Free Republic

Conservatism, the late philosopher Roger Scruton wrote, emerged into the modern world as “a kind of ‘yes but…’” response to liberalism. Conservatives, he observed, believe, like liberals, in the importance of the free market, of private property and of individual choice. They believe also in the overriding significance of community and tradition as setting limits to the reach of individualism. Liberalism, for Scruton, made sense “only in the social context that conservatism defends”. The relationship between these two philosophical wellsprings of conservatism has never been comfortable. The tension between the individualism of the market and private property and the communality...

At the November 2024 election, twenty-three individuals are on the ballot for President in at least one state. That is down from 2020, when there were thirty-six, a historic record. The reason there were so many in 2020 is that Vermont let anyone on by request, and Colorado allowed anyone on who paid $1,000. Neither of those states have those policies any longer.

There’s an odd and unsettling strain of fatalism sweeping through the ranks of erstwhile conservative thinkers these days, as though they've been put into a form of collective hypnosis and conditioned into believing that the only way to stave off disaster is for all of us to throw ourselves headlong into another Trump campaign—ironically, more than Trump himself is willing to throw himself into it. It’s the kind of logic that says, “If the Titanic is sinking, you should try to put out the fire in the engine room by drilling more holes in the hull.” We are told in...

Will McVay, a former Delaware Libertarian Party activist who has left the Libertarian Party, earlier this year noticed that the Conservative Party of Delaware had become ballot-qualified, almost accidentally. The Delaware definition of a qualified party is one with registration of at least one-tenth of 1% of the total state registration. Without any organized effort, the number of people who spontaneously filled out a Delaware registration chard showing themselves as “Conservative” rose high enough last year to qualify that party. McVay organized it, and this year, under his leadership, the party is running Vermin Supreme for President, Jonathan Realz for...

<p>DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Joe Wiederien was an unlikely candidate to challenge a Republican congressman in one of the nation’s most competitive House districts.</p><p>A fervent supporter of former President Donald Trump, Wiederien was registered as a Republican until months earlier. A debilitating stroke had left him unable to drive. He had never run for office. For a time, he couldn’t vote because of a felony conviction.</p>

Minnesota Democrats have complained in past elections of dirty deeds in the race for the 2nd Congressional District. In both 2020 and 2022, candidates claiming to be with marijuana legalization parties filed to run in what Democrats feared was an attempt to draw votes from Democratic incumbent Angie Craig. One even left a voicemail message for a friend saying he had, in fact, been recruited as a spoiler candidate. It didn’t work. Craig won by more than enough votes to compensate for any skimming of votes. And in a bizarre coincidence, both legalization candidates died before Election Day. This year,...

The smart analysis of the first — and maybe only — debate of the Trump-Harris presidential cycle is that Don­ald Trump blew it. The former president, winging it as usual, missed numerous “kill shots,” was frustratingly imprecise and allowed himself to be baited by Kamala Harris. But on the optics, Harris committed far worse self-harm. If you switched off the sound for the ABC debate Tuesday night and just watched the images, you would come away feeling deep distaste for the haughty flibbertigibbet who kept making faces while Trump was speaking. Harris’ split-screen pantomime made her seem unserious and unlikable...

During Tuesday night’s debate, ABC News moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis interrupted Donald Trump five times to “fact-check” his answers. They did the same to Kamala Harris … never. The vice president was allowed to skate through the debate without substantive follow-up questions or pushback on some of her obviously false claims. So since ABC didn’t do its job, here are some of the fact checks they should have made:

Kamala Harris is losing the fight for the American middle. In the latest New York Times/Siena College poll, a plurality of respondents — 44% — label her “too liberal or progressive.” Only 42% say she’s “not too far either way,” compared to a solid 50% who say that about Donald Trump. But it’s not only voters who think Harris is too far left; the vice president herself agrees. That’s why she’s running like a wannabe Republican, even welcoming support from Liz and Dick Cheney. She’s tried to make “freedom,” the traditional rallying cry of conservatives, her campaign’s watchword. The newly...

After Tucker Carlson platformed Darryl Cooper, I saw numerous Democrats on ?Twitter and other sites calling for Tucker to be arrested for doing so. It looks like this has been memory holed, as I cannot seem to find it, even in Republican search engines. I need help finding that information again.

Yesterday I went to see Reagan. Excellent movie. Go see it.There is a scene in the movie after President Reagan is shot where he gets a hospital visit from Tip O'Neill. They pray together.Even as recently as a few years ago when a Bernie Sanders supporter tried to kill Republican Congressmen and injured Steve Scalise, members of both parties condemned the act and cheered Scaise's recovery.A few months ago, when President Trump was shot, Democrats' responses largely fell into three groups: deny that it happened, claim that Trump staged it, or wish that the shooter had better aim,What has happened...

Jack Kemp once said that liberals "measure compassion by how many people they're helping; we measure compassion by how many people no longer need our help." In my many years of life, especially my years as a minister and a practitioner, I understand that the latter is the better measure. Here's the problem, though. If your measure is how many people you're helping, what happens when people no longer need your help? What do you do? There are fewer people to help, so by your own measure, you're less compassionate. Clearly, we need more people in need. Eventually, as the...

While Donald Trump is not a politician known for his message discipline, he took the world by storm in 2016 with a well-articulated diagnosis of what ailed the nation. “Make America Great Again” managed in four words to assert that America had been great, that it no longer was, and that he would do something about it. His current campaign, by contrast, has devolved into the litigation of personal vendettas, crass promotion of niche issues like cryptocurrency, and pandering to the donor class on tax cuts and temporary labor. The rallying cry to “Make America Great Again” has become the...

89-year-old Eva Edl — a survivor of Nazi invasion and a communist concentration camp — was recently arrested by Biden’s Department of Justice for praying and peacefully protesting outside an abortion clinic. She now faces 10 years in prison for violating the FACE Act. But before her sentencing, she spoke with Glenn about how we got here in the first place. How did people become so accepting of abortion? How did America’s courts, which she thought were beacons of freedom when she immigrated here, become tools of political movements? And why is the same government that let Biden off the...

Even though the petition deadlines for minor party and independent presidential candidates have not yet passed in most states, already eight minor party and independent presidential candidates are facing challenges to their ballot access. This is the highest number of such candidates in history. “Challenge” means an outside individual or group initiated an administrative action or a lawsuit to keep someone off the ballot. It does not mean that the state election office itself kept a candidate off the ballot. Generally, when challenges are mounted to a minor party or independent presidential candidate, only one such candidate is the target,...

It is absolutely astounding to me that suddenly so many people have forgotten why Roe vs. Wade was unconstitutional from the start. The federal government, state governments and local governments NEVER had the authority to deny anyone the inherent right to live without due process and equal protections under the law. THAT is why Roe vs. Wade was unconstitutional. Abortion is NOT a "right" for any government in any capacity to grant. Understand this. Life is a natural right, inherent by the creator and protected by every founding document in our country. As an American, I am a HUGE supporter...

On August 16, U.S. Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey, who had been re-elected as a Democrat in 2018, withdrew his name from the November 2024 ballot. He had been running as an independent candidate this year.

Among the eight national tickets who will be on the ballot in at least ten states, there is more diversity than at any previous U.S. presidential election. The eight tickets are: Democratic, Republican, Libertarian, Green, Constitution, Socialism & Libertarian, We the People, and Justice for All. Five of the eight tickets have a woman. Six of the tickets have an ethic or racial minority member (all but the Republican and Libertarian tickets). One ticket has an openly gay man. Two of the tickets have Muslim members, and one has a Jewish member..

Harris liked to brag about using “a huge stick” as a prosecutor in San Francisco, where she regularly threatened poor parents with jail time in her efforts to craft social policy — which wasn’t her job. It’s true that Harris threw a lot of people in jail to bolster her political fortunes. Some of them likely innocent. And judging from her disposition, she would throw a lot of more people into jail, if she could. When pro-life journalist David Daleiden published videos of Planned Parenthood executives nonchalantly discussing the selling of body parts, Harris had his home raided, seized evidence...

Just The News GovTrack rated Kamala Harris 'most liberal' U.S. senator in 2019 but webpage has disappeared GovTrack, which tracks voting records of House and Senate lawmakers, removed a 2019 webpage that ranked then-Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., as the “most liberal” U.S. senator in 2019 at some point between the evening of July 8 Eastern time and July 23 of this year. Social media users have posted that the page was still live on July 22 but GovTrack has not confirmed the exact date the page was removed. MIDDLE Just The News Mediaite Axios Accuses GOP of Fabricating Kamala Harris’s...