Free Republic

When I write about threats to Western civilization, I struggle to find the sweet spot between describing the myriad problems we face and my firm belief that we are capable of winning this fight. I do not think all is lost. I do, however, think that it is important for as many people as possible to recognize what our enemies are doing. When we are being attacked from all sides — culturally, politically, economically, socially, parentally, morally, religiously, psychologically — it is sometimes difficult to recognize that these attacks are all connected. Those who wish to destroy Western civilization use...

The parallels between American black ghettos and European no-go zones are obvious. In a relatively short period from 1940–1960, over 2.5 million blacks migrated to Northern cities from the predominately agrarian South. Their assimilation into mainstream society was arduous. It became a visible problem by the 1960s with unrest and rioting commonplace in black neighborhoods during summer months. It was against this backdrop of urban unrest and Vietnam war protest that the Canadian rock band, Guess Who, created the 1970 hit American Woman. The song’s iconic lyrics express the band’s rejection of the great temptress, America, with her seductive allure...

n ever-increasing number of despondent Westerners are taking to social media to state things like, “I took a walk today. I don’t recognize my town anymore.” Or, “Nothing is like I remember it from my youth.” Or, I feel like a stranger in my own country.” Many of us have a longing for yesteryear. There are multiple reasons for this, but every one of them is either directly or indirectly caused by Democrats and their disdain for the United States and traditional Americans. Period. Their policies, such as they are, are soft on crime and hard on law-abiding citizens and...

SEMINOLE COUNTY, Fla. (WFTV) — Two high school girls in central Florida are charged with attempted murder of another student. Video from the back seat of a police cruiser caught them laughing about their plan. Isabelle Valdez, 15, and Lois Lippert, 14, were seen laughing and smiling as if they were heading to a party. In reality, they were on their way to jail. “This is such a bonding experience. I love this,” Lippert laughed. “I was going to do my makeup this morning for the mug shot, but I couldn’t find anything,” Valdez said. Prosecutors played the video...

hirty-five years ago, American political scientist Francis Fukuyama made a name for himself by advancing the proposition that the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union promised the ascendency and universalization of so-called Western liberal democracy. As a Marxist-Hegelian who saw the progression of history as an evolutionary process with a natural and predetermined conclusion, Fukuyama envisioned Western-styled liberalism as both “the endpoint of mankind’s ideological evolution” and “the final form of human government.” Expecting all human struggles to barrel toward a state of imminent equilibrium and future peace, Fukuyama stated out loud what many...

Elite fashions harden into dogma, dissent becomes taboo, institutions fall in line—and only when reality intrudes does yesterday’s madness begin its overdue collapse. How do destructive ideas and bouts of collective madness so quickly become policy, law, and the status quo? After all, most have little public support—and are not Western nations supposedly rationally governed? There is usually a multi-step process on the road to these self-destructive fits of society-wide insanity. The suicidal impulse so often begins with left-leaning researchers in elite universities (i.e., the tenured in search of a novel, grant-getting theory). They begin insisting that a new existential...

History will record the early 21st century as the era of the “Great Betrayal.” We witness a profound moral collapse within Western academia, media and political movements — a collapse defined by a deafening silence regarding the systematic butchery of the Iranian people by the Islamic Republic, contrasted against the ever-present, mobilized rage against the State of Israel’s war in Gaza. This disparity is not an accident of geography or a result of ignorance. It is a calculated, ideological alignment. The Western Left — comprising Marxists, post-modernists and self-described “progressives” — has abandoned the Enlightenment principles of liberty, secularism and...

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told European leaders on Feb. 14 that Washington is not walking away from the transatlantic alliance—but called for a renewed partnership that aligns with President Donald Trump’s push for national revival, tougher border control, and a return to industrial and military strength.Addressing the annual Munich Security Conference, Rubio sought to reassure governments unsettled by a year of tensions over trade, defense spending, and at times critical U.S. rhetoric toward NATO.At the same time, he made clear that Washington’s commitment would be tied to what he called a broader civilizational renewal—one that calls on Europe...

With Britain on the brink of civil war, engulfed in growing anarchy, it is encouraging to hear three voices exposing the enemies of civilization and attempting to reverse the current decline by appealing to morality and reason. In periods of civilizational stress, the defining intellectuals are rarely those who echo prevailing orthodoxies. Rather, they are individuals insisting on the legitimacy of first principles when those principles have become unfashionable or even dangerous to articulate. In contemporary Britain, Natasha Hausdorff, Douglas Murray, and Matt Goodwin exemplify this truth-seeking, altruistic calling. Each operates within a distinct professional domain—law, cultural criticism, and political...

New York City hasn’t had a trash pickup for 1/3rd of Mamdani’s term. New York City would smell worse than it does if it weren’t so cold. And if it weren’t so cold.&br>

The ultimate question - maybe even more important than "Who's two points up in Iowa?" - is: Why is this happening to us? On our present course, within the next generation the two most valuable continents on earth plus a third "island-continent" in the South Pacific are about to be surrendered to ...something other. And all without a shot being fired - save (in America) the occasional psychotranny, (in Australia) Isis associates armed to the hilt by His Majesty's Government, and (in Europe) a demographically catastrophic war Lindsey Graham and Victoria Nuland want to fight till the last Ukrainian under...

Permission Granted: Go Kill Yourself "A macrosocial cluster B crisis is ripping this nation apart because Leftism has hijacked the minds of progressive females who then LARP out dangerous Gnostic heroic delusions." — JD Haltigan Civ — in the raging 2020s. It will be clear by then that it was largely a female hysteria, like other departures from social sanity in the annals of the Homo sapiens, such as the outbreak of witchery in the Massachusetts Colony, 1692, the Dancing Plague of Strasbourg, 1518, and the lunacy of Meowing and Biting Nuns that spread through the convents of Europe in...

Out of the 32,788 burglaries reported in London last year, only seven resulted in a suspect actually being charged. Data cited by the Daily Mail shows the Metropolitan Police accounted for roughly two-thirds of all recorded theft cases in the UK in 2024. Greater Manchester recorded nearly 10,000 burglaries, while South Yorkshire followed with 6,694 cases. The figures come as burglary remains a common experience for many households across the country. One in five UK adults have expressed experiencing either a burglary or attempted burglary. Because of this, the UK’s Labour Party remains under pressure to crack down on theft,...

People living in “an Islamic country” must “at least have to profess [they’re a] devout Muslim.” Those living in “the United States or a Western Europe,” however, can believe and do whatever they want. Hanson breaks down the difference between “a Judeo-Christian country” and “an Islamic country” where it’s “almost impossible” to be “an apostate, an atheist, [or an] agnostic” in those countries, on today’s episode of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words.”

History suggests civilizations fall when complacency, debt, and tribalism replace unity, discipline, and reform—prompting fears the West may be nearing a familiar decline. Western civilization arose in the 8th century B.C. Greece. Some 1,500 city-states emerged from a murky, illiterate 400-year-old Dark Age. That chaos followed the utter collapse of the palatial culture of Mycenaean Greece. But what reemerged were constitutional government, rationalism, liberty, freedom of expression, self-critique, and free markets—what we know now as the foundation of a unique Western civilization. The Roman Republic inherited and enhanced the Greek model. For a millennium, the Republic and subsequent Empire spread...

Everything everywhere in the West is going to hell on three different fronts, and the weekend's news — you know, the stories I wallowed in all Saturday and Sunday instead of waiting for Monday morning — provides three perfect (and perfectly chilling) examples.... But then I had a happy thought, courtesy of the Blogfaddah himself, Glenn Reynolds. "If," he asked on Sunday, "the Intifada has been globalized, doesn’t that mean that it’s been, well, globalized on both sides?" Glenn took it a step further."If it’s a global Intifada, then isn’t a mosque or Islamic 'charity' that, say, provided the guns...

I had a visitor from the East Coast, a few weeks ago, and I drove her around the San Fernando Valley to show her what a dismal ----hole it is. But I kept missing all the encampment sites and pirate RV villages, which move around, so we ended up driving around the Encino hills, where my plan to show a visitor how disgusting Los Angeles has become led to the visitor saying that oh my goodness, this is such a pretty neighborhood. I apologized for the absence of squalor. There’s a lot of that going around. A bunch of recent...

What is now unfolding in France may soon drag the entire Eurozone into deep turmoil. The country is staggering through a fiscal crisis while locked in a political stalemate that seems impossible to break. In the bond market, the clock is ticking loudly as France’s public debt spirals out of control. This week, Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu celebrated a textbook Pyrrhic victory. On Tuesday, the National Assembly narrowly approved his draft for next year’s social budget. But the win came at a steep price: sweeping concessions that will only worsen an already explosive fiscal situation. Strange coalitionsWith 247 votes in...

America warns Europe that only one of them is truly fighting to reverse the West’s decline—and the clock is running out for the other to follow suit. Nothing bothers the European elite as much as American conservatives praising the European foundations of their shared, but threatened, Western civilization. Europeans especially resent having their social-welfare state system critiqued by upstart, crass Americans. Their pique only increases as they push back against the condescending American idea that the U.S. could possibly offer any constructive advice, much less help a more civilized Europe follow the “American model.” Americans, in turn, are worried that...

Hungary’s guarded borders stand out in a Europe where migrant-driven unrest is forcing Christmas markets to shutter under rising security fears. Not surprisingly, a controversial prediction in the new Trump administration’s National Security Strategy that Europe is facing “civilization erasure” because of out-of-control mass migration infuriated European elites. The Economist attacked this reference as “shocking.” The Independent, a UK newspaper, referred to it as a “sinister conspiracy theory.” I want to set this aside for a moment and talk about European Christmas markets, especially in Hungary. These markets are an old tradition where people gather to shop and socialize in...