Free Republic

President Donald Trump's administration has warned that Europe faces "civilisational erasure" and questioned whether certain nations can remain reliable allies, in a new strategy document that puts a particular focus on the continent. The 33-page National Security Strategy sees the US leader outline his vision for the world and how he will wield US military and economic power to work towards it. Trump described the document as a "roadmap" to ensure America remains "the greatest and most successful nation in human history". European politicians have begun to react, with Germany's Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul saying his country did not need...

The late conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer maintained of the U.S., “Decline is a choice.” This isn’t quite right with regard to Europe, whose great powers were kneecapped by the cataclysms of the early 20th century. France bore the brunt of World War I, suffering 1.4 million dead and 4.3 million wounded and a ruinous economic cost. As for Britain, stretched to the max, it got steadily eclipsed in power and influence by the United States as World War II progressed. The less said about Germany’s role in all this, of course, the better. And then the European colonial empires inevitably...

The United States government has warned that mass migration represents an “existential threat” to Western civilization and has warned Europe against the continuing open borders policies and the creation of two-tier justice systems that favor foreigners over native populations. In a shot across the bow against the open borders ideology that has taken hold in the halls of power in many Western European capitals, the U.S. State Department urged its allies “to take bold action and defend citizens against the threats posed by mass migration.” The diplomatic arm of the Trump administration also warned that its embassies will be actively...

In the grand theater of American decline, there are few characters so destructive as the Affluent White Female Liberal (AWFL), a suburban archetype with a Prius, a “Coexist” bumper sticker, and an unquenchable thirst for moral superiority. From the San Francisco Bay Area to the halls of Democrat power, these women, often secular, privileged, are kicking out the pillars upholding our society. Their hyper-liberal zeal promotes family breakdown, political alienation, cultural Marxism, and racial division, all while patting themselves on the back for “saving” the world. It would be funny if it weren’t so dangerous — the irony that the...

Will the death of Western Civilization occur while the United States is the global hegemon and unquestioned leader of the West? Due to Euro-socialism and decades of unfettered Islamic immigration, virtually all the nations of Western Europe are swept up in seemingly irreversible death spirals. When combined with the pathological anti-American and anti-West mindset The American Marxist fifth column has long been part of the global cabal of Marxists and their de facto Islamic allies, as both have a common objective: to destroy Western Civilization. As such, they have been determined to undermine the United States as the titular leader...

I began my career with Allegheny County Pretrial Services in April 2008. I was sworn in by a judge, issued a badge, and placed into a system built on neutrality and public safety. Our job was simple: interview defendants, verify information, review police reports, pull complete criminal histories, and present magistrates with fact-based recommendations. We weren’t advocates for release or detention. We were there to present facts. And for a long time, the system worked because facts were the only thing that mattered. Failures to appear happened, but they were usually honest mistakes. Multiple pending cases were rare. Dangerous charges...

Key Takeaways: This visual timeline attempts to plot all of the world’s empires throughout history, based on geographic area and size. The rise and fall of familiar civilizations, like the Romans, Mongols, or Ottomans can be seen, as well as modern powerhouses like the U.S. or China. Attempting to plot this all on one timeline is bold, but also comes with its many challenges and some omissions.

Bukele is now a verb. To ‘Bukele’ something is to fix a problem that liberals say is ‘too complicated’ by simply ignoring their long-winded excuses and just doing the obvious. It is named after the leader of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, who has turned a country that was once dubbed the murder capital of the world into one of the safest. Meanwhile, Britain, once Europe’s most orderly nation, is mired in rape gangs, knife crime, and shoplifting. The UK doesn’t need Bukele-style mega-prisons, but it certainly needs his clarity. The problem is that our elites in Westminster have mastered the...

Recent lawsuits reveal a troubling pattern of cities working with private, fee-based lawyers. These cases lack proper legal backing, misuse courts to alter state and national policies, and create chaos when the outside legal bills are due. For example, in pro-fracking Pennsylvania, an upscale county near Philadelphia partnered with contingency fee lawyers to sue energy companies over climate change, an attempt to fundamentally transform a key business in the Keystone State. In public health, private lawyers exploited their municipal engagements to fight for years over their fees, thus delaying a multi-billion-dollar settlement to help victims of the opioid crisis. A...

In those neighborhoods, where civil society breaks down, giving way to anarchy and Haitian-style barbarism, civilization is effectively suspended. Across the United States, the trajectory of inner cities has been one of “inexorable decline” — a descent from centers of economic growth, cultural splendor, and communal solidarity into fragmented, dystopian environments marked by neglect and anarchy. Like mirror images of downtown Port-au-Prince, these urban landscapes, far from civic greatness, have become wastelands defined by abandoned structures, pervasive insecurity, and social disintegration (aggravated by the “homelessness crisis”). The emblematic example of Detroit crystallizes the narrative of urban decline — a Democrat-run...

The death of an outspoken conservative American was only a matter of time. The coming conflict remains unavoidable. This is incomprehensible to conservative Americans. We think America is indomitable; no American in his right mind would ever deny freedom to embrace Marxism in any form. But we’re fatally naïve, because we don’t understand how ideas build nations and tear them apart. America is caught in a war of competing ideologies, and we don’t know how these wars work. We were too busy enjoying endless prosperity to learn that America, like any other nation, rises and falls based on the ideas...

"You currently have one side willing to talk and extend a microphone to anyone, and one side that shoots to kill when they do." —Aimee Terese on X. When Brian De Palma’s movie, Dressed to Kill, came out in 1980, this was a different country. Like Hitchcock’s Psycho before it (1960), both films depicted men seeking to become women who are murderously deranged by their wishful fantasies. Now, our country has become murderously deranged by the same fantasy writ large. These derangements are acted out now by a segment of the population that calls itself “the trans community.” This is...

When Manners Disappear: A Society Without RestraintManners are often dismissed as superficial — just a list of rules about saying “please” or chewing with your mouth closed. But at their core, manners are much more than that. They are the quiet architecture that holds a civilized society together. They are the social grease that allows people to live near one another, work together, share space, and not come to blows over every disagreement.It’s my belief that societies create manners not just to promote politeness, but to control human emotions — especially the more destructive ones: anger, resentment, jealousy, and cruelty....

The black community’s disengagement from ordinary acts of civic responsibility is harming America as a whole, but mostly, it’s harming blacks. To save their communities, blacks need to reengage with what was once normative polite conduct across American society. To appreciate this point, consider the tales told by abandoned shopping carts and litter. Shopping carts were invented in Oklahoma in 1937 and changed the face of retailing. No longer were customers limited to what they could carry around the store, they could now leisurely stroll the store not having to worry about how much they could fit in their cloth...

We must not be complacent about communist and woke ideology:Marxism and related ideologies are still very much with us. The Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall may have come crashing down some 35 years ago, but the pernicious threat that is Communism and godless Socialism remain. They are found throughout Western institutions, be it the media, academia, or the political and cultural arenas.In a recent piece I examined a new book by the important Christian thinker Os Guinness: Our Civilizational Moment: The Waning of the West and the War of the Worlds (Kildare, 2024). In it he argues that there...

from the Middle East and Africa. We, as critics of mass immigration and multiculturalism, must understand why individualism, honesty, guilt, and deferring gratification are particular to the West. Helpfully, authors like Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Ed Husain can explain. You do not understand how these people think. They will not produce the same civilisation as us.

The influence that even a minority Muslim population can have in a democratic state can cause unthinkable damage, but Western leaders have their heads in the sand. In 1836, fighting for the independence of Texas, a small band of Texans in San Antonio took up the defense of a Spanish mission, known as the Alamo, against the much larger army of Mexican General Santa Anna. Despite their courage, all defenders were killed, giving rise to the battle cry—”Remember the Alamo.” That battle cry served to motivate other Texans to later defeat the Mexicans. There are times when democratic nations may...

Across Europe, things feel increasingly fragile. As governments lose control of basic order and the state becomes rapidly incapable of maintaining law and order, this isn’t so much a ‘clash of civilisations’ as the West quietly rolling over and letting itself die. Today, it was announced that Germany will be working alongside the Taliban. Yes, those same extremist Islamists that NATO forces—including Germany’s—spent years fighting in Afghanistan. The aim here is to facilitate the deportations of Afghan criminals living in Germany. Despite not officially recognising the Taliban regime, Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s government will allow two Taliban officials to work at...

With almost every day that passes, Britain is progressively embracing its own destruction by groveling to its mortal foes and dumping big-time on its most loyal friends. Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour government is increasingly surrendering to Islamization while presiding over a poisonous culture of antisemitism that’s roaring out of control. For the past decade, more than 170,000 illegal immigrants have crossed the English Channel from France in small inflatable boats. Successive governments have failed to deal with this people-smuggling trade, which has provoked fury among the British public aghast at the unsustainable levels of immigration, both legal and illegal....

I started writing my Imperfect America blog in 2009. It’s my passion, despite the sad fact that it’s never made me a penny. Not even on Twitter, new or old, where my account is constantly throttled! My first post was titled “Racism, America’s Original Sin.” It was a response to the new normal of anyone disagreeing with Barack Obama being called a racist. In it, I talk about the 3/5th Compromise and the fact that it gave Southerners less power in the House than they wanted, but more importantly, it was the key to America being one nation rather than...