Free Republic

Forget about getting a backbone. America needs an iron constitution for the era of great power competition now upon us. So warns conservative scholar Colin Dueck in his new book, “Age of Iron: On Conservative Nationalism” (Oxford University Press, 2019). Dueck, a former “Never Trumper,” starts and ends his book with an unexpected assertion that Founding Fathers George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and the rest of the cast of “Hamilton” would have been perfectly content with President Trump’s foreign policies. What’s more, he argues, Trump policies will help 21st century America deal effectively with modern threats posed by the likes of...

It isn’t easy to put U.S. defenses back on track after they’ve endured a season of neglect. Gen. William Snow found that out firsthand. Snow’s job, when he arrived in Washington in the World War I era, was to direct the buildup of artillery for the Allied Expeditionary Force. He thought his office should have stationery reflecting the importance of the task. His request was rejected. Rather than fund this extravagance, it was suggested the general purchase a rubber stamp to mark his correspondence. Snow had joined a War Department completely unprepared to fight a war. The Army hadn’t been...