Free Republic

What history we recall on the Fourth of July typically involves stirring words of freedom, and rightly so. But why stop there? After all, not every colonist in 1776 was a patriot, and at this particularly fractured political moment, we might do well to remember that, according to contemporary accounts, one third of Americans wanted revolution, one third were loyal to the crown and one third could go either way. Loyalists did more than talk; they formed Tory regiments and fought alongside the British, against their fellow Americans. Even those who did support breaking from Britain could be surprisingly lax...

‘The Western world no longer aspires, as did the Western Europe of Dante’s day, to be a place of a single faith,” A.N. Wilson writes confidently in his recent book, Dante in Love. Really? It doesn’t? Has Western society given up that dream? Because many in the United States’ particular corner of civilization seem not to have gotten the memo. Maybe it’s the scientist in me, but I’m always looking for what Einstein called the “Theory of Everything” — one formula that explains the world, and clinging to the hope that society will someday be populated entirely by your co-religionists...

I love the smell of bloodlust in the evening. Not every evening. Just the evenings that have Republican presidential debates. There have been five such debates so far, but only the last two of them have been considered major because they have featured Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who is leading in the polls. Except the debates haven’t really featured him. They have featured the audience. If you have ever asked yourself how crowds could have gathered to cheer public burnings and beheadings in times past, tune in to one of these debates, and you will stop asking. At a Politico/NBC...

In the March of Folly, historian Barbara W. Tuchman describes how governments throughout history have insisted on making huge mistakes that harmed their own interests even as smarter people warned them not to. The results, of course, were disastrous. Now, Washington is teetering on the edge of its own march-of-folly moment — intentionally allowing the first U.S. default next month, potentially throwing financial markets into turmoil and leaving soldiers, doctors and Social Security recipients with a bunch of IOUs. We might yet dodge the bullet. The White House said Wednesday that President Barack Obama is confident that enough lawmakers from...

President Barack Obama last week snappishly accused liberal critics of being "sanctimonious," which doesn't mean what I think he thinks it means. The adjective connotes hypocrisy along with self-righteousness. And, if I may presume here to speak for the aggrieved left, the frustration with the president is quite sincere. What Obama actually seemed to want to say when he sneered at the "purist position" on tax legislation was that the liberal base is excessively idealistic, even naive, in its expectations of him. Could be. But — hmmm — where did progressives get the idea that Obama was a transformative political...

NLPC has uncovered a plan by the White House New Media operation to hire a technology vendor to conduct a massive, secret effort to harvest personal information on millions of Americans from social networking websites. The information to be captured includes comments, tag lines, emails, audio, and video. The targeted sites include Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr and others – any space where the White House “maintains a presence.” In the course of investigating procurement by the White House New Media office, NLPC discovered a 51-page solicitation of bids that was filed on Friday, August 21, 2009. Filed as Solicitation...

In case you haven't heard, President Obama is a member of a secret Kenyan terrorist cell who is scheming to dispatch waves of government bureaucrats to tell grandmas and grandpas how to off themselves. Such is the intellectual weight of a segment of the Republican Party these days. Or as one commentator recently put it, the GOP has decided "to double down on crazy." We're talking about two controversies here, one involving the so-called birther movement, which questions the citizenship of the president; the other involving mandatory "end-of-life" counseling that's supposedly part of the president's health care plan. The controversies...

What did you make of the big protest against the U.S. military and our veterans Wednesday? It took place in hundreds of American cities; people were waving signs, brandishing tea bags. Of course, they didn't think they were speaking out against our military and our vets -- they hadn't really thought it through at all. They were under the impression they were condemning federal taxes. But where do federal tax dollars go? By far the largest chunk -- more than a quarter -- supports our military and takes care of aging vets. No, no, the protesters will say, that's not...

Regarding Fran Eaton's Aug. 26 column calling the South Suburbs an abortion-free zone: I remember a number of years back when doctors and clinics advertising that they were doing abortions in this area were threatened, set fire to and picketed, which is likely another reason there are not many openly-broadcast abortion clinics in the South Suburbs. That subject aside, I would like to address the many inconsistencies and illogical arguments in Eaton's column. Eaton name-calls liberals whom she says get "hot and bothered" about resistance to using tax dollars for fixing social ills. Interpretation: Rich people hate when they are...

The greatest triumph that conservatives ever achieved is to make liberals embarrassed to call themselves "liberal." That thought came to mind as I watched Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton rhetorically wriggle her way, as so many liberals do, right out of using the "L-word" to describe herself. During the CNN/YouTube debate by Democratic presidential candidates, Clinton was asked, "How would you define the word 'liberal' and would you use this word to describe yourself?" Briefly she showed off her knowledge of the word's various meanings over the past, oh, century or two. She pointed out how the word used to mean...

Black America's first serious contender to become the leader of the free world just racked up one more first: Ten days ago, Sen. Barack Obama was assigned to the watchful eye of the U.S. Secret Service, concealed automatic weapons and all. The politic explanation for his getting this 24/7 team of bodyguards so early has much to do about the rock-star crowds he draws. The real explanation, unspoken but readily understood, is deeply rooted in those two great American social disorder diseases: racism and murder. Obama's Secret Service detail comes nine months before the first presidential primary vote is cast...

An anti-war rally in the Loop and downtown Chicago area tonight included a march along a stretch of the Magnificent Mile. The demonstration, which coincides with the 4th anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, began around 7:30 p.m. in the parking lot of Ogden School at Walton and Oak Streets. Chicago police are estimating that 4,000 marchers showed up for the march and rally, according to Chicago Police Officer Tom Polick. He said as of 9:20 p.m., he had not received any reports of arrests. At 8:10 p.m., marchers filled the southbound lanes of Michigan Avenue, with many carrying...

This year, the next-to-the-last week was a week of second chances. Defensive tackle Terry ''Tank'' Johnson got one, allowing him to remain a Chicago Bear. Miss USA Tara Conner was granted one, allowing her to hold on to her tarnished tiara. And by simply embracing the recommendations of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, President Bush had another opportunity to chart a new course for his ill-advised and poorly planned Iraqi occupation. The president blew his chance; Tank and Tara did not. The two twentysomethings were contrite, choosing their words carefully. The president was not and did not. In accepting their...

Five years later, Sept. 11 still is etched in our minds. The terrorist threat it revealed is a real and present danger. It is not the worst threat we face. Catastrophic climate change has already wreaked more economic damage. Global pandemics will take more victims. Unsustainable U.S. trade deficits pose a greater threat to Americans' economic security. But the horrors of Sept. 11 supersede those rational calculations. The grotesque horror of the act of terror; the innocent victims jumping to their deaths; the heroism of those who came to rescue -- they will remain a source of agony and of...

Joe Lieberman has been in the Senate for 18 years. He's a leader of the Democratic Leadership Council, the money wing of the party. He became the party's vice presidential nominee, even as he championed the DLC's "triangulating" politics, pushing off of the Democratic Party base to demonstrate his "independence" by embracing key elements of the conservative agenda -- championing the war in Iraq, attacking affirmative action, pushing capital gains tax cuts that benefit only the very wealthy. Now he's pushed off so long, he seems confused about whom or what he represents. He now says he's a good Democrat,...

Peter Beinart is an advocate of liberal -- not ''progressive'' -- nostalgia. He wants to turn the clock back to 1947 at Washington's Willard Hotel. Beinart, who was born in 1971, is editor at large of the liberal New Republic magazine and disdains the label ''progressive'' as a rejection of liberalism's useable past of anti-totalitarianism. An intellectual archaeologist, he excavates that vanished intellectual tradition and sends it into battle in his new book, The Good Fight: Why Liberals -- and Only Liberals -- Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again. It expresses Beinart's understanding of liberalism...

Tens of thousands marched on Washington last Saturday to protest George Bush's war in Iraq. The crowd included college-age activists, veterans of Vietnam War protests, entire families united against the war, and parents whose children have been killed in Iraq. It was the largest protest yet against this war. Larger ones will almost surely follow. If there had been a soundtrack to Saturday's march past the White House, you couldn't pick a much more appropriate song to kick it off than Jefferson Airplane's "Volunteers." Released in 1969 by one of the most politically acute bands of the era, "Volunteers" was...

Evacuees. Humanitarian crisis. Terrorism. Failure of leadership. We Americans have become citizens of the world. No longer can we stand aloof, conjuring pity and donations for the wretched souls of other lands who suffer the indignity of losing everything. This new millennium has shown us we are just as vulnerable to the ills of our modern world as any impoverished African nation. Terrorism on our shores? Never, we thought. We were insulated on two sides by friendly neighbors and on two other sides by huge expanses of water. Terrorism was something that happened in the neighborhoods of Jerusalem or the...