Free Republic

At the 55th Annual Governor’s Buffalo Roundup in Custer State Park in South Dakota, the bison aren’t the only draw this year. Governor Kristi Noem, with an ever-rising profile in the Republican Party, joined cowboys and cowgirls on horseback for the September 25th festivities. For South Dakota’s 33rd Governor, the Buffalo Roundup is arguably the best day in South Dakota. “I love it,” she told me. “It’s great to have so many visitors, and I’m glad we have good weather too.” This year’s event drew about 20,000 spectators to the state park, a 71,000-acre oasis home to about 1,300 free-range...

With this week's Republican National Convention and the formal coronation of Donald Trump as the party's 2020 presidential nominee, many have seized the moment to speculate about the political future of the Republican Party -- and, by extension, the intellectual and pragmatic future of American conservatism itself. The 2016 romp of Trump, the reality TV star-turned-commander in chief, upended decades of outmoded GOP orthodoxies and ushered in a seismic shift in American politics. Throughout the Cold War, and even in the two-and-a-half decades between the fall of the Berlin Wall and Trump's infamous campaign-launching 2015 golden escalator descent, conservatism in...

Today, America has a choice of two paths. We can embrace the foundational principles that created this nation of limited government and individual liberty. Or we can veer down the path of bigger, more intrusive government that promises to solve all our problems if we just turn over more of our freedom and our paychecks. The difference between the two paths recently has become even starker as those on the left have gotten more radical. They have sought to destroy the lives of those who disagree with them, rewrite history to teach our children that America was illegitimate from the...

On this guest episode of the Resistance Library Podcast Sam invites Jeremy Carl onto the show. Jeremy Carl is a Senior Fellow at the Claremont Institute and a writer at The American Mind, as well as a number of other publications. He joined Sam to discuss the future of a fighting conservatism and the deep ideology of the hard left in America.

What is conservatism in America today? It’s hundreds of millions of dollars a year spent fiddling while Rome burns. It’s ideas with little to no consequence. It’s getting trampled all over by History, but while yelling Stop! Conservatism is the seven cheers for capitalism and the deafening silence on demographic change, feminism, and corporate malfeasance. It’s the same tired cast of speakers blathering about limited government almost a century after the New Deal. It’s the platitudinous Reagan quotes and the worn-out Buckley anecdotes. It’s the mindless optimism and the childish exhortations—if something can’t go on forever, it won’t!

Note: This is an "Unlisted" video--meant for the consideration of my brothers and sisters on Free Republic. I'm a long-time Freeper (20 years +), and love the site. I have great respect for Jim Robinson, and some others here. But something is missing these days at FR. Is it connected to the erosion of Christianity in our culture? I had a post pulled recently, and have had a lot of pushback lately regarding some basic truths that should NOT be controversial. Now I see that last night's post was pulled. Why did the Mods remove it? ("The Real Way To...

George Washington University is urging students to read Conservatism and Racism, and Why in America They Are the Same in an effort to educate them about the dangers of stereotypes and discrimination. The "Solidarity Resource Syllabus" released by the Washington, D.C.-based school's Office of Diversity provides students with a reading list that focuses on racism in the United States. Among the 126 books that the university says "actively and effectively … [combat] injustice" is San Francisco State University professor Robert Smith's 2010 book that equates conservative beliefs with bigotry. That label applies to all who subscribe to right-leaning beliefs, including...

There is a Tory tradition in America that runs against the grain of establishment Liberalism, embracing home, hearth, community, family, church, nature, and the moral realities of everyday life, and opposed to individualism, unlimited free markets, libertarianism, secularism, and the rootless loneliness of global modernity. This tradition comes from within America, not without. “Conservatism,” a movement built in the unique pressures of the Cold War, is metamorphosing into new forms. The Cold War is long over. New considerations based on new circumstances are emerging on the Right—in the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States—that closely resemble those of Saintsbury’s...

“I’ve been in the habit for many election cycles of telling people when they asked me how important the election was, I would always say it’s the most important election since the last one and will be the most important one until the next one. I think this may be a little different here … this election is different. This is big, no doubt.” - Brit Hume If you’re a Trump supporter, this election cycle so far has been sort of like sitting down to watch your favorite college football team play a much-anticipated game against a hated rival. You’ve...

Tomorrow, beginning at 10 a.m. in the East, the Supreme Court will start issuing its final opinions of the term. The big cases yet to be decided include: June Medical Services v. Russo (regarding abortion), Trump v. Mazars USA and Trump v. Vance (regarding access to President Trump’s tax returns case), Little Sisters of the Poor Sts. Peter and Paul Home v. Pennsylvania (regarding the conscience exemption from Obamacare’s birth control mandate), and Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue (regarding tax credits and religious schools). Having incorrectly predicted the result of Michael Flynn’s case in the D.C. Circuit, and not...

Chris D’Angelo, Huffington Post’s environment reporter, recently tweeted: “GOP Sens. Cory Gardner and Steve Daines, who have backed Trump's anti-conservation agenda at nearly every turn, are now fighting to shore up funding for public lands. Both face a tough road to reelection in 2020.”  This statement is problematic and visibly inaccurate. First, regardless of your personal feelings about President Trump, his Department of Interior has advanced true conservation policies. Of the agency’s many accomplishments thus far, opening over four million acres of federal public lands for hunting, fishing, and other recreational activities is chief among them.Second, Senators Cory Gardner (R-CO)...

State Senator Chris Jacobs declared victory Tuesday night in the special election for New York's 27th congressional district, held to replace former Rep. Chris Collins (R) after his resignation following insider trading charges. NY-27 has been classified as the "most conservative district" in the state of New York, so there were plenty of eyes on this one. In his win, Jacobs defeated attorney Beth Parlato, Erie County Comptroller Stefan Mychajliw, and the lone Democratic candidate Nate McMurray. McMurray has yet to concede, but Jacobs’s team says there’s no way, even with absentee ballots, that the Democrat can make up...

George Will's a funny guy. He is willing to aid our ideological foes for our own good. He will teach us how wrong we've been to support President Trump by facilitating Marxist socialism's stranglehold on what's left of America's Constitution. After fighting for Democrats to win everything this November, he will turn around and help us rebuild a Republican Party in his image for the miserable decades to come. When we voted for Donald Trump in 2016, weren't we rebelling against not only Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, but also the shriveled and putrid corpse of a Grand Old Party...

The Conservative movement in America - much like those who fought valiantly at the Alamo - will shortly be overrun and butchered at the hand of an EXPONENTIALLY godless and lawless nation and the world after the Rapture of the Church (Matt. 24:12, Gal. 1:4; Eph. 6:12, Rev. 13). One might say, "How can that come to be for America in light of Donald Trump's great conservative victories in many parts of the conservative spectrum? My friend, have they been great victories or have we just been holding back the multi fractured dam of lawlessness and getting back very very...

Conservatism isnt what it was. That's because everything changes. But what is truly good in people does not change as fast as fashions do. If we can find what is best in ourselves now by truly feeling what was good in our shared past, we give the future a better chance of being good.

WMAL is the #1 radio station in the DC market for the first time in decades! Take a look at the Nielsen radio ratings for April 2020! (And many in media have said in the past that a conservative news talk station would NEVER make it in a city and region like Washington, DC!) Congratulations to WMAL -- Mary Walter, Vince Cogliniese, Larry O'Connor, Chris Plante, Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Ben Shapiro, John Batchelor.

Barry Farber, an original pioneer of talk radio who shared his intelligent conservatism with untold millions of listeners during a career in broadcasting that spanned 60 years, has passed away. One day after his 90th birthday on Tuesday, Farber died peacefully at home in New York City, with members of his family at his bedside. On Tuesday, a live program celebrating Farber’s birthday was on in his time slot, featuring his younger brother Jerry, his two daughters Celia and Bibi, and his producer Dahlia Weinstein. During the program, Barry Farber took the mic briefly and spoke his last words...

Many on the left have accused originalism of being nothing but a cover for conservatives’ preferred policy outcomes, but Vermeule’s proposal illustrates how restrained originalists have been. “The Republic” often alarms first-time readers. Not only is Plato’s dialogic style foreign to us, the character of Socrates makes bizarre and even wicked proposals as he outlines a supposed ideal polity, such as a communism not only of property, but also of wives and children. Many readers, including some philosophers, have taken Plato literally and seriously, and therefore condemned him as a proto-totalitarian. Something similar seems to have happened in response to...

"There are no libertarians in a global pandemic." So goes the smug punchline of large-government advocates who point to the necessity of collective action in the face of an unprecedented global crisis. Without government, they say, we'd all be dead. Few libertarians would disagree. The hardcore libertarians at Reason magazine aren't spending their days fulminating over the evils of government-required lockdown orders in the face of a fast-spreading, deadly disease. That's because they, like all other sentient human beings, recognize that collective action is sometimes necessary. But here's the dirty little secret: Institutional failures during this pandemic are more indicative...

The annual conservative conference CPAC is slated to take place later this week outside of Washington, D.C. at the Gaylord Hotel overlooking the National Harbor from Wednesday, Feb. 26th through Saturday, Feb. 29th. President Donald Trump’s closest and most loyal allies will be in attendance, and the commander in chief himself will deliver the keynote address. After his acquittal by the Senate on impeachment charges, Trump gave high praise to CPAC chairman Matt Schlapp; a former President Bush official turned Trump loyalist. On Wednesday, a panel on connecting to GOP voters to messaging will take place with three senior Trump...