Free Republic

 To Edward Pentin   On the subject "Information Operations-Successes and Failures",  here is Robert R. Reilly, former director of the Voice of America,  author of "The Closing of the Muslim Mind: How Intellectual Suicide Created the Modern Islamist Crisis" and  "Making Gay Okay: How Rationalizing Homosexual Behavior Is Changing Everything",  in a 25 minute YouTube video at youtube.com/watch?v=Kw_YdHJkDcs Rules for Engaging in a war of Ideas.  Don't go into a war of ideas unless:  1) You understand the ideas with which you are at war.  2) You [yourself] have an idea.  3) Wars of ideas are fought by people who think.  4)...

In 2005 I was invited to Rome by the BBC to provide commentary for the events surrounding the death of Pope John Paul II and the subsequent conclave that would elect Joseph Ratzinger as Benedict XVI. On the day the cardinals entered the conclave, I was on camera with the veteran BBC correspondent Brian Hanrahan (who died in 2010) and who seemed incredulous that the College of Cardinals might elect Ratzinger who had just given a memorable homily to the cardinals in which he decried the “dictatorship of relativism.” Could so narrow-minded a man, I was in effect asked, become...