish conspiracy theories and unsubstantiated allegations ¯ the columnist has crossed the bounds of ethical journalism. Case in point: HonestReporting Canada reports that the Toronto Sun's Eric Margolis, who has a long record of Israel-bashing, recently...

"Jump the Shark" is a semi-known phrase meaning "lose all credibility" or "it's all downhill from here." The phrase comes from www.jumptheshark.com - which catalogs and debates the (paraphrase) "defining moment when you know you're favorite TV Show has reached its peak and its all downhill from here." The phrase "jump the shark" comes from a Happy Days episode - late in the series - where Fonzie went on a vacation with the Cunninghams. In that episode of the sitcom, Fonzie jumped over a jaws-like shark while waterskiing on the ocean. Fans generally thought this moment was so absurd, that...

The film Seven Days In May is one of my all-time favourites. The gripping 1964 drama, starring Burt Lancaster, depicts an attempted coup by far rightists in Washington using a top-secret Pentagon anti-terrorist unit called something like "Contelinpro." Life imitates art. This week, former military intelligence analyst William Arkin revealed a hitherto unknown directive, with the Orwellian name "JCS Conplan 0300-97," authorizing the Pentagon to employ special, ultra-secret "anti-terrorist" military units on American soil for what the author claims are "extra-legal missions." In other words, using U.S. soldiers to kill or arrest Americans, acts that have been illegal since the...

''We must recognize what a large and growing number of Iraqis now believe,'' said Sen. Ted Kennedy last week, that ``the war in Iraq has become a war against the American occupation.''Even with the heroic and heartening election turnout, Kennedy is not entirely wrong. The insurgency has always been a war against the U.S. occupation and those Iraqis who cooperate with us. But the paradox that Kennedy fails to address is this: While the U.S. invasion and occupation precipitated the insurgency, it has grown to where only the U.S. military keeps it from seizing power. Should we withdraw now, there...

Will today's elections for 7,785 unknown candidates in violence-racked Iraq mark the dawn of genuine Mideast democracy, as U.S. President George W. Bush claims, or be another step deeper into the bloody quagmire in Mesopotamia? First, no election held under a foreign military occupation resulting from an unjustified war is legal under international law. During the Cold War, elections staged by the Soviets after invading Afghanistan, Hungary and Czechoslovakia were rightly denounced by the U.S. as "frauds" and the leaders elected as "stooges." Second, Shiites, excluded from political power since Britain created Iraq in 1921, will win since they represent...

Once upon a time there was a liberal media. It developed out of the Great Depression and the New Deal. Liberals believed that the private sector is the source of greed that must be restrained by government acting in the public interest. The liberals' mistake was to identify morality with government. Liberals had great suspicion of private power and insufficient suspicion of the power and inclination of government to do good. .... When the draft is reinstated, conservatives will loudly proclaim their pride that their sons, fathers, husbands and brothers are going to die for "our freedom." Not a single...

Where Woodrow Wilson was going to make the world safe for democracy, George W. Bush is going him one better. President Bush is going to make the whole world democratic. As he declared in his Inaugural Address, our "great objective" is "ending tyranny" on earth. And how does the president propose to achieve it? So, it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world. The president is here asserting a unilateral American right to interfere...

Americans have been betrayed. Sooner or later, Americans will realize that they have been led to defeat in a pointless war by political leaders whom they inattentively trusted. They have been misinformed by a sycophantic corporate media too mindful of advertising revenues to risk reporting truths branded unpatriotic by the propagandistic slogan, "you are with us or against us." What happens when Americans wake up to their betrayal? It is too late to be rescued from catastrophe in Iraq, but perhaps if Americans can understand how such a grand mistake was made they can avoid repeating it. In a forthcoming...

[more Chronicles Extra!] June 18, 2004 9-11 COMMISSION: NO IRAQ LINK TO AL-QAIDAby Srdja Trifkovic The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (“9-11 Commission”) has found “no credible evidence” of a meaningful link between Iraq and al-Qaida. Its findings contradict claims by the Bush administration that such a connection justified the war against Iraq. In a preliminary report released on June 16, the commission further said that Osama bin Laden had long opposed the Iraqi leader’s secular regime and that his subsequent attempts to obtain help from Saddam were rebuffed by the Iraqi dictator. The 9-11 Commission...

In what may be the twentieth example of the genre in the past decade, a neoconservative has written a magazine article excommunicating from the conservative movement Patrick Buchanan and others who fail to embrace warmongering neoconservatism. A comedy skit could be made about these repeated efforts, as the excommunicated faction somehow fails simply to shut up and disappear as it is supposed to. David Frum’s National Review article (April 7) is longer than most of its kind but predictable in its wielding of the standard neocon rhetorical weapons: those who disagree with his faction are racist, nativist, anti-Semitic, and of...

On the message boards at Gene Expression (gnxp.com), a self-styled paleocon calling himself Sporon offers the opinion that America is at war today for the sole purpose of "making the world safe for Israel." I could not help responding. My reply to Sporon reads: Dear Sporon: Nobody said that this war is being fought to make the world safe for Israel except you paleocons. Even the Arabs have more geopolitical sense than that. They understand that Israel serves the United States -- not the other way around. Paleos are experts at spinning excuses for opposing wars. Indeed, the only wars...