Free Republic

The new slim Republican majority in the House of Representatives lacks something besides its slim majority and the battle over leadership positions. It lacks intellectual depth. The Reagan administration may have been the last one to challenge Americans to think for themselves, and for that matter, just to think. Perhaps this lack of thinking and intellectual depth in our politics is caused by instruments and websites that do the thinking for us. We now tune in to whatever newspaper, cable network or website reinforces our beliefs and care little about how ideas were developed, whether they work and who benefits...

Source: Screenshot via CSPANAs with many things, propaganda can be used for good or for ill, depending on who dispenses it. During World War II, American propaganda was considered a necessary tool in the pursuit of victory in a moral cause. Germany and Japan had their own propaganda machines to advance an evil agenda. The Nazi propaganda effort was headed by Joseph Goebbels to whom the term "The Big Lie," meaning if one tells a lie often enough people will come to believe it is true, has been attributed. American forces could listen to several women they called "Tokyo Rose,"...

As often happens among the political class in Washington, we met on television debating each other. I liked him immediately, despite our political and even religious differences. Bob Beckel and I became friends and eventually more than friends. Twenty years ago, after debating a long-forgotten subject on Fox News Channel, we came back to the green room where I noticed a streak of sadness in his face. "Are you OK, Bob?" I asked. In what he would later describe as a rare moment of transparency, he said, "No, I'm not," and began to cry. I had never seen him like...

It is usually Republicans who blast the media for what they consider biased or unfair coverage of their policies, but increasingly we are hearing Democrats engaging in the same behavior, apparently frustrated their agenda is not being embraced by some of their fellow Democrats and the public. Last week, New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who has yet to stem rising crime as he promised to do, criticized reporters for what he regards as their negative coverage of his administration. To be fair, he was just sworn in on Jan. 1, 2022, but there are few signs that the policies...

In outlining the goal for winning the Persian Gulf War against Saddam Hussein for invading and occupying Kuwait in 1991, Gen. Colin Powell, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said, "Our strategy to go after this army is very, very simple. First, we're going to cut it off, and then we're going to kill it." The ceasefire announced last week between the terrorist organization Hamas and the state of Israel is the opposite of that strategy and solves nothing. As with previous ceasefires it simply gives Hamas an opportunity to regroup and reload in time for the...

Remember Never Trump? For four years, an influential clique of think tankers, Republican operatives and talking heads claimed that any conservative who supported ­Donald Trump was complicit with a uniquely malevolent presidency. But if Trumpian conservatives are ­responsible for everything the 45th president was faulted for, then Never Trump should likewise own the evils of the new Biden administration. Never Trumpers spoke of the Trump GOP almost as if it were Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath Party, a dictator’s discredited political organ, badly in need of a purge. “President Donald Trump leaves office with a crimson-stained legacy,” thundered Peter Wehner, vice president...

During last Thursday's debate, Joe Biden said his goal as president would be to "transition away from the oil industry." He has also said the future is in cars powered by electricity. Biden would build 500,000 charging stations across the country. It wasn't the first time he attacked the oil and job-producing industry in his worship of the cult of "climate change." According to Energy Information Administration data, petroleum is America's No. 1 source of energy, providing approximately 40 percent of the nation's power needs. Biden claims oil is also a major pollutant. According to the website IQ Air, the...

The ouster of Liberty University president Jerry Falwell Jr. over allegations of sexual misconduct and other behavior that falls short of the university's code of conduct -- not to mention Scripture -- is another in a long list of lessons each generation of Christians seems to have to learn anew. In our 1999 book, "Blinded by Might: Why the Religious Right Can't Save America," the late Dr. Edward Dobson and I -- he a former dean of students at Liberty and me for a brief time vice president of Moral Majority -- warned about the dangers we had observed when...

Hello, it is the Fourth of July 2020. "Independence Day" or "Another Day In The Dictatorship Of Covid-19" There was a bicentennial in 1976 and Bob Hope entertained us for that occasion along with lots of stars..... No Meaningful Republican Party Opposition To DC 19, Instead Distraction With Cultural Warfare.... Burning The Muzzles (Masks) In Boise No tea to throw in the harbor this time around like 200 years ago but how about a mask burning to protest the chains we are in. The protest yesterday Friday over the mask order of the mayor in Boise Idaho...... Newsdump Update: Two...

The modern media trend is to make fun of President Trump for his alleged and actual misstatements of fact. You have to go a long way -- in this case Sky News in Australia -- to find a media outlet willing to make fun of a U.S. liberal Democrat. The host of a program called "Outsiders," Rita Panahi, assembled a montage of gaffes and gibberish from former vice president and current frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, Joe Biden. The Biden montage makes you ask: Is this guy mentally fit to be president? Biden supporters might argue the clips are...

The Trump administration thinks appealing to North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un by dangling promises of prosperity in front of him if he agrees to change his ways is the path to peace on the Korean Peninsula. So far there have been no agreements to build a Trump resort and Kim has made no effort to adopt any other form of capitalistic behavior. Undeterred, the administration's front man for Middle East peace, the president's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has revealed part of his plan (the rest he says will come after Israeli elections this fall) to settle the multi-decade conflict between Israel...

President Donald Trump made a rare appearance at a church last Sunday. It’s a safe bet the sermon was not based on Proverbs 15:1—”A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” If it was, it didn’t appear to have much effect. Before and after church, the president engaged in a tweet storm that insulted several people, including the late Sen. John McCain. Trump accuses McCain of being complicit in the leak of the Steele dossier, a private intelligence report compiled by former MI6 officer Christopher Steele for the political research firm Fusion GPS, which, among...

The first thing that needs to be said about President Trump's decision to sign a measure re-opening part of the federal government without getting money for the wall he demanded is that his experience as a New York businessman was no help. Perhaps he failed to recognize that Democrats are the party of government and no one guards the power, cost and perks of government better than they do. As long as Democrats stuck together -- and they did (Republicans should learn a lesson) -- he was bound to lose. Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer were...

The erosion of what many Americans once believed were the foundations of our country continues apace. They include, but are not limited to, overspending and debt (personal and national), never-ending wars, uncontrolled borders leading to massive immigration with no time for or expectation of assimilation and political divisions that grow wider by the day. It's now the Boy Scouts of America's turn to join the parade. The organization, which began in 1910 to, according to its website, "...train youth in responsible citizenship, character development and self-reliance" so they become honest men, worthy of admiration and respect, is now in danger...

I first met the man who would become America's 41st president in 1968. He was a Houston congressman and I was a young reporter for a local TV and radio station. My first impression was how kind he was to this "kid," who had just moved to Texas from the Washington, D.C., area and was just starting to learn the "language," like "fixing to go" and "y'all." Everyone who worked for George H.W. Bush, or knew him, has a story to tell. I have several. Mr. Bush was a letter writer like none other. I think I have an almost...

Just in time for Halloween comes a former male stripper, who drove a van with Trump stickers plastered all over it, being charged with sending pipe bombs to top Democratic leaders, a journalist and at least one celebrity, all of whom have been vocal critics of President Trump. The New York Post headline was the cleverest: "Caught Red Hatted: Steroid-abusing Florida stripper driving Trump van is charged with Dem bomb spree." The Post reported that the accused, Cesar Sayoc Jr., was said to be lost and a "sick individual" who is estranged from his family, but eventually "found a father"...

He's back! President Obama has emerged from his supposed cloistered life to attack President Trump. Obama broke with a tradition apparently only modern Republican ex-presidents follow, which is not to speak ill of your successor.Obama, who reportedly has been running his "Organizing for America" operation, along with his White House aide Valerie Jarrett from his expensive home in a Washington neighborhood, spoke to a group of University of Illinois students last Friday, claiming it was his policies, not those of President Trump, that have produced the current economic boom."When you hear how great the economy's doing right now, let's...

For the current generation, sometimes referred to as millennials, it appears one thing is more seductive than sex -- and that's socialism. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and 28-year-old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, winner of a New York Democratic primary, are the old and new faces of socialist America. Their platforms, it appears, hinge on the concept of shared wealth, in other words, handing out free stuff to just about everyone. How far we've come from JFK's admonition not to ask what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country. Today, for many, it's all about what...

As a longtime resident of Virginia, I am well aware of its sordid history when it comes to slavery, racism and discrimination. I can still remember "colored only" restrooms, water fountains, poll taxes and African Americans forced to ride in the back of the bus. Virginia public schools in the 1950s were mostly segregated, as they had been since first established in 1870. Segregation was so bad in my home state of Virginia that even Native Americans were largely excluded from public education. It wasn't until 1963, nine years after Brown v. Board of Education, that public schools were open...

Among the several ways to judge a person's fitness for office are the enemies he has made. In the case of John Bolton, President Trump's choice to become national security adviser, those who oppose his appointment -- liberals, neocons and some Republicans all with differing worldviews and questionable foreign policy experience -- appear to say more about his qualifications than those who support him. A New York Times editorial said that at least Bolton speaks his mind, though it also said it didn't like what was on it. The Times and their ideological sister publication, The Washington Post, have spilled...