Free Republic

Much of the historical perspective on the era holds that the Japanese were prepared to fight to their very last man, and that until the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been visited upon their homeland Japanese leaders had no intention of surrendering. But in fact the Japanese had sent peace feelers to the West as early as 1942, only six months after the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. More would come in a flood long before the fateful use of the atomic bombs. In her 1956 book, The Enemy at His Back, journalist Elizabeth Churchill Brown supplied overwhelming...

The U.S. Senate’s first spending bill of 2016 spends more than President Barack Obama requested and lacks significant conservative amendments, but it still sailed to passage in the Republican-led Senate Thursday. An overwhelming number of U.S. senators on both sides of the aisle approved the energy and water development appropriations bill by a vote of 90-8. Conservatives had objected to the higher spending levels and lack of policy riders in the weeks leading up to the vote.

When the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement (KORUS) was passed just over four years ago, President Obama said that the agreement would support 70,000 U.S. jobs. This claim was supported by a White House fact sheet that claimed that the KORUS agreement would “increase exports of American goods by $10 to $11 billion…” and that they would “support 70,000 American jobs from increased goods exports alone.” Things are not turning out as predicted. Far from supporting jobs, growing goods trade deficits with Korea have eliminated more than 95,000 jobs between 2011 and 2015.

Paul Ryan is not for open borders. In the Year of Donald Trump, these are fighting words. They are also true. On his campaign website, the speaker of the House lists four principles that he believes should guide any attempt to reform our immigration system, among which are: “First, we need to secure the border,” and, “Second, we need to enforce our laws.” Ryan has called illegal immigration “an affront to the rule of law and an unacceptable security risk.” He voted for the “Secure Fence Act of 2006,” which aimed “to establish operational control over the international land and...

The House Benghazi Select Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-SC) was pleasantly surprised by the Obama administration on Thursday. After months of accusing the committee of hampering progress in the investigation for political reasons, the State Department has finally admitted it deserves the blame for the delayed findings. The State Department’s review unit into documents uncovered by the Benghazi committee was supposed to be functional by June 2015, but the agency failed to make that target. State Department spokesman Mark Toner noted that Gowdy did his part, even helping to secure funds for the department to obtain the relevant records. In...

Bush 41 and 43 REFUSE to endorse Trump: Former Presidents join a growing list of top Republicans who will not back their party's presumptive nominee Both George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush will not back Donald Trump A number of Republicans say they will not back the presumptive nominee Trump has all but secured the nomination after Cruz & Kasich dropped out Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Trump has the 'opportunity and the obligation' to unite the GOP Former Presidents George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush will not endorse Donald Trump, their spokesmen have announced....

Liberal celebrities Jane Fonda and Ellen DeGeneres on Tuesday strove to offer the most fawning Hillary Clinton praise. Is she “amazing,” “exciting,” or “smart?” All of these things. Appearing on the Ellen DeGeneres Show, Fonda cheered, “It's so exciting that she may very well be our president.”

President Obama is fast-tracking the import of Syrian Islamists prior to the end of his administration. Simultaneous to the State Department’s heightened activity video now surfaces of the Islamists blending their cultural jihad with the nice people of France.

Poll: Hefty Slice Of Virginia’s GOP Will Bolt If Trump Is Nominee By Laura Vozzella April 7 RICHMOND — Nearly a third of Virginia Republicans will vote for Hillary Clinton, pick a third-party candidate or sit out the election if Donald Trump is the GOP’s nominee for president, a new poll finds. Democrats in the key swing state are far less likely to defect if Clinton is the nominee, with just 9 percent saying they would vote for someone else or stay home on Election Day, according to a Christopher Newport University survey released Thursday. Trump’s “loyalty gap,” as CNU...

he United States used to be a nation whose population, through hard work and sound policy, grew wealthier over time. Now, we are a nation whose middle class has nearly disappeared, whose workers’ wages have stagnated, and whose plutocrats become greedier and wealthier with each passing year. A quick look at the facts reveals why this has happened and continues to happen. America has become a less productive nation over time. Unfortunately, only the rich are enjoying any increase in wealth. The rest of us, though we work harder than Americans did in the past, enjoy no more wealth than...

Lost in the flood of Ronald Reagan retrospectives and testimonials is a crucial fact with special relevance for all Americans today: To a great extent, Ronald Reagan was a trade realist. The conventional wisdom about Reagan as free enterprise, free market champion is largely true. But on trade policy, Reagan acted decisively in five instances to save major American industries from predatory foreign competition. Moreover, as I detailed in a 1994 article in Foreign Affairs, in each case, the temporary import relief succeeded spectacularly, resulting in improved performance by these industries and avoiding the captive market prices that conventional economics...

The FedEx founder and CEO reflects on how deregulation and opening markets have wrought astonishing changes and prosperity over 50 years. During our years at Yale, the world was a different place. Foreign travel was exotic, expensive and rare among the population as a whole. While some young Americans had been abroad, by far most Americans had not—and those who did go abroad most likely traveled by sea rather than air. In the early 1960s, flying over the oceans was mainly for the affluent. Long-distance telephone calls were expensive, international calls prohibitively so. From furniture to TVs and appliances, and...

Nearly everything in a tech store has a label “Made in China” on it. In fact, it is almost difficult to find something that isn’t made in China. Not only has this flood of goods from China put our companies out of business, but they are hurting, even killing people. Counterfeit high end bikes, wheels, and helmets from China are putting people’s life in grave danger.

f we were attacked militarily, our government would do everything in its power to defend its citizens. True American patriots emerged during the reign of the British military. Patrick Henry is famous for shouting, “Give me liberty, or give me death!” Today, the U.S. is losing the economic war and we are rapidly spiraling towards the enslavement of ourselves and future generations. We know from history what happens to the losers of military conflict–losers work for the sole benefit of their conquerors under the laws of the new regime. Right now in the U.S. we are in an economic war...

Establishment economists will defend to the death the idea that trade does not destroy jobs. Yes, I’m serious. They believe that. Really. Instead, they say, job losers move into other jobs so there is no net job loss. They also assume that trade deals cause no change in the balance of trade. This matters because when economists study the TPP and other trade deals, their models find no job losses and no future trade imbalances because those bad things are simply assumed away. Those net negatives cannot happen and are not even worth inquiring about. If you think you observed...

Most favored nation status has been controversial over the past couple of decades, especially with China. Nancy Pelosi (back when Democrats gave a crap about some aspects of America. Now both parties have been bought and paid for.) voiced her concerns in June of 1997 in a hearing before the Subcommittee on Trade. At the time, Congress was discussing whether to grant China unconditional MFN status. She rebutted the arguments that were in favor of MFN status to China by demonstrating that it is a bad idea for our jobs and for our economy: “Less than 2 percent of U.S....

“Free trade” means uncontrolled, unrestricted access to our economy for goods often made at less than $4 per hour, tariff- and duty-free. This has devastated our economy and put some of our best companies out of business. “Free trade” has been incredibly costly for the United States. We have seen a steadily rising trade deficit as a result of these failed policies. The United States has not had a trade surplus in 37 years!

The U.S. military is starting to consider how China’s economic growth and the corresponding loss of important American high-tech industries might impact future national security. The Project on National Security Reform run by U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute, an independent academic group, has put together a “Vision Working Group” that is assessing various future possible military scenarios including how to deal with a more aggressive China if the United States does not have much left of an industrial base.

We did trade wrong. We could have had a good trade policy that increased trade and raised living standards. We could export more soybeans, airplanes and software, and protect the environment around the world. We could have low-cost goods and encourage democracy, respect for human rights and improved working conditions.

The United States is the very first “post-industrial” nation on the globe. All great economic empires eventually become fat and lazy and then squander their great wealth. However, the pace at which America has declined is beyond comprehension. Thousands of factories have closed and left the United States. The high paying manufacturing jobs are gone leaving the United States with over 92 million UNEMPLOYED citizens.