Free Republic

A review of A Man of Faith: The Spiritual Journey of George W. Bush by David Aikman The Faith of George W. Bush by Stephen Mansfield George W. Bush on God and Country edited by Thomas M. Freiling Conservative evangelicals have high negatives in public opinion polling, due in large part to public fears that they are rigid, closed-minded, unreasonable, and unwilling to respect the separation of church and state. Many critics of the Bush Administration have attempted to cast Bush himself in such a light, arguing that religious considerations dominate his politics to such a degree that they prevent...

At an uncertain moment late in Ronald Reagan's 1980 campaign for the presidency, National Review offered the following editorial observation: "It's time to stop worrying about Ronald Reagan…. His mind has an unfashionable and even homemade quality, he knows a lot more than people expect him to know, and he will win or lose as Ronald Reagan." The "homemade quality" of Reagan's political thought came back to mind during the week of his passing in June when Irving Kristol wrote that Reagan was the first "neoconservative"—that is, "a liberal mugged by reality." It is not correct to call Reagan a...

John Kerry took the floor of the United States Senate on March 27, 1986, and delivered a dramatic oration indicting the foreign policy of the Reagan Administration. As is his habit, Kerry drew on his Vietnam war experience in explaining his opposition to the policy. "I remember Christmas of 1968 sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia," he said. "I remember what it was like to be shot at by Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge and Cambodians, and having the President of the United States telling the American people that I was not there." To emphasize the importance of this incident to...

Liberals believe that the American principle of religious liberty requires not only the separation of church and state, but also the separation of religion from politics. They argue that a prohibited "establishment of religion" exists whenever government promotes religion at all.Some conservatives agree that government should be neutral between religion and its opponents, but they point out that neutrality is hardly served by excluding religious expression and views from public life, while allowing non-religious and anti-religious expression. Other conservatives say that government may support religion, as long as it supports "religion in general," not any particular faith or denomination. No...

Tom Karako, editor of www.missilethreat.com, will discuss missile defense with Frank Pastore on KKLA today at 5:15-5:45 pm. Listeners in Southern California should tune in to 99.5 FM. From elsewhere, listen online here. http://www2.kkla.com/listen/

"That Honorable Determination" Celebrating the 228th Anniversary of the American Declaration of Independence By Christopher Flannery Posted July 4, 2004 Anything in these remarks that does not stray from the truth is indebted to the American Founders, who bequeathed these ideas to us, to Abraham Lincoln, who preserved and ennobled them in the country's greatest crisis, to Harry V. Jaffa, who has done more than anyone since Lincoln to recover them, and to the late Tom Silver, the wisest and best of those who founded the Claremont Institute for the sake of these ideas. American children are not born understanding...

Last month, given all of the attacks on our soldiers, and the conflicts in Fallujah and Najaf, I was reminded of T.S. Eliot, who wrote, "April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land; mixing memory and desire; stirring dull roots with spring rain." Now, with the reports and images we are seeing from Abu Ghraib, the hearings in the House and Senate, and the slaughter of Nicholas Berg of Philadelphia, I'm not sure what to say about this month—it contends with April, to say the least. Our emotions are stirred, our consciences are challenged. Nonetheless, our...

EDITOR'S NOTE: The following remarks were delivered by William J. Bennett to the Claremont Institute President's Club on May 14, 2004, in Palm Springs, California. Last month, given all of the attacks on our soldiers, and the conflicts in Fallujah and Najaf, I was reminded of T.S. Eliot, who wrote, "April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land; mixing memory and desire; stirring dull roots with spring rain." Now, with the reports and images we are seeing from Abu Ghraib, the hearings in the House and Senate, and the slaughter of Nicholas Berg of Philadelphia, I'm...

THE D.C. SNIPER'S JIHAD By MICHELLE MALKIN -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Email Archives Print Reprint December 10, 2003 -- FROM the moment John Allen Muhammad and Lee Malvo were arrested in the Beltway-area sniper case last fall, the media and Muslim activists wanted us to believe that the serial killings had absolutely nothing to do with Islamic terrorism: * CNN downplayed Muhammad's religious conversion - calling him by his old name, John Allen Williams, when his identity was first revealed. Malvo was cast as a clueless dupe with no true convictions. * Nihad Awad of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) argued: "There...

The Claremont Institute announced Wednesday that Rush Limbaugh will not be in attendance at the Institute's annual Churchill Dinner on Friday, November 21, 2003. Mr. Limbaugh was to receive the Claremont Institute's Statesmanship Award at that time. From his New York studio, Rush said, "Because I must limit my travel for the remainder of this year, I am unable to attend the Claremont Institute's Churchill Dinner on November 21. I deeply regret the inconvenience and disappointment caused the Claremont Institute by my having to postpone my appearance at such a late date. However, I am hopeful that we can re-schedule...

Tuesday mornings at 10:30. How I hated that day and time. I can still feel the same tightness in my stomach. As a kid growing up in Chicago in the '50s, Tuesday mornings at 10:30 meant the testing of the city's air raid sirens. People seemed to get used to the ear-piercing wails, but I always remember thinking that if I were a clever Soviet official -- I had never heard of the word oxymoron at that time -- I would attack Chicago at 10:30 on a Tuesday morning. No one would know or care until it was too late....

Why We're Honoring Rush Limbaugh Join us November 21, 2003, in downtown Los Angeles On November 21 the Claremont Institute will honor Rush Limbaugh with our Statesmanship Award. One of our heroes, Abraham Lincoln, frequently reminded his countrymen that "our government rests in public opinion."  Few Americans in recent memory have done more on a daily basis to sustain and invigorate a healthy public opinion in this country than Mr. Limbaugh, known fondly to us all as "Rush." In an overwhelmingly liberal media, Rush has brought to unprecedented millions of listeners a conservative point of view, year in and...

Well-known conservative scholar William J. Bennett was named the new Washington fellow at the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank which emphasizes the governing principles adopted by the nation's founders. The appointment Wednesday was a good one for the organization, said institute president Brian T. Kennedy, because Bennett's reputation as a principled constitutionalist and scholar should help Claremont better achieve its policy goals. "[Dr. Bennett] is the most serious moral voice in Washington for the recovery of free government," Kennedy said in a statement. "We look forward to his scholarship, his good counsel, and his analysis of how best to...

California Thinking What went wrong. Where to go from here. By Ken Masugi Ken Masugi is director of the Center for Local Government at the Claremont Institute. He is co-author of the recent book Democracy in California: Politics and Government in the Golden State. NRO: How devastating is the Simon loss for California? Masugi: The closeness of the race, despite the horrors of the campaign and the breadth of the statewide losses, indicates that conservative Republicans can succeed statewide. Note the good showing of my former Claremont Institute colleague Tom McClintock, who is narrowly losing the race for state controller,...

Ever since the publication last March of my book, The Real Lincoln, Harry Jaffa and his followers at the Claremont Institute and elsewhere have been screeching and carrying on like a colony of baboons that has just spotted a panther. Before the book was even published Richard Ferrier and David Quackenbush responded to Ilana Mercer’s advance review in WorldNetDaily by calling her article a "rant" and referring to her personally as a "comprehensively ignorant parrot" and a "small-minded naysayer." They called me a "fanatic" even though we had never met and they had not read my book. They warned their...

As you may know, the Claremonsters launched their latest and probably most widespread attack on Thomas DiLorenzo's "The Real Lincoln" this week with an article in National Review by Ken Masugi. The article follows the same line taken by the two previous Claremonsters tasked with smearing DiLorenzo by the Abratollah Jaffa - Tom Krannawitter and Richard Ferrier. Rather than appearing on the Claremont or Declaration Foundation websites like the previous attacks, this one made it into a more mainstream conservative publication. I read the review today in the new issue of NR and immediately experienced a sense of disgust that...