Free Republic

Many generations of young Americans have learned in school under the grading system. We took tests in subjects and would find out how well we had done when the instructor returned them, often with red marks to show where we’d made mistakes. The instructor would go over the tests, often spending extra time on the questions that had given students the most trouble. Then we would move on to new material, followed by another test. At the end of the class, we’d receive an overall grade to indicate how well we had done—an A for excellent work, a B for...

VIDEOImagine that you write a book to prove to the world that you are not just some dumb gold-digger bimbo and then THIS happens..... And don't forget to read the next book from world renowned author Lauren Sanchez: "The Bimbo Who Flew Into a Rage."

Yours truly is rarely to be found at the multiplex, but I guess it was spiritually impossible for me not to go see the new Reagan film, given that Bob Dylan recorded a special tune for it (Cole Porter’s “Don’t Fence Me In”). It’s conceivable I would have gone out to see it anyway, but more likely would have waited to check it out some time in the future in the quiet and comfort of home.

Bob Woodward, a far-left author and Washington Post editor, is set to drop an ‘October surprise’ on Kamala Harris and Joe Biden. Far-left author Bob Woodward’s forthcoming book about Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will drop several bombshells on October 15. Per RealClearInvestigations reporter Paul Sperry: OCTOBER SURPRISE: A source close to Bob Woodward says his forthcoming book, “War,” about the Biden-Harris administration’s inner workings will “not be kind to Biden or Kamala” and will drop several bombshells on Oct. 15 when Simon & Schuster releases the tome … developing … Simon and Schuster called Bob Woodward’s forthcoming book ‘War,’...

Derek Bok has served as president of Harvard twice, from 1971 to 1991 and again from 2006-07. He has written much about higher education and is by no means a reflexive defender of the status quo—see, for example, his The Struggle to Reform Our Colleges, which I reviewed here. Bok’s latest book is Attacking the Elites: What Critics Get Wrong—and Right—About America’s Leading Universities. He explains that his motivation for it was the absence of response from our “elite” higher-education institutions to the surge in criticism from both sides of our political divide. As his subtitle suggests, he thinks that...

JD Vance is a marked man. After accepting the nomination for vice president, Vance has been the subject of endless media attacks. Recently, Vice President Kamala Harris even questioned his “loyalty” to the country despite his serving as a Marine in the Iraq War. Yet, one of the most chilling attacks came from Germany where the publishing house Ullstein Buchverlage has stopped printing the sold-out German translation of Hillbilly Elegy, his 2016 autobiography. As we have discussed previously in this country, it is the modern left’s equivalent of book burning. After all, why burn books when you can simply prevent...

The 1951 J.D. Salinger novel The Catcher in the Rye has long been one of the most controversial literary tomes, inspiring films and criminal conspiracies. John Lennon’s murderer, Marc David Chapman, carried the book at the murder and continued reading it while Lennon lay bleeding at his feet. He has said that he wished to model his life after the novel's protagonist, Holden Caulfield, identifying with Holden’s misanthropic world view. -snip- There have been numerous books, podcasts, and lectures positing even more outlandish schemes emanating from the pen of Jerome David Salinger. One of the most amusing was a three...

Waltzing Matilda is Australia's unofficial national anthem. It is a song about suicide being a better option than being a prisoner of tyranny. Such is Australia. Here the musician, playing in the caldera of extinct volcano Mt Buninyong, slows it down and pauses a lot. This gives the birds in the trees around him a chance to sing back. What do those birds say?

On this, the second day of the abortive 1832 June Rebellion in Paris, police inspector Javert is faux-executed — and mercifully released — by his longtime quarry Jean Valjean in Victor Hugo’s classic Les Miserables. Hugo’s monumental novel is structured by the implacable policeman’s pursuit of Jean Valjean, an absconded ex-con with a heart of gold. Fate brings them together accidentally at the barricade of the (historical, but now forgotten) student uprising — Javert to spy on the student revolutionaries, who unmask him, and Jean Valjean to keep an eye on his adoptive daughter’s idealistic lover. Jean Valjean’s timely contribution...

The conventional wisdom among “progressives” is that black Americans must be given preferences in college admissions, hiring, and government contracting because the nation is so suffused with racism that they cannot advance otherwise. There are many problems with that view, and in her book The Adversity of Diversity Carol Swain explores them. As a black woman who grew up in impoverished conditions in rural Virginia, Swain has a compelling case to make against the idea that preferences actually help blacks. Her success in life is a strong counter to the leftist racial agenda, and she argues that it makes matters...

I cannot think of anything in comedy in my lifetime more deeply meaningful to me than Babylon Bee. There was Mark Twain. Who agrees? Who believes that the Bee's Trump Bible is sacrilegious?

Hugh Gallagher explored what he called FDR’s Splendid Deception in his 1985 book of that title. In the title Gallagher was referring to FDR’s concealment of the polio-related paralysis that struck him in 1921. Gallagher was also a polio victim who understood the pain underlying Roosevelt’s efforts. Researching the book, Gallagher found that among the 35,000 photographs of Roosevelt at his presidential library, only two featured him in his wheelchair. Media of the day cooperated by ignoring his polio. Roosevelt himself went to extraordinary lengths to convey the impression that he could walk. “[T]he overwhelming fact about [FDR] is that...

Suddenly almost all the Michael Connelly detective novels featuring Harry Bosch have appeared on You Tube.

There is much to learn from Paul Johnson's history of the 20th century, not least the appalling truth about the "Republican" camp during the Spanish Civil War; some unpalatable facts about FDR and his "vanity … compounded by an astonishing naivety"; and, most importantly, the many ways in which the autocrats of the left (Lenin, Stalin, Mao, etc…) and of the right (Hitler, Mussolini, Pétain, etc…) inspired, complemented, and even conspired with, one another. Much of what we have learned turns out to be myths. What explains the rise of rightist fascism, and how does it differ from leftist communism?...

You’ve likely encountered films such as Dr. Strangelove, Fail Safe, or WarGames, narratives where the specter of nuclear war looms ominously, often triggered by a mere twist of fate. In my latest work, I delve into the unsettling realm of historical near-misses—moments when a convergence of computer glitches, radar anomalies, or communication breakdowns brought the world to the brink of nuclear Armageddon. Each chapter meticulously recounts instances where a stray aircraft carrying deadly cargo narrowly averted disaster or when a malfunctioning missile silo threatened to unleash unimaginable devastation. What sets this exploration apart from conventional historical accounts is its narrative...

Many Americans realize that our higher-education system is decaying, its standards in decline while costs continue to rise. Is this situation like a tooth with a cavity that can readily be fixed? Or is the decay so deep that we need something far more serious, such as a root canal? David Barnhizer’s new book, Conformity Colleges, strongly suggests that we must have the latter. His subtitle explains that we suffer from “the destruction of intellectual creativity and dissent.” That’s an accurate diagnosis. An emeritus professor of law, Barnhizer has written a no-holds-barred exposé of the tragic fall of our institutions...

A university library in the UK has placed trigger warnings for "white supremacy" on classic children's books such as Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland. York St John University warned readers that historical children's stories written in the 19th and early 20th centuries under their Rees-Williams collection are likely to contain "offensive" examples of "white supremacy" and "colonialist narratives." An online disclaimer for the collection, entitled "Content warning and position statement" says: “Within the 150 years of children’s writing which is represented in the collection, there is a widespread occurrence of colonialist narratives which centre white supremacy, and racist and...

The American edition, published in 1956, 468 pages, Translated by A.P. Maudsley The Diaz account is the best history book that I have read. It has all the advantage of a first person account and reads like a well written adventure novel. The Discovery and Conquest of Mexico by Bernal Diaz del Castillo is the only extant first person account of the campaign under the command of Hernando Cortez from 1519 to 1520. The campaign resulted in the discovery and conquest of the Aztec civilization in Mexico. Cortez himself wrote five long letters to Carlos V in Spain. Parts...

Christine Blasey Ford will release a memoir five years after she accused then-Supreme Court Justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh of assaulting her. Ford’s memoir, One Way Back, is slated for public release on March 19, and the central topic is her allegations against Kavanaugh. According to Ford, Kavanaugh groped her during a gathering at a house in suburban Maryland in 1982. Kavanaugh vehemently denied the accusations from Ford, in addition to the two other women who stepped forward with claims of misconduct. “The fact is, he was there in the room with me that night in 1982,” an excerpt reads. “And...

“Centuries of capitalism were held to have produced nothing of value,” Winston Smith discovers in George Orwell’s 1984. “One could not learn history from architecture any more than one could learn it from books. Streets, inscriptions memorial stones, the names of streets – anything that might throw light on the past had been systematically altered.” In other words, “history has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.” For all but the willfully blind, the parallels are apparent on every hand. For the Biden Junta, America is nothing more than a bastion of racist...