Free Republic

The snarky quip attributed to 19th-century French Foreign Minister Charles Maurice de Talleyrand -- "It was worse than a crime; it was a blunder" -- has recently been making the rounds to deride a letter written by Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and signed by 46 other senators.

The absence of true leadership has created chaos at home and abroad.What has gone wrong with the U.S. government in the past month? Just about everything, from the fundamental to the ridiculous. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the United States to warn Congress about the dangers of a nuclear Iran. He spoke without the invitation of an irritated President Obama, who claimed that he did not even watch the address on television. Obama declined to even meet with the Israeli prime minister, announcing that it would have been improper for him to have such a meeting so close to...

<p>California is not suffering one drought, but four. Each is a metaphor of what California has become.</p> <p>The first California drought, of course, is natural. We are now in the midst of a fourth year of record low levels of snow and rain.</p>

Hillary stonewalled and has now outsourced her problem to attack-dog subordinates and Democratic stalwarts who, she believes, have Hillary—or no one—for 2016. I guess the message is “I’m lying, so what?” Remember Richard Nixon’s vain attempt to keep Watergate tapes because he alone had determined that some were only private in nature and did not relate to government business or subpoenas—and the subsequent reaction to his “gaps.” That is Hillary Clinton’s absurd line of something like “secretary of state privilege,” and thus her press conference could only end in disaster. After all the obfuscation, the only thing that one can...

She is the star of the Democratic party — and for Democrats that’s a big problem. Hillary Clinton’s pre-campaign for the 2016 presidential race is predicated on three givens: her landmark status as the likely first female presidential candidate of one of the two major parties; her name recognition as a Clinton; and the fact that no Democratic strategist is yet willing to risk turning over a presidential campaign to Joe Biden or Elizabeth Warren. Polls show that right now Hillary would both win the Democratic nomination and be elected president. But that likelihood assumes that four considerations will go...

Obama’s morally confused foreign policy is making the world more dangerous by the day. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to Congress on Tuesday to warn Americans of the anti-Western threats from theocratic — and likely to soon be nuclear — Iran. Netanyahu came to the U.S. to outline the Iranian plan to remake the Middle East with a new nuclear arsenal. His warning was delivered over the objections of the Obama administration, which wants to cut a deal with Iran that allows the theocracy to continue to enrich lots of uranium. Netanyahu received a standing ovation for stating the...

A federal judge has temporarily blocked President Barack Obama's executive order that overrode existing immigration law. The result is more acrimony and chaos. It is a good time to remember that there are more than just two types of immigration -- legal and illegal. There also exist liberal and illiberal approaches to immigration.

World War II was the most destructive war in history. What caused it? The panic from the ongoing and worldwide Depression in the 1930s had empowered extremist movements the world over. Like-minded, violent dictators of otherwise quite different Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Imperial Japan and Communist Soviet Union all wanted to attack their neighbors. Yet World War II could have been prevented had Western Europe united to deter Germany. Instead, France, Britain and the smaller European democracies appeased Hitler. The United States turned isolationist. The Soviet Union collaborated with the Third Reich. And Italy and Japan eventually joined it. The...

The NBC anchor’s lies are symptomatic of a culture in which truth has become relativized. NBC Nightly News anchorman Brian Williams frequently fabricated a dramatic story that he was under enemy attack while reporting from Iraq. NBC is now investigating whether Williams also embellished events in New Orleans during his reporting on Hurricane Katrina. Williams always plays the hero in his yarns, braving natural and hostile human enemies to deliver us the truth on the evening news. Former CBS anchorman Dan Rather tried to pass off fake memos as authentic evidence about former President George W. Bush’s supposedly checkered National...

"NBC Nightly News" anchorman Brian Williams frequently fabricated a dramatic story that he was under enemy attack while reporting from Iraq. NBC is now investigating whether Williams also embellished events in New Orleans during his reporting on Hurricane Katrina. Williams always plays the hero in his yarns, braving natural and hostile human enemies to deliver us the truth on the evening news. Former CBS anchorman Dan Rather tried to pass off fake memos as authentic evidence about former President George W. Bush's supposedly checkered National Guard record. CNN news host Fareed Zakaria, who recently interviewed President Obama, was caught using...

Snark is a popular word used for a particular sort of off-putting sarcasm. Snarkiness can manifest itself as adolescent cheap shots, snide condescension, or simple ad hominem patronizing — a sort of “I know you are, but what am I?” schoolyard name-calling. Its incessant use is typically connected with a peevishness born out of juvenile insecurity, and sometimes fed by an embarrassing envy. All politicians are snarky at times; but few obsessively so, given the wages of monotony and insecurity that the snark earns. President Obama is well known both for ad hominem dismissals of his supposed enemies — everyone...

The United States can be quite an incoherent place at times. Here are a few examples. Diversity Sometime in the 1990s the growing contradictions of affirmative action in a multiracial society became problematic. Ethnic ancestry was often neither easily identifiable nor readily commensurate with class status, and so gave way to a more popular term: “diversity.”

The president’s disastrous foreign policy is as much a product of his own vanity as anything else. Members of the Obama administration have insisted that the Taliban are not terrorists. Those responsible for the recent Paris killings are not radical Islamists. The Muslim Brotherhood is largely secular. Jihad is a “legitimate tenet of Islam.” And “violent extremism,” “workplace violence,” or “man-caused disaster” better describe radical Islamic terrorism. Domestic terrorism is just as likely caused by returning U.S. combat veterans, according to one report by a federal agency. What is the point of such linguistic appeasement? The word “appeasement” long ago...

President Obama, at the National Prayer Breakfast this morning, said: Unless we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ. This is banal. The problem with all such high-horse declarations by Obama is his continual omission of historical context and, in this case, his conflation of the frequent with the rare. The Crusades began in 1095, almost a millennium...

<p>Empires can rise and fall quickly. After World War I, the Austro-Hungarian, German, Ottoman, and Russian Empires abruptly collapsed amid military defeat, rising nationalism, and revolution.</p> <p>Yet on the eve of World War II four new empires suddenly grew out the wreckage of old Europe and Asia. A weak Italy under Fascist Benito Mussolini in just a few years grabbed much of East and North Africa, as well as the Dalmatian coast. Hitler’s so-called “Third Empire” carved off Austria and strips of Eastern Europe — and planned to go to war for more. The Soviet Union absorbed the Baltic states and southern Finland. Japan declared first Manchuria, and then Southeast Asia, part of its new “Co-Prosperity Sphere.”</p>

Once you see what he is trying to accomplish, it all makes sense..... The Obama team — with its foreign policy formulated by President Obama himself...Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, and John Kerry — is not in fact befuddled by the existing world. Instead, it is intent on changing it into something quite different from what it is.... ... current U.S. foreign policy is consistent, logical, and based on four pillars of belief. 1. Readjustments in the global order are long overdue.... 2. All nations and interests act rationally — if given a chance..... 3. Do abroad as we try to...

After six years, it is no surprise that the Obama administration does not see the Taliban as “terrorists” or that it will not associate “violent extremism” with radical Islam or just Islam. After all, when Maj. Hasan murdered U.S. soldiers it was nothing more than “workplace violence,” as if he were a disgruntled post office employee of the 1970s. Our two top intelligence chiefs assured us that the Muslim Brotherhood was “largely secular” and that jihad “was a legitimate tenet of Islam.” Add in “workplace violence” and the old “overseas contingency operations.” Do we remember that Ms. Napolitano’s Department of...

Israel is the only liberal democracy in the Middle East and North Africa. Eight million Israelis are surrounded by some 400 million Muslims in more than 20 states. Almost all of Israel's neighbors are anti-Israeli dictatorships, monarchies or theocracies-- a number of them reduced to a state of terrorist chaos. Given the rise of radical Islam, the huge petrodollar wealth of the Middle East and lopsided demography, how has Israel so far survived? The Jewish state has always depended on three unspoken assumptions for its tenuous existence. First, a democratic, nuclear Israel can deter larger enemies. In the Cold War,...

Western civilization's creed is free thought and expression, the lubricant of everything from democracy to human rights. Even a simpleton in the West accepts that protecting free expression is not the easy task of ensuring the right to read Homer's "Iliad" or do the New York Times crossword puzzle. It entails instead the unpleasant duty of allowing offensive expression. Westerners fight against pornography, blasphemy or hate speech in the arena of ideas by writing and speaking out against such foul expression. They are free to sue, picket, boycott, and pressure sponsors of unwelcome speech. But Westerners cannot return to the...

Fueling the Western paralysis in dealing with radical Islam is the late 20th century doctrine of multiculturalism. Multiculturalism is one of those buzzwords that does not mean what it should. The ancient and generic Western study of many cultures is not multiculturalism. Rather, the trendy term promotes non-Western cultures to a status equal with or superior to Western culture largely to fulfill contemporary political agendas. On college campuses, multiculturalism not so much manifests itself in the worthy interest in Chinese literature, Persian history, or hieroglyphics, but rather has become more a therapeutic exercise of exaggerating Western sins while ignoring non-Western...