Free Republic

Americans tend to believe that we do everything better than anyone else. That belief makes it hard for us to learn from others. For example, I've found that many people refuse to believe that Europe has anything to teach us about health care policy. After all, they say, how can Europeans be good at health care when their economies are such failures? Now, there's no reason a country can't have both an excellent health care system and a troubled economy (or vice versa). But are European economies really doing that badly? The answer is no. Americans are doing a lot...

No need to reply, but it's a good short read. Just caching for future use.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - The U.S. government agreed to pay $87,500 to settle a lawsuit brought by a Kenyan refugee who was denied political asylum in the United States. The Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights, which handled the woman's case, said it it is the first time an arriving refugee has received a settlement in a lawsuit accusing the government of negligence. Rosebell Munyua, 35, claimed the government was negligent because it sent her back to Kenya, even though she said she told immigration officials she would be killed. The U.S. Attorney's Office said the settlement, filed Wednesday in federal...

Michael Moore's latest movie, "Fahrenheit 9/11," is an anti-Bush broadside. It accuses President Bush of letting Saudis leave the United States after Sept. 11 without being interviewed by the FBI. A shocking charge! And utterly false as well — the FBI got its crack — but who cares? Millionaire Moore is a deft provocateur, and if he's wrong about the facts, well, the facts should be right. They feel right. Isn't that what counts? Of course his latest film won the Palme D'Or at Cannes. Jittery film-geek Quentin Tarantino, who led the panel, assured reporters that the choice was not...

When the White House promised to punish the murderers who sawed off Nicholas Berg's head, a spokesman said the crime "showed the true nature of the enemies of freedom." Wrong. Or, rather, not wrong, but vague, and perilously so. It's not every enemy of freedom who shouts, "Allahu akbar (God is great)!" while committing murder in front of a video camera. What Mr. Berg's heinous killing showed was the true nature of fundamentalist and unreformed Islam, according to the Koran. "Now when ye meet in battle those who disbelieve, then it is smiting of the necks," says verse 47-4 in...

"Go back and get the file footage," said John Kerry. He was on "Good Morning America," sorting out whether he threw over the White House fence his medals, his ribbons, someone else's medals, someone else's ribbons, or a combination of the above mixed with some Cracker Jack prizes. How to clear things up? In a peeved and hectoring voice, Kerry told the interviewer to "go back and get the file footage." Hmm. This would be the film of a grim, long-faced young man with ultra-'70s hair hurling some symbols of military honor at the White House. That's the sort of...

I've never been called "a douche-nozzle" before. At least, not that I know about anyway. The insult came from one supporter of the Fox News Channel. But then I don't think The Globe and Mail has ever been called "the far-left Toronto Globe and Mail" before. That's what this great newspaper was called by Bill O'Reilly on the Fox News Channel on Monday night. Reacting to my column, which cheerfully suggested that the proposal to bring the Fox News Channel to Canada should be acted upon promptly, so that we can all take a look, and get a laugh, O'Reilly...

At least now we know where John Kerry is meeting these unnamed foreign luminaries: "I mean, you can go to New York City and you can be in a restaurant and you can meet a foreign leader," he said on "Meet the Press." Happens to us all, you know; one moment you're at Denny's garnishing your hamburger, and the next you have the Guatemalan undersecretary for bauxite slapping you on the back and expressing a fervent desire for your victory. You nod, you smile, you play along. And he goes on and on about Kyoto until you note that while...

The coalition approach to Iraq was summed up a year ago by a British colonel. Explaining how they were trying to secure Basra without blowing up buildings and causing a lot of death and destruction, he said, ''We don't want to go in and rattle all their teacups.'' The avoidance of teacup-rattling remains a priority. Last week in Fallujah, American troops had rockets fired at them from a mosque. So they fired back, but with the state-of-the-art laser-guided weaponry that kills the insurgents but leaves the mosque virtually untouched. I'd have been quite happy to see it blown up with...

Some Bush-loathers rejoiced in the Fallujah atrocities: There is a virus of hate in the Democratic party On 31 March, four civilian contractors to the Coalition Authority in Iraq were ambushed in Fallujah. They were shot, burned, mutilated, and what was left was then dangled from a bridge while the townsfolk danced for joy in the street. On his website The Daily Kos, Markos Zuniga marked the passing of these four individuals: ‘I feel nothing over the death of merceneries [sic]. They aren’t in Iraq because of orders, or because they are there trying to help the people make Iraq...

My column on Iraq  one year on prompted a lot of skeptical commentary in the wake of the last week's news. Peter Caress in Bethesda summed up most of the main points: Given the current state of affairs in Iraq — the massacre in Fallujah, the Sadrist uprising — I wonder if you need to rethink your column "One year on, and Iraq's better off."  Especially point (3): "The suicide-bomber depravity is getting more depraved even as it gets more impotent. But there remains no widespread popular 'resistance' except in the minds of the left's armchair insurgents."  A lot more Shi'ites...

“Vote for the crook, not the Fascist.” In 2002, that was the cheery slogan of French electors offered a choice between Jacques Chirac and Jean-Marie Le Pen. Two years on, as part of the remorseless Francisation of Canada’s political culture, it’s now the strategy of Ottawa’s Paulitburo.  Yes, this Adscam business is a bit hard to explain, and it would be helpful if the statistically inevitable immolation of Yvon Duhaime’s next federally subsidized Shawinigan enterprise could be postponed for a year or two, and maybe we need a two-billion dollar federal registry of single mums so that when Crown Corporation...

The recent assassination of Sheik Saruman raises among some Americans the question — at what point should we reconsider our rather blanket support for the Israelis and show a more even-handed attitude toward the Palestinians? The answer, it seems to me, should be assessed in cultural, economic, political, and social terms. Well, we should no longer support Israel, when…Mr. Sharon suspends all elections and plans a decade of unquestioned rule. Mr. Sharon suspends all investigation about fiscal impropriety as his family members spend millions of Israeli aid money in Paris. All Israeli television and newspapers are censored by the Likud...

Imagine a huge state broadcasting network in the US completely financed by a tax levied on every single household with a television set. Perhaps this fee might cost about $200 every year and there would be no way to opt out — short of getting rid of the offending TV set. It would make no difference whether you watched their channels or not — you would still have to pay the state broadcaster’s fee. Of course, the broadcaster would be kind enough to inform all citizens that illegally operating a television set without a license would land them a prison...

So Sheik Ahmed Yassin's a martyr now. And Hamas is upset? It surely beats passing away in your sleep — at least by the standards Yassin himself upheld. But he was by all accounts a humble chap. Martyrdom, for me? Oh, you're too kind. No, I'll just sit here with a nice cup of coffee and perhaps a pastry. Martyrdom is a young man's game, my child. Run along now. Well, live by the unexpected explosion, die by it. Commentators now fear an "upsurge" in the old dependable "cycle of violence" — you know, Hamas sends someone to drive ball...

"This is the culture in which we live… The world is ruled by force. The only way we can put a permanent end to terrorism is to stop participating in it… This is the first time the guns have been pointed the other way." – Noam Chomsky, discussing the events of 9/11/01. Noam Chomsky has endorsed, however reluctantly, John Kerry. This is an endorsement from the man who, on hearing about 9/11, attempted to put it in perspective for the American people by arguing that President Clinton had murdered many times more people in his response to the Al Qaeda...

What exactly does democracy — "people power" — really mean? Even the Greeks who invented this peculiar institution were not quite sure. Was it just rule by a majority vote? Or did it include mechanisms and subsidies to ensure the participation of the poor? Or to protect the minority from mob rule? Aristotle himself was baffled about what actually distinguished some forms of oligarchies from democracies; indeed his Politics can offer only a hopelessly confused typology. Later Westerners who looked back at democracy in Athens were also confused over whether it was the noble "School of Hellas" of Pericles or...

What the Democrats need is a home-grown Tony Blair. Britain's prime minister could announce his support for state-funded late-term abortions for the offspring of married gay orangutans, and he would still get votes from the right side of the spectrum. He's a wartime leader. He grasps the nature of the enemy. He knows what's at stake, and can describe the moral duty of the West in electrifying rhetoric. He understands what Sept. 11 meant, even though he lives an ocean away. He is not a man who values cooperation more than victory. And he wouldn't stand a chance in the...

Readers of this column will remember, as apparently political scientists and pundits have not, that in the rancorous months before the Democratic primaries got underway, I identified that one dynamic new political constituency that would decide the winner. In years gone by, the dynamic constituency was the youth vote. And there was the year of the women's vote. This year as we watched Dr. Howard Dean gain the role of frontrunner, the veins in his neck bursting, his face an angry gnarl of sneers and grimaces, it became obvious that the dynamic new force in the Democratic primary was the...

Gnat’s bouncing on the bed with a rabbit, which is really a kangaroo, while the radio restates the death toll: 150 dead, and an unimaginable number of wounded. I dread the day when she starts to listen to the radio, and understand; I wonder what she will think about the world outside Jasperwood. Right now she knows that we live in Minneapolis, in Minnesota, on the Earth. It’s a pretty good place. It has seasons and it has ice cream and it has spring, soon, and it’s where her room is. But at some point kids realize that when daddy...