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...

At present, there is no sign of de-escalation in the Iran conflict. The Strait of Hormuz has become a geopolitical chokepoint that could plunge the global economy into a severe crisis. While European governments work on emergency plans to mitigate soaring energy prices, the maritime insurance market is experiencing a seismic shock. War is raging in Iran. Amid the fog of propaganda, it is increasingly difficult to separate fact from fiction, to distinguish AI-generated material from actual bomb strikes, and to see behind the carefully woven veil of media spin and national interests. Yet, we attempt here to make sense...

Increasingly, countries that were once U.S. allies are aligning themselves with America’s enemies. The signs were obvious two decades ago, and the insightful Mark Steyn—the conservative Canadian author—addressed them then. In numerous books, written in his sharp, convincing style, he warned that America would soon become isolated in its fight against Islamist jihad. Today, that loneliness appears to be fully realized. His 2006 book America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It, convincingly argued that much of the Western world would not survive the 21st century. Europe, with its declining birthrate, would be the first to go—thanks...

With brilliant intelligence and close U.S. and Israeli cooperation and coordination, Operation Epic fury is systematically dismantling the terrorist regime of Iran’s ayatollahs. And as if in a game of chess, the war has reshaped the Middle East, (a consistent source of hostilities), into a more peaceful and orderly part of the world. It has also demolished fears of Russian and Chinese intervention on behalf of the regime. (Russia’s too broke and China’s grasp is less than its reach.) Indeed China, which depended on Iran and Venezuelan oil, is unlikely to make good for a while if ever on its...

Is there any better evidence that the Europeans are as hidebound, bureaucratic, and ridiculous as we think they are than this statement from European Union Commissioner Ursula von der Leyen in the wake of the U.S.-Israeli strike on Iran's mullah regime? Ursula von der Leyen @vonderleyen Following the ongoing situation in Iran, I am convening a special Security College on Monday. For regional security and stability, it is of the utmost importance that there is no further escalation through Iran’s unjustified attacks on partners in the region. 9:44 AM · Feb 28, 2026 Don't let the bombing of Iran, the...

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?

Apparently, it's panic time for Democrats in their one-party blue state of California. The Los Angeles Times reports that they are facing armageddon in the upcoming governor's race, whose "jungle" primary is in June. According to the Los Angeles Times: SAN FRANCISCO — Leaders of the California Democratic Party, along with liberal activists and loyal power brokers, are openly expressing fear that their crowded field of candidates running for governor may splinter the vote and open the door to a surprise Republican victory in November.SNIP The bottom line here is that Democrats wouldn't have this problem at all if they...

As was true for many conservatives, when I saw the headline saying that the Supreme Court had reversed Trump’s tariffs, I admit that my stomach sank. My first thought was that this was an epic disaster for the Trump administration. More than that, I thought that this is an epic disaster for the strong Trump economy, because tariffs have been a major leg of that stool.AdvertisementThen I took a deep breath and had a couple of useful thoughts. My first thought was, I bet Trump has a backup plan, because he’s always known that this could happen. He’s not the...

Christmas week was rather a slow week, with the big news being the further unraveling of the corruption in Minnesota, Washington state, California, and other Democrat redoubts. But like George Washington crossing the Delaware to beat the Hessians as they rested on Christmas, the U.S. pulled off an incredible military operation capturing Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro in his pajamas and bringing him back here to answer to criminal charges. The Venezuelan military was largely on Christmas leave and Maduro’s international protectors --- the Chinese and Russian forces in Venezuela -- were caught flatfooted, diminishing their credibility in the Western Hemisphere. The...

Every year, New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof ends the year providing a useful and compelling summary of good news from the past year to counteract the general journalistic theme of bad news dominating the headlines. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Kristof refused to offer that annual summary this year. His reactionary political ethic regarding the President of the United States prevented this work. In his own words: "I’ve done these “best year ever” columns annually, irritating Eeyores. But now I just can’t. The year 2025 was a setback for humanity -- and unfortunately, the United States is a reason for the retreat.”...

For students of ancient civilizations, one of the curious facts is that the site of Troy (Hisarlik in western Turkey), whose walls Homer describes as overlooking the sea, is now 6.5 kilometers inland at the closest point to the Aegean. Millions of modern-day tourists have visited that inland site since Schliemann excavated it in the 19th century. Portions of the walls and towers are clearly visible — but the Aegean is nowhere in sight. Why? Because the world's oceans and seas were different at the time of the Trojan War that Homer celebrated in the Iliad. The seas were higher...

There’s been a lot of unsavory comments making the rounds on our side of the political divide the past twenty-four hours following the murder of Rob Reiner. Some people are evidently happy it occurred, or at least acting as if they are. Nope, they’re not going to say a single good word about Reiner. Nope, they weren’t going to sympathize. Nope, they just don’t care. In other words, they’re acting pretty much the same way the Left does when one of ours gets taken down.That this is not acceptable goes without saying, particularly in a case like this. Reiner was...

Ever since Donald Trump welcomed Zohran Mamdani into the White House, we’ve been hearing the expected rhetoric from various usual suspects. Trump has sold out. He’s gone over to the dark side. Mamdani outwitted him and made him look like a fool in his own hometown. This has largely come from two sources: the hysterics who live for the moment where they can begin caterwauling that it’s all over, that nothing can be done, that we may as well give up… (Yeah, that’s right – I’m talking about you in the comment threads.) …and the sincere but limited individuals who...

The left’s house of cards incinerates under scrutiny, and Trump lit the match. Democrat politicians and left-leaning journalists use loaded questions like weapons. Thankfully, conservatives have found a powerful model in President Donald Trump. He has inspired a new generation of fighters to push back against dishonest attacks. Conservatives have stopped playing defense, flipped the script, and gone on the offense. Directly countering the left’s playbook of preordained conclusions cherry-picked with selective facts, conservatives are increasingly using unvarnished evidence leading to clear truths. The days of polite deference are over, as Trump himself demonstrated in the Oval Office when he...

At least theoretically, because of open competition, democracies are supposed to choose their “best” members to be in charge of the public sector. For some reason, however, that doesn’t often happen.Examples of this defect abound. About thirty years ago, here in Oakland, CA, the city’s moms and pops were clutching their pearls over the rampant crime along the near-bayside corridor defined by East 14th Street. Having worked right there for the previous fifteen years, the situation was quite familiar to me.Really conspicuous street crime began when the Barcelona bar closed. Having been mostly a front for the procurement of prostitutes,...

Left-wing activists in the West display an extraordinary tendency toward cognitive dissonance. They are able to firmly believe in mutually exclusive assertions. Such people often refuse to acknowledge the contradiction between their various beliefs. Thus it is that homosexual activists in Europe and in the U.S. join public demonstrations of sympathy for Islamic terrorists who routinely kill homosexuals for the Islamic crime of being homosexual. I remember when such an absurdity was a joke worthy of a comical movie. Now, it’s a tragic reality. In a video online there is an example of an activist who was hoping to...

A coordinated offensive unfolded with precision September 2 against five scientists questioning the popular media’s most sacred bogeyman -- the hypothesis that human-induced emissions of carbon dioxide threaten to overheat the planet. The scientists attacked had written a report published in July by the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE), "A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate." Delivering virtually identical narratives, proclaiming that 85 "climate experts" had discredited the DoE report, were CBS, NPR, ABC, CNN, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Reuters and others. Language in the news reporting was nearly indistinguishable, and...

In 1965, the Four Seasons released “Bye Bye Baby.” Today, there is a new top hit called “Bye Bye Jimmy,” referring to the recently suspended Jimmy Kimmel. A few years earlier, in 1962, NBC premiered “The Tonight Show” featuring Johnny Carson. It was ranked as one of the greatest T.V. shows of all time. Carson was funny and entertaining. Although he interviewed past presidents including Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton, he “refused to discuss his personal political views on the show out of concern it might alienate his audience.Several decades later, ABC launched “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” in 2003....