Free Republic

In one of the most powerful passages of his speech, he recalled the religious resolution of the Polish people against the Soviets: Through four decades of communist rule, Poland and the other captive nations of Europe endured a brutal campaign to demolish freedom, your faith, your laws, your history, your identity — indeed the very essence of your culture and your humanity. Yet, through it all, you never lost that spirit. Your oppressors tried to break you, but Poland could not be broken. And when the day came on June 2nd, 1979, and one million Poles gathered around Victory Square...

One Friday afternoon last July, Wladyslaw Pleszczynski, the No. 2 man at The American Spectator for twenty years, from its time as a small-circulation conservative intellectual review through its run as the shouting voice of anti-Clintonism, rummaged through the magazine's shut-down office in Arlington, Virginia, cleaning out his desk before movers arrived, on Monday, to cart everything away. The Spectator had been sold nearly a year earlier to the high-tech guru George Gilder, who, in changing the magazine to a journal of the New Economy, decided to fire the staff and move the operation to his headquarters, in Great Barrington,...

Their timidity on Obamacare repeal has made them a national laughingstock. "....Yet the party that ended slavery and successfully championed women’s suffrage, both in the face of violent Democratic opposition, can’t muster the courage to repeal even the worst provisions of the Affordable Care Act. This cowardice has now inspired the law’s apologists to openly mock the GOP and President Trump."

We’re looking at a possible government shutdown next Saturday, and that’s got some conservatives nervous. They shouldn’t be. Admittedly, past government shutdowns — or threats of shutdowns — have worked against conservatives. With Trump, however, it would likely be a different story.... even a partial shutdown plays precisely into the Trump agenda and his campaign promises of draining the swamp. Trump’s base, as well as “swing voters” who are fed up with out of control spending, would, of course, be cheered by such a move. Moreover, such a shutdown plays into Trump’s hands by giving him every excuse to slash...

I used to have a best friend, recently in his eighties. I’m not allowed to talk to him any longer because I voted for Trump. That’s the law from his wife. Anyway, just before I was cut off, I asked this great man if he could summarize all the wisdom of his life in one sentence. He looked at me with a smile and said, “Peace is good.” With that, a few words about Mr. Trump’s getting us into the war in Syria in a big way: First of all, the happiest people on the planet right now must be...

Donald Trump, on some issues, also has disputes with Bannon. But now hear this: Bannon is coming from the space of “civic society,” not hate. I get where he’s coming from and going to albeit am not always am in full accord as to how he plans to get from here to there. Such disputes aren’t grounds for fury. Bannon also shows self-awareness and winsome self-deprecation: “We’re the know-nothing vulgarians.” As for his supposed cocktail party trope about being a Leninist it’s doubly hilarious for his inversion of Leninism to mean anti-Statism and in watching the left recoiling in horror,...

The modern political equivalent of “blood libel” is the incessant claim — sometimes by people ignorant enough to say it explicitly and sometimes by people too cowardly to say what they mean, instead resorting to cheap innuendo while slaying quivering white straw men — that Republicans are irredeemably racist. *snip* On Wednesday during the second day of hearings for the confirmation of Alabama Republican Senator Jeff Sessions to become the next Attorney General of the United States, we saw the latter. It came in the form of testimony against Sessions by Congressman John Lewis (D-GA), a man who sacrificed much...

The Democratic Party is broken, beaten down, shell-shocked, and scratching its heads wondering what went wrong. So, I have decided, being the noble American that I am, to offer some aid and comfort, not to the enemy, but to my fellow Americans as well as some friendly suggestions on how they can rebuild their party and image to compete in four years. President Obama should keep going around the world making incendiary comments about President (elect) Trump. There is nothing Americans like more than hearing negative comments about the person for whom they voted, and themselves, even more so when...

Losing it on a losing night. Ever since the early hours of Wednesday November 9, skeptical minds have been musing over what happened to Hillary and her concession speech. She was supposed to deliver it shortly after it was apparent she had lost on Tuesday evening. She was going to speak. No, she was not ready. Then it was coming Wednesday morning. No, it would be put off for a while. She supposedly was very gracious in talking to Donald Trump later that night, but was still not ready to concede publicly until late morning Wednesday. At 2 a.m., a...

When back in June 2015 Donald Trump announced he was running for president, he said during his speech, “I will find the General Patton or I will find General MacArthur. I will find the right guy. I will find the guy that’s going to take that military and make it really work.” Since then, Trump has frequently mentioned Douglas MacArthur in his speeches. It is worth discussing his importance in American history, especially as we are approaching the 66th anniversary of Battle of Inchon. While MacArthur’s greatest achievement was the creation of modern Japan, the Inchon landing on September 15,...

Putting Harriet Tubman on the $20 concludes a long, concerted drive to reimage U.S. currency. More to the point, it illustrates a profound, probably permanent shift in American historiography. Tubman joins the historical pantheon of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Alexander Hamilton, and Ben Franklin. Going forward Lucretia Mott, Sojourner Truth, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Alice Paul, and Susan B. Anthony will decorate the back of the $10. The New York Times calls the changes the “most sweeping and historically symbolic makeover of American currency in a century.” OK, no problem, we say, and maybe a good thing. Tubman on the $20...

President Obama made his fourth trip to Saudi Arabia Wednesday, ostensibly to “clear the air” in an attempt to repair the damaged relationship with the Kingdom brought about by what many will regard as his administration’s mistakes — cozying up to the Islamic Republic of Iran, for example, and embracing the Arab Spring which toppled the Saudi ally Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. But perhaps the biggest mistake Obama has made with regard to the Saudis is the one they’ll likely thank him for; namely, opposing — and threatening to veto — a bill authored by Sens. John Cornyn and Chuck...

<p>Donald Trump says a lot of things. We've become all too used to that now. Some of these things should probably be taken with a grain of salt - "Only Rosie O'Donnell" comes to mind - but some deserve to be analyzed more closely.</p>

Abraham Lincoln told an 1864 audience that "the world has never had a good definition of the word 'liberty.'" Different people can define liberty in different, even contradictory ways, so that both sides in a conflict can claim to the mantle of liberty. That was exactly the situation in the Civil War: Slaveholders defined liberty in such a way as to make themselves the guardians of liberty... The South's liberty was the liberty to hold other people as chattel slaves. What the slaveholders called liberty, the North quite rightly called tyranny; namely, the systematic deprivation of the natural rights of...

This piece will borrow liberally from a pair of previous occupants of this space, in which (1) it was prophesied that Hillary Clinton will not ultimately be that party's nominee and (2) Mike Bloomberg will be allowed to ride in and purchase that party lock, stock and barrel. Now that those prophecies no longer reside deep in left field, that is.

There was a time in my life when I was a campaign communications consultant, responsible for helping political campaigns come up with new and intriguing ways to engage voters using digital media. There is a reason I don't do it anymore, and that reason is, because no matter how many times I or any of my colleages explained that most Republican consultants had the pop culture knowledge of 80 year old men and couldn't find a connection to Millennials if they were accosted by an entire room of Urban Outfitters employees, they still produced things like this. Though, in fairness,...

deral Bureau of Investigation will recommend that the Justice Department bring criminal charges against Hillary Clinton and various of her aides, and soon. The evidence consists of materials that the Bureau has gathered in the course of its months-long investigation of Mrs. Clinton’s personal server. The recommendations will come very soon. The charges will consist of some of the following:

The Federal Bureau of Investigation will recommend that the Justice Department bring criminal charges against Hillary Clinton and various of her aides, and soon. The evidence consists of materials that the Bureau has gathered in the course of its months-long investigation of Mrs. Clinton's personal server. The recommendations will come very soon. The charges will consist of some of the following: 1. Improper disclosure or retention of classified information. 2. Destruction of government records. 3. Lying to federal agents. 4. Lying under oath. 5. Obstruction of justice. All the counts are familiar to those of us who have followed the...

"....................All this tells a considerable amount about what passes for the unremarkable inside the Washington establishment. For Feehery spends his time continually attacking conservatives. There was this open letter attack on Rush Limbaugh in Politico in which he snarked:Congratulations! You have been selected by the Obama administration, the mainstream media and 20 million of your most passionate followers to be the new head of the Republican Party.As such, you are given all the rights and responsibilities that come with being a true political leader.Your mission is simple: Restore the Republican Party to its former greatness by single-handedly helping Republicans to...

What happened to the American Spectator magazine. the website is still current but it seems there has not been a magazine published in a while.