Free Republic

Eight months before the crucial midterm elections, the administration of President Donald Trump is battling high living costs. The strike against Iran threatens to undo the first successes achieved in the struggle against inflation via falling energy prices. Ludwig Erhard understood the formula for sustained political success. The equation was as simple as it was powerful: stable money circulating in free markets coordinates the millions of individual decisions made by households, businesses, and credit institutions -- day after day -- in the most efficient manner. Stable money requires a lean state. Public debt, meanwhile, is widely regarded as the primary...

On Tuesday night, President Trump made his case for attacking Iran. #Perhaps we ought to ask ourselves if an attack on Iran is prudent or desirable.#In his address, Trump argued that Iran was in the process of developing intercontinental ballistic missiles to hit the United States. This assertion is farcical and risible. Iran simply has no ability to hit the United States, and even if it did, the doctrine of classical deterrence would come into play. The United States and the Soviet Union had thousands of nuclear-armed ICBMs targeted at each other for decades yet never engaged in direct conflict....

hirty-five years ago, American political scientist Francis Fukuyama made a name for himself by advancing the proposition that the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union promised the ascendency and universalization of so-called Western liberal democracy. As a Marxist-Hegelian who saw the progression of history as an evolutionary process with a natural and predetermined conclusion, Fukuyama envisioned Western-styled liberalism as both “the endpoint of mankind’s ideological evolution” and “the final form of human government.” Expecting all human struggles to barrel toward a state of imminent equilibrium and future peace, Fukuyama stated out loud what many...

Her father decided to have her born by way of an anonymous egg donor and a surrogate mother. His obsession about having a figure skating daughter was clear: ‘I spared no money, no time,’ Alysa was intentionally created for a single-parent household; she will never know what it means to have a mother. Is this a fair and ethical decision to make?

This is just one more example of a Tucker-Carlson-esque pattern of doing anything he can to avoid showing sympathy to Israel and the Jews. ... Vance: "Today we remember the millions of lives lost during the Holocaust, the millions of stories of individual bravery and heroism, and one of the enduring lessons of one of the darkest chapters in human history: that while humans create beautiful things and are full of compassion, we're also capable of unspeakable brutality. And we promise never again to go down the darkest path."

With the attack on the Cities Church, the Minnesota Nice lefties have crossed a clear line. They’re no longer tribunes of the people, defenders of the oppressed, or speakers of truth to power. No…. now they’re living a dream. They’re giving full expression to their fantasy lives as Bolsheviki storming the Winter Palace, Red Guards liquidating the bourgeoisie, and Khmer Rouge cutting down everybody they come across, with all that implies -- terror, violence, destruction, and bloodshed. So we hear the cries of “why won’t Trump do something…” Why doesn’t he make his move? Why doesn’t he send in the...

In the school of Tuckerism, I was a prospective PhD. I never missed Tucker’s Fox News monologues. Every night, I imbibed his lively lectures, treating his conservative social critique as a nightly devotional. His cuts into liberalism were scalpel-sharp. I once commented to my wife, after another of Tucker’s surgical vivisections of some liberal propagandist, “I’d hate to be one of his liberal guests.” Though sometimes, looking back, the red flags were there—baseless conspiracy theories punctuated with an emphatic “This is just true, period!”—he still put on a nightly clinic on how to deconstruct the left. But now the scalpel-like...

Her story, once dressed as a crusade against elite corruption, has revealed itself as the ascent of a self-serving charlatan whose loyalties shifted the moment her ambitions stalled. What followed was not principled dissent. It was a strategic rebellion from someone who realized that Trump’s second term would not revolve around her. One truth stands out: this rift was inevitable. Trump’s disavowal does not fracture populism; it fortifies it. Movements rooted in loyalty, discipline, and authentic concern for working people cannot depend on performers who mistake attention for integrity.

Once again, it feels as if we’re tiptoeing toward an official war between the United States and Russia — as opposed to the proxy war that has endured for three and half years between Russia and NATO-backed Ukraine. Although President Trump has downplayed the “rare and urgent” meeting of top military commanders from around the world at Quantico, Virginia, on Tuesday, the event has generated intense speculation. The Pentagon says that secretary of War Hegseth merely wants to deliver a speech on the “warrior ethos” and make sure that military leaders are all walking in the same direction. The president...

Unfortunately for the West, the Muslim world understands the game’s optimal strategy, while the West is barely showing up. In the board game RISK, the goal is world domination. You achieve that by battling other players within and across continents. The best strategy is to take and hold Australia. Once secured, you can build up your troops while defending the single point of access to keep your opponents at bay, then attack in a methodical style and slowly expand. This strategy doesn’t always work, but the notion of finding an easily defendable base where you can husband resources and use...

When the FBI visited Deep Stater John Bolton early Friday morning, a line from The Godfather crept into my mind: “Today I settle all family business.” Surely I wasn’t the only one who hoped cable news would soon be reporting similar raids at the homes of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Brennan, James Comey, Jim Clapper, Susan Rice, and all the other co-conspirators responsible for the Russia Collusion Hoax, the Ukraine impeachment, the Hunter Biden laptop cover-up, and all the fraudulently predicated criminal investigations into President Trump and his associates. Alas, Bolton was the only fish dumped out of his...

I love you, BUT I’m not “in love” with you. You don’t have to go home, BUT you can’t stay here. You may continue fighting, Martial Law President Zelensky, BUT the American people won’t be following you into World War III.No matter how agreeable the first half of a sentence might sound, the “buts” change everything on a dime. President Trump has been clear that he wants the Russia-Ukraine War to end, but he says Zelensky must choose to end the conflict. When the war began, 73% of Ukrainians wanted to fight Russia until Ukraine secured victory, but 69% now...

There’s no better example of how little faith Americans have that government officials will tell the truth than the public’s blasé reaction to UFO announcements. In the last ten years, The New York Times has run stories about secret Pentagon programs tasked with retrieving alien craft. Members of Congress have held hearings on “mysterious orbs” and invited government witnesses to testify about black budget projects supposedly reverse-engineering alien technology. Secretary of State Rubio and director of National Intelligence Gabbard have both suggested that the UFO issue is serious. Yet eight billion people around the world collectively shrug. Can you imagine...

There is no shortage of Internet forums filled with energetic contributors all predicting the imminent collapse of the West. Communicating about current events, culture, war, and the economy, a multitude of anonymous speakers publicize their worries every day. Western governments — increasingly insecure, hostile to tradition, and unmoored from any abiding principles — have decided that the best way to project strength is to silence critics. As European governments more overtly embrace censorship and criminalize speech, the incremental push toward a regulated online system requiring authenticated digital identities promises a future when only government-engineered narratives will be approved for public...

Today’s Trump isn’t the original Trump. Watch ancient videos, on Oprah (1988) or testifying before Congress (1991). (Believe it or not, Democrats were then thoughtful legislators, not Marxist juveniles or foreign-born terrorists.)Trump was originally a public intellectual. What happened? Pro wrestling. And secondarily, the Apprentice series (2004–2014). The World Wrestling Hall of Fame (2013) was an Oval Office stepping stone. Adopting an intellectual public persona would have been political poison. Today’s Trump is an assumed persona feeding the mob’s appetites. By 2007, he was grounding and pounding Vince McMahon in the Battle of Billionaires. Along his path to the presidency,...

I have repeatedly stated -- in this forum and elsewhere — that Republicans must not gloat over their rare and recent victory in the 2024 elections. The incumbent party typically loses numerous House and Senate seats in mid-term elections. Moreover, things can change fast. Unforeseen circumstances routinely arise. (See COVID-19.) Arrogance can turn many voters off. The mainstream media is 100.0% in the tank for Democrats, as is the education establishment and other institutions. The Deep State is ever lurking. And Democrats cheat … whenever and wherever they can. That is why they are so rabidly against the concept of...

During the USSR’s 73 years of existence, the list of wars it waged is enormous—a total of 25, including conflicts in the Caucasus, the Baltics, Finland, Poland, Germany, Japan, Afghanistan, Spain, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia. Since 1991, Russia has continued to exist in a state of permanent war: Georgia, Chechnya, Syria, and now the most senseless war of all—against Ukraine. Why? The answer is in the title of this essay: Russia can exist only in a state of permanent war. Therefore, the goal of the Russia-Ukraine war is war itself. Nothing more.

(See also, “The Jeffrey Epstein Case Is Far Bigger Than Jeffrey Epstein” by Vince Coyner.)It’s fairly rare that I agree with Glenn Beck on a political issue (he’s too much of a neocon for me), but he recently posted a brilliant thread on X detailing “five conclusions…for anyone who still cares about truth” on the latest chapter of the Jeffrey Epstein cover-up, this development unfolding under the Trump administration. (For brevity’s sake I won’t include the whole thread, but the beginning of it can be found here.)Now, I’ve seen a number of Republicans and conservatives declare that to some degree...

On Tuesday, President Trump took umbrage at a question about the Justice Department’s assertion that there are no Epstein tapes, there is no client list, and there is nothing more to be released. The Twitterverse has been brutal towards AG Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel, and his #2, Dan Bongino. Many people were saying they felt betrayed, given the fact that, before the election, we were told that the files would be released and the criminals held to account. The president has a point. There is a lot going on in Washington. There are natural disasters with dozens dead...

The Big Beautiful Bill Act (BBBA) will add trillions of dollars to the national debt over the next decade. Elon Musk is right that this is a turning point for American citizens. It is now clear that neither political party has the will to enact a fiscally responsible budget or solve the debt crisis. Musk threatens to form a third party if Congress kicks this can down the road. The budget process is broken, as special interests continue to carve out their bits of a spoils system. Congress is not even willing to discuss reforms in Social Security and Medicare....