Free Republic

Excerpt: COVID-19 shows the dangers that the Western world ignored when it embraced the CCP imperial dynasty The COVID-19 pandemic is the single greatest global peacetime catastrophe that humanity has suffered since the end of the Second World War. Barely months into what promises to be a multiyear disaster, the pandemic has already cost America alone over 100,000 lives, tens of millions of jobs, and trillions of dollars in lost output, income, and wealth. The ultimate toll for the world as a whole from this pandemic — both the direct and the indirect consequences — may still lie beyond imagining....

Sure, we revere Lincoln today, but in his lifetime the bile poured on him from every quarter makes today’s Internet vitriol seem dainty...He was called a coward, “an idiot,” and “the original gorilla” by none other than the commanding general of his armies, George McClellan. ...As for the Gettysburg Address...A London Times correspondent wrote, “Anything more dull and commonplace it wouldn’t be easy to produce.”

This is arguably a crisis, but it is hardly ever discussed in the public square. Received wisdom holds that the U.S. is at or near “full employment.” Most readers have probably heard this, perhaps from the vice chairman of the Federal Reserve, who said in a speech last week that “it is a remarkable, and perhaps underappreciated, achievement that the economy has returned to near-full employment in a relatively short time after the Great Recession.” Near-full employment? In 2015 the work rate (the ratio of employment to population) for American males age 25 to 54 was 84.4%. That’s slightly lower...

China’s stringent regulation of American movies isn’t just a matter of cultural differences, but in fact runs afoul of China’s commitments to the World Trade Organization, which in 2007 ordered the country to open its doors to cinematic imports. China failed to comply with the WTO directive for several years, the researchers write, but in 2012 made a deal with the United States to raise the cap on film imports from 20 to 34 films a year -- a move heralded by the Obama administration as a breakthrough. But more films didn’t lead to WTO compliance. “The ruling called for...

One test for economic conservatives is whether they are willing to oppose constituent business interests looking for government favoritism. On that score, two recent contrasting votes by Jim DeMint of South Carolina and Marco Rubio of Florida are instructive. The political habit of favoring big business is bipartisan, as the sugar and Ex-Im Bank votes show. If Republicans want the political credibility to reform middle-class entitlements, they had better be prepared to eliminate corporate welfare too. Kudos to Mr. DeMint for understanding this.

Whether Hoffa's words are criminal or not, with words like "terrorist," "lynching," "go to hell," and "take them out," the emerging tone of the Democratic Party regarding the Tea Party is ominous. It is the language of murderous violence, and it is targeted at a specific group of people. Most disturbing is the failure of the Democratic Party leaders to condemn such language -- including Chairman of the Democratic National Committee Debbie Wasserman Schultz -- who on national television specifically and repeatedly evaded any comment on Hoffa's statement. No president or other party leader can be held responsible for the...

In the weeks during and since the debt-ceiling debate, the media, pushed by the Democratic Party, has peddled the propaganda that our government is broken -- because the Republicans in the House of Representatives negotiated a better deal than the liberals wanted. snip Abraham Lincoln could have been thinking of Thomas Friedman when he worried out loud in the Gettysburg Address whether any nation "conceived in liberty...could long endure." Lincoln then called the nation to the "unfinished work" of maintaining a nation "of the people, by the people and for the people." That work goes on today.

For unsurprising reasons, the people's uprising in Egypt has been widely cast as an epochal event for Arab political culture, and somewhat more widely, for the entire Middle East. To limit our understanding of these events in this way, however, is to lose sight of a story playing out against an immensely larger backdrop. The putative and much discussed decline of the United States in recent years has been cast against the perceived successes, or at least the argued attractiveness, of an authoritarian other. It is hard, though, to overstate the difficulties of spinning the Egypt situation from the perspective...

The burden of regulation on Americans increased at an alarming rate in fiscal year 2010. Based on data from the Government Accountability Office, an unprecedented 43 major new regulations were imposed by Washington. And based on reports from government regulators themselves, the total cost of these rules topped $26.5 billion, far more than any other year for which records are available. These costs will affect Americans in many ways, raising the price of the cars they buy and the food they eat, while destroying an untold number of jobs. With the enactment of new health care laws, financial regulations, and...

WASHINGTON — A top US diplomat who reportedly compared a tough new immigration law in Arizona to China's rights record must retract his "offensive" remark and apologize, the state's two US senators demanded Tuesday. Republican Senators Jon Kyl and John McCain accused Assistant Secretary of State Michael Posner of implying that the Arizona measure "is morally equivalent to China's persistent pattern of abuse and repression of its people." The letter from McCain and Kyl, obtained by AFP, cited a media report that Posner had called Arizona's controversial immigration measure part of "a troubling trend in our society" during recent US-China...

For those Forum Members who have expressed an opinion on the movie Letters from Iwo Jima, please allow me to share how I re-acted to this film. For lack of a better way to begin, let me say, What “Nice Guys” the Japanese Soldiers Were. It was obvious to me that the Japanese soldiers who fought the Americans on Iwo Jima were not the same soldiers who fought the Americans on Bataan, or were they? As a survivor of the Bataan Death March, I can tell you for certainty, the Japanese depicted in “Letters From Iwo Jima” were in no...

Vietnam taught many Americans the wrong lesson: that determined guerrilla fighters are invincible. But history shows that insurgents rarely win, and Iraq should be no different. Now that it finally has a winning strategy, the Bush administration is in a race against time to beat the insurgency before the public’s patience finally wears out.

October 10, 2006 NORTH Korea's nuclear test, coming hard on the heels of its missile tests in July, will cause Japan to reassess whether it will continue to rely on the US for its security. If Japan decides on an independent nuclear option, Australia will have to reconsider its policies. That will be domestically contentious, not least because we, like Japan, have relied on the extended deterrence of the US "nuclear umbrella" while pursuing nuclear disarmament policies that serve to undermine it.

(SNIP) Q Mr. President, Vice President Cheney called it reprehensible for critics to question how you took the country to war, but Senator Hagel says it's patriotic to ask those kinds of questions. Who do you think is right? PRESIDENT BUSH: The Vice President. Q Why? PRESIDENT BUSH: Well, look, ours is a country where people ought to be able to disagree, and I expect there to be criticism. But when Democrats say that I deliberately misled the Congress and the people, that's irresponsible. They looked at the same intelligence I did, and they voted -- many of them voted...

Conclusion (SNIP) (SNIP) Put simply, the current makeup of the all-vol­untary military looks like America. Where they are different, the data show that the average sol­dier is slightly better educated and comes from a slightly wealthier, more rural area. We found that the military (and Army specifically) included a higher proportion of blacks and lower propor­tions of other minorities but a proportionate num­ber of whites. More important, we found that recruiting was not drawing disproportionately from racially concentrated areas. Perhaps more could be done to dismantle the claim that an all-volunteer military relies dispro­portionately on ignorant, black, poor, urban young...

BEIJING - Chinese President Hu Jintao on Saturday postponed his official visit to Washington next week due to Hurricane Katrina, but he and President Bush agreed to meet on the sidelines of a U.N. assembly in New York later this month. The move upset Hu's plans to try to polish Beijing's image in Washington amid strains over textile imports, China's growing economic and military power, human rights and other issues. It would have been Hu's first U.S. visit since becoming president in 2003. Hu talked with Bush by phone and the two leaders agreed to postpone a meeting planned for...

We must pass the Central America Free Trade Agreement--for our economy, for democracy, and to thwart China. WASHINGTON--Any day now, the House of Representatives will vote on the Central American Free Trade Agreement. The outcome is considered too close to call. But the stakes are huge. The upcoming vote will affect far more than trade deficits, job creation or other economic factors. It will determine the course of American leadership in Central America and could decide the very fate of the infant democracies there. That's because a third party lurks silently in the shadows as the CAFTA debate swirls. That...

Thursday, July 21, 2005 at 04:00 JST TOKYO — U.S. Ambassador to Japan Thomas Schieffer said Wednesday the United States may agree with Japan to decrease U.S. troops in Okinawa Prefecture and other areas in Japan as long as deterrence in the region surrounding Japan is maintained. "We can reduce the number of troops that are stationed here and I think we can change the footprint of how they are deployed," Schieffer told a press conference, regarding the ongoing bilateral consultations on the planned realignment of U.S. forces in Japan. (Kyodo News)

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The rapid rise of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as a regional political and economic power with global aspirations is one of the principal elements in the emergence of East Asia, a region that has changed greatly over the past quarter of a century. China’s emergence has significant implications for the region and the world. The United States welcomes the rise of a peaceful and prosperous China, one that becomes integrated as a constructive member of the international community. But, we see a China facing a strategic crossroads. Questions remain about the basic choices China’s leaders will...

Robert McNamara says he did not realise during the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962 just how close the US and the Soviet Union came to nuclear war. Forty-three years later, the controversial former US defence secretary is more concerned than ever about the dangers of nuclear weapons. Sitting in his Washington office, the subject of The Fog of War - the Oscar-winning documentary about his views on the Vietnam war - cautions, in a rare interview, that he does not want to talk about Iraq. The 89-year-old Mr McNamara - who served under Presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson...