Free Republic

BERRIEN COUNTY, Mich. (AP) — Part of an ancient Michigan cave where “The Great Train Robbery” was filmed has collapsed under heavy rain. A wall of Bear Cave in Buchanan collapsed this week, Adam Morris, the property manager at a campground that operates near the cave, told MLive.com. The wall collapsed at night and was already closed to the public due to flooding, Morris said. He didn't clarify what night the collapse happened. The cave will remain closed pending an inspection, Morris said. It was unclear how soon the inspection might take place. Storms on July 9, 10 and 15...

…But as the 2024 Republican National Convention in the garrison state of downtown Milwaukee winds down, a more definitive transformation of the Trumpist creed is under way, chiefly in the selection of Ohio Senator J.D. Vance as Trump’s running mate. Trump’s own listless, meandering, and astoundingly long acceptance speech on the convention’s last night only made it all the more clear that the MAGA torch is being passed to a more focused and clear-eyed generation of ideologues, with Vance as their de facto leader. But the party’s fulsome embrace of a blood-and-soil brand of economic nationalism, as epitomized by Vance’s...

2 days after Gandhi's birthday, I publish a comparison of his thought and the ideas and practices of a few American conservatives. "The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong." (cf TR's favourite proverb: "Speak softly and carry a big stick."?) “The future depends on what you do today.” ("It is no coincidence that the century of total war coincided with the century of central banking." - Ron Paul) "Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good." ("The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and...

Ron Paul, who is, in my view, perhaps the single greatest living libertarian politician in the world, was born in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, on August 20, 1935. He came to my attention through his “what if” speech on YouTube. I consider it to be a truly great poem. I throw up for contrast with some of Paul’s thought a book title from Paleoconservative Pat Buchanan: “Churchill, Hitler and The Unnecessary War: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World.” To what extent would his fellow libertarian, Ron Paul, agree? Here is a taste of Paul’s thought: “There is...

The Old Right/New Left/Neo-Nazi AllianceBy Steven Zak FrontPageMagazine.com | May 12, 2005 How much difference is there, really, between the far-Left, the far-Right, and overt white supremacists? How do the public stances of Michael Moore, Pat Buchanan, and David Duke compare? Proponents of both extreme views now think and sound so much alike, they sound like soulmates. Somehow these fringe characters have moved so far around the edges that they have arrived at the same territory, spouting identical positions in copycat rhetoric on such issues as Iraq, the broader War on Terror, and the Jewish state of Israel. Their own words...

...A political magazine, The American Conservative will presumably comport itself with a bit more dignity than the average tabloid -- or maybe not, given the crew behind it. Executive editor Scott McConnell was formerly editorial page editor of the New York Post, and right-wing fulminator Pat Buchanan will serve as an advisor and contributor. Backed by millionaire New York Press columnist Taki Theodoracopulos, the new biweekly is expected to be more conservative than either The Weekly Standard or the National Review. It launches in September.... (snip)

Stalwart conservative and three-time presidential candidate Patrick J. Buchanan has announced his retirement from writing a weekly syndicated column. Buchanan, 84, has been a longtime Newsmax insider. After making a national name as broadcaster and author, Buchanan ran for the GOP presidential nomination in 1992 and 1996. He became the Reform Party nominee in 2000, espousing his strong opposition to outsourcing and illegal immigration. On television, Buchanan was a regular panelist on Sunday morning's long-running "The McLaughlin Group," and was an original host of CNN's "Crossfire." A prolific writer, he authored 14 books including "The Death of the West," "State...

But is he mad enough to quit Congress over losing the gavel? Did U.S. Rep. Vern Buchanan curse out Speaker Kevin McCarthy on the House floor? A new report in Puck documents an angry exchange between the Longboat Key Republican after the GOP Steering Committee denied him the chairmanship of the House Ways and Means Committee. The gavel instead went to U.S. Rep. Jason Smith, a Missouri Republican fifth in line in terms of seniority. “You f**ked me. I know it was you, you whipped against me,” Buchanan reportedly told the California Republican. Sources close to Buchanan would not confirm...

Winter has often proven an indispensable ally of Mother Russia.The impending winter of 1812-13 forced Napoleon's withdrawal from Moscow, a retreat from which his Grande Armee never recovered.The winter of 1941-42 sealed the ultimate fate of the invading armies of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich.Vladimir Putin's new strategy in the war he launched on Ukraine in February is to conscript the coming winter of 2022-23 as an ally of his failing army.For weeks, there have been reports of Russian air, missile and drone strikes on power plants in every major Ukrainian city.The false report that a Russian-fired rocket had landed in...

In the aftermath of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, President Joe Biden declared to the nation and world: "We are engaged anew in a great battle for freedom. A battle between democracy and autocracy."On her trip to Taiwan, Speaker Nancy Pelosi echoed Biden: "Today, the world faces a choice between democracy and autocracy. America's determination to preserve democracy here in Taiwan and in the world remains iron-clad."But is this truly the world struggle America is in today?Is this the great challenge and threat to the United States?Are autocracy and democracy in a climactic ideological crusade to determine the destiny of mankind?For...

Because America entered both world wars of the 20th century last, while all the other great powers bled one another, and because we outlasted the Soviet Empire in the Cold War, America emerged, in the term of President George H.W. Bush, as "the last superpower." We had it all. We were the "indispensable nation." We saw further into the future. We could impose our "benevolent global hegemony" on all mankind. And so it was that we set out to create a "new world order," plunging into successive wars in Iraq, the Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq again, Syria, Libya, Yemen. So doing,...

If the left believed that draping the Capitol riot of Jan. 6, 2021, around the neck of former President Donald Trump and the party that refused to repudiate him would sink the GOP, it appears to have miscalculated. For, as the left painted the Capitol riot as an "armed insurrection," "domestic terrorism," "attempted coup," and political atrocity that stands beside Pearl Harbor and 9/11 as "a day that will live in infamy," Republicans were displacing the Democrats as America's first party. Democrats began 2021 as the preferred party of 49% of the country. Only 40% identified as Republicans. When 2022...

To prove that @PatrickBuchanan truly was Right from the Beginning, here’s a list of times he warned you years in advance of the problems that conservatives face today (THREAD) 1 (2) Pat Buchanan warned Republicans of the globalist agenda of George HW Bush in 1991: (3) Pat Buchanan warned of declining American manufacturing in 1992: (4) Pat Buchanan correctly predicted the fallout of an Iraq War in 2002, a year before it even happened: (5) Pat Buchanan sternly warned the Republican Party about the electoral effects of mass immigration in 2004: (6) In 2010, Pat Buchanan even warned us about...

I would say it was fun while it lasted but that would imply it even started. When former President Donald Trump gave U.S. Rep. Vern Buchanan his “complete and total endorsement” on Monday it effectively eliminated any chance that Martin Hyde’s circus act of a campaign for Florida’s 16th Congressional District would get off the ground. It’s not like Buchanan needed the former President’s endorsement to destroy Hyde’s chances of winning the Republican nomination. Hyde did that to himself the moment he called Trump “wretched” and said he was “horrified” by the “bigotry and bullying” of Trump supporters. He may...

So asks Newsweek's cover, which features a full-length photo of the prime minister his people voted the greatest Briton of them all. Quite a tribute, when one realizes Churchill's career coincides with the collapse of the British empire and the fall of his nation from world pre-eminence to third-rate power. That the Newsweek cover was sparked by my book "Churchill, Hitler and The Unnecessary War" seems apparent, as one of the three essays, by Christopher Hitchens, was a scathing review. Though in places complimentary, Hitchens charmingly concludes: This book "stinks." Understandable. No Brit can easily concede my central thesis: The...

In judging the actions of Kyle Rittenhouse, set aside for the moment Wisconsin law under which he is being tried, and consider the natural law, the moral law, the higher law written on the human heart. In terms of values demonstrated and the deeds done that night that Rittenhouse shot the three men who attacked him, who was on the righteous side? Consider what Rittenhouse did that night of Aug. 25, 2020, and why. Watching on television the nightly riots in Kenosha, Wisconsin, a town 20 miles from his home in Antioch, Illinois, that he knew well, Rittenhouse decided to...

In a surprise announcement at the Glasgow summit, U.S. climate czar John Kerry and his Chinese counterpart declared that their two countries have pledged to work together to slow global warming. Yet, the arrival a day earlier in Taiwan of a U.S. Navy plane from Clark Air Base in the Philippines, carrying a U.S. congressional delegation, set off a different reaction from Beijing: "The Chinese People's Liberation Army will ... take all necessary measures to resolutely smash any interference by external forces and 'Taiwan independence' separatist plots." The incidents touch on one of the great questions of our time. Are...

"I don't think parents should be telling schools what they should teach." With this remark -- arrogant, dismissive, contemptuous -- in his debate with Glenn Youngkin, Terry McAuliffe committed a historic gaffe. From that debate forward, his poll numbers steadily sank until McAuliffe lost his lead, and with it, the election. And going down to defeat, McAuliffe dragged with him his fellow Democratic candidates for lieutenant governor and attorney general and watched Virginia's House of Delegates revert to Republican rule. What was McAuliffe saying, and what were Virginians hearing, in his remark? McAuliffe was saying that, in deciding what should...

Last Friday, in a triumph for transnationalism, 136 nations, including the U.S., agreed to mandate a global corporate income tax for all nations that will not be allowed to fall below 15%."Virtually the entire global economy has decided to end the race to the bottom on corporate taxation," said Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who negotiated the pact.Betraying a nervousness as to how such a minimum corporate tax, dictated by globalists, will be received in Congress, Yellen urged that it be adopted "swiftly." Yellen is right to be nervous.The tax proposal is a giant leap forward toward a globalism that America...

The first returns from the delayed census of 2020 are in, and they have made for celebratory headlines in the mainstream media. Big takeaway: Between 2010 and 2021, the white American population declined in real and relative terms, with more deaths than live births, as the white share of the U.S. population fell from 63 percent to under 58 percent. As The Washington Post reported, between 1990 and 2020: Black Americans held at roughly 12 percent of the population. Hispanics doubled their share from 9% to almost 19 percent, and Asians went from less than 3 percent to more than...