Free Republic

Thank you to the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy for sponsoring this important symposium on the future of Iraq and the war on terrorism. Through gatherings such as this one, the Foundation is helping “lead the war of ideas in the battle between freedom and totalitarianism.” Today I want to discuss the war we are waging against Islamic terrorists in Iraq and around the world, and to argue that it is fundamentally a war of ideas and a war of values, a war of conflicting visions of humans and history, of faith and country.  The war on terrorism we...

Two views are emerging about our post-September-11 world. One is angry, but also therapeutic — and most often embraced by the Left. I think it goes roughly like this. Removing the Taliban in our initial rage might have for a moment seemed necessary, but things now in retrospect have proved not much better than before in Afghanistan and might well get worse. There was no need for the Iraqi campaign. Thus the Europeans and moderate Arabs were right that chaos would result and terrorists multiply in its bitter aftermath. Sharon has only antagonized the Palestinians, set back the peace-process, and...

The debates are over, thank God, and you can find much useful analysis pus a soupcon of hooey from my old friends  Andrew Coyne and Paul Wells, and my new friends at The Western Standard. I have nothing much to add, except to say that any Canadian who still believes in the inherent superiority of his more civilized articulate politics over the debased “negative” American kind must be on crack. Both the French and English debates were embarrassments.  In part, it’s the format, designed by third-rate TV producers to get the politicians to “mix things up”. This rapidly becomes very boring....

RUSH Limbaugh put out a statement yesterday that he and his third wife, Marta, had separated — but only after PAGE SIX called to confirm what we'd learned exclusively. Sources in Palm Beach say Marta dumped the burly blowhard and vacated the couple's home on North Ocean Boulevard. The two are quietly working out a divorce agreement. Limbaugh met Marta on the Internet and they married in 1994. Since

“It’s only wrong if you get caught.” – Michael Moore Don’t know if I can definitively tell you where character has landed … but it’s no secret that it took the red eye flight out of here sometime in the early 60’s. You know, until recently, character and substance served as the funky bottom line bass note to our Western culture’s earth blessing groove. But since the early 60's it seems as if character has packed its bags, kissed its kids bye-bye and taken a one way flight out of our country. From Plato to the Apostle Paul to the...

WILMINGTON, Ill. — The body of a three-year-old girl who was the subject of an Amber Alert (search) was found Sunday about four miles from her home in this small Will County community, officials said. [snip] Riley's father, Kevin Fox, reported her missing Sunday morning when he awoke and couldn't find her in the family home. The front door to the home was open, but the father said he did not know whether his daughter had opened it and wandered off or not. [snip] "We have no doubt foul play was involved," said Pat Barry, a spokesman for the Will...

Ronald Reagan loved to tell jokes and he especially loved to tell jokes about his old age. In his 1984 debate against former senator, former vice-president Walter Mondale, Mr. Reagan answered a question about his own fitness for office with a mock-pious outburst: "I will not exploit for political advantage my opponent's youth and inexperience!" If there is a Heaven, Mr. Reagan is probably already vexing his old hero Harry Truman by boasting of surpassing the latter's longevity: Mr. Reagan died Saturday at his home in Bel-Air, Calif., aged 93. Few American presidents have been as consistently underestimated as Ronald...

Sixty years on, D-Day casts a long shadow. We look at the extreme heroism of that time and ask ourselves whether such solidarity and self-sacrifice could take place today. The answer is usually a despairing no, and it isn’t hard to see why. For what above all won the war for the allies was self-discipline, a willingness to sacrifice oneself for the common good. Today’s Britain, by contrast, is characterised by self-centredness and a breakdown of self-discipline. Sated by unprecedented material prosperity, this society has all but lost the concept of overcoming setbacks or hardship. It has lost its capacity...

-snip- First, he halted the incremental and insidious growth in rates of taxation and indeed questioned our accepted faith in ever larger government. While deficits resulted and government itself grew nonetheless, at least he established the principle that the United States would not follow the path of European socialism, and would be aware of the peril posed by statist, utopian, pacifist, and welfare systems. That we are not like a struggling, centrally-planned France and Germany today is in large part due to his life-long warning and public service. Second, he restored an honesty of expression in government and tried to...

"The Great Communicator" was effective because what he was communicating was self-evident to all but our dessicated elites: "We are a nation that has a government - not the other way around." And at the end of a grim, grey decade -- Vietnam, Watergate, energy crises, Iranian hostages -- Americans decided they wanted a President who looked like the nation, not like its failed government. Thanks to his clarity, around the world, governments that had nations have been replaced by nations that have governments. Most of the Warsaw Pact countries are now members of Nato, with free markets and freely...

It is too much of a simplification to say Europe and America look at the problem of the resurgent Islamic Jihad in different ways. (Canada being more like Europe than America.) There are two radically different approaches — surrender, or fight — but both may be found on either side of the Atlantic. As President Bush again tours Europe — celebrating the 60th anniversary of the capture of Rome yesterday, and of the Normandy landings tomorrow — we are again reminded how much has changed. In Rome, Mr. Bush had an audience with Pope John Paul II. In exchange for...

It's the crude sado-masochistic elements that bother me. Not in the photos, but in the ensuing ballyhoo. To witness an entire culture -- media and political -- toss all other business aside for a non-stop ritual self-flagellation session is a remarkable privilege. I use the term "self-flagellation" because, though many Democrats and pundits fancy themselves in the sado-dominant role and clearly enjoy flaying Bush, Rumsfeld and co, it is in the objective sense an act of masocho-submission, at least for America.....

There is a certain number of Iraqi terrorists that either need to give up, reconsider their militancy, leave the country, or be killed for there to be peace and the emergence of a consensual government. Given the fiery sermons of al Sadr, the cadres of Baathist hold-outs, the horrific assassination of peace-loving Iraqi officials, and the constant bombing of American soldiers, it may well require the latter ultimate fate. We do not know the exact number of enemies that must be eliminated, but only that it will grow exponentially — along with Iraqi and coalition deaths — unless we act...

Here's a story no American news organization thought worth covering last week, so you'll just have to take it from me. In the southern Iraqi town of Amara, 20 men from Scotland's Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders came under attack from 100 or so of Muqtada al-Sadr's ''insurgents.'' So they fixed bayonets and charged. It was the first British bayonet charge since the Falklands War 20 years ago. And at the end of it some 35 of the enemy were dead in return for three minor wounds on the Argylls' side. If you're used to smart bombs, unmanned drones and doing...

Global Jihad (Arab holy war) is intensifying. In Nigeria last week, Muslim mobs brandishing machetes butchered some thirty Christians in the streets of the city of Kano. They butchered them and then set them aflame. American contractors are murdered in Iraq, their abused corpses triumphantly dragged through the streets and displayed hanging from a bridge. An American, Nick Berg, is beheaded on camera. Six Israeli soldiers are blown up by a roadside bomb and masked terrorists parade their body parts, including a head, for the press. The Arabs, shockingly, are allowed to use UN and UNRWA ambulances to bring body...

The only thing worse than a victorious American at the Athens Olympics? A proud one. The United States Olympic Committee has requested that our athletes curb their enthusiasm, since we are, you know, uh, hated. Says the London Sunday Telegraph: "American athletes have been warned not to wave the U.S. flag during their medal celebrations at this summer's Olympic Games in Athens, for fear of provoking crowd hostility and harming the country's already-battered public image. ... U.S. Olympic officials have ordered their 550-strong team to exercise restraint and avoid any jingoistic behavior." Said Mike Moran, a USOC consultant: "If a...

As Senator Zell Miller, a Democrat, put it: "Why is it that there's more indignation over a photo of a prisoner with underwear on his head than over the video of a young American with no head at all?" ..........

MURDEROUS ARABS SAY THEY ARE VICTIMS OF STEREOTYPING DAMASCUS -- Delegates to the Annual Meeting of the League of Murderous Arabs (LOMA), say they are the victims of "ethnic stereotyping" perpetrated by "Western imperialists who are controlled by the Elders of Zion and the Knights of Malta." "It is not true that Arabs only murder," said Muhammad al-Faruqi, LOMA delegate from Saudi Arabia. "We also rape, steal, lie and cheat. To focus only on murder is to miss the great diversity and range of Arab culture. And Arabs are responsible for all of the technological advances of the last...

The chief strategist for President Bush's re-election campaign yesterday said that if the president's declining approval ratings, which are already at record lows, slip an additional seven percentage points, it will be "very difficult to win." Citing a Gallup poll that shows Mr. Bush's approval rating at 46 percent, strategist Matthew Dowd said the election could be decided by a relatively small shift in support. "I have no idea where it will end up, but all the president's numbers have to move is plus or minus five or six ... which can easily happen, because of events," he said. "If...

As a psychiatrist, I have developed a knack for sniffing out paranoia in others. Lately, however, the psychosis seems to be emanating from me. While politics and personal mental illness do make strange bedfellows, election season events prove that there are no limitations to the nature and course of the human condition. I confess my paranoid concerns, so that I might rid myself of these demons. There are five specific points of political paranoia that keep me up at night. 1) People are coming to kill me: What a tough delusion to resist! I have spent years listening to individuals...