Free Republic

Remember the "Republican Revolution," remember "The Contract With America" of 1994? Newt Gingrich nationalized the congressional elections by appealing to Americans' distaste for Bill Clinton's fiscal and social liberalism and swung fifty-four seats from the jackasses' to the elephants' camp. Gingrich's young Turks were champing at the bit to finish the job Reagan had started. A dozen years later, the Republicans have made a farcical shambles of the Reagan revolution: The term limits they promised never seemed to materialize (they all voted for term limits, technically, by spreading their votes among a handful of competing bills, none of which conveniently...

In 1997, Michale Graves, then lead singer for the horror punk rock group the Misfits, found himself on tour in Germany at the site where the Berlin Wall once stood. He took home with him a piece of that wall and with a few years' time, a bold commitment to fighting the mindset that built it. Punk rock is all about resisting the establishment. But punk rock itself has an establishment that is driven by Left wing, anti-war, anti-life, anti-faith politics. To scream, as Green Day does in its new CD "American Idiot," "I'm not a part of a redneck...

The irony of “conservative punk,” or ConPunk as it’s uncommonly known, is not lost on yours truly. According to my thesaurus, “conformist” is a synonym of “conservative.” We’ve heard enough about Punkvoter.com and Rock against Bush in the past year to be swayed into thinking that punk rock – the few remaining bones of punk rock’s corpse not already sold to television commercials – is decidedly liberal. But punk rock’s history is steeped in conservative politics; it should come as no surprise that there’s been a rise in conservative punk in recent years. To those who choose not to take...

Freedom is something we, as Americans, often take for granted. We take for granted our right to assemble, to protest, and to affiliate with whomever we wish. For some people around the world these rights exist only as a dream, much in the same way as they existed to our founding fathers before 1776. This is true for the students of Iran. Recently we had the pleasure to speak to Aryo Pirouznia, co-ordinator of the Student Movement Coordination Committee for Democracy in Iran (SMCCDI), an organization committed to the idea of bringing secular democracy to the people of Iran. Aryo...

The most anti-establishment of music genres is being used in support of the US Republican party. Dorian Lynskey reports Wednesday July 7, 2004 The Guardian Gotham Road's Michale Graves: 'the cool thing now is to hate the government' One would have thought punk's capacity to shock was exhausted when, in the 1980s, GG Allin defecated on stage and either ate the result or flung it at the audience. Today, punk has come to mean safe, multiplatinum groups such as Blink-182 and Green Day, and Ashton Kutcher playing pranks on celebrities on MTV. There is one tattooed, mohawked New Yorker who...

Doc Martins on The Ground We have recently received a letter from a Marine of the second division who happens to be a Conservative Punk. In it, he comments on the state of the Iraqi conflict, as well as recent events. Hey man, I just want to say, I agree whole-heartedly. I'm a Lance Corporal in the Marines. I've been in about two years now. Let me tell you, all this shit that the media is saying is such a lie. I was in Iraq. I watched a friend of mine suffer for nearly 12 hours before he died, but...

In 2004, punk rock fans don't have to all be the same. Sheep are the same. Lemmings are the same. But punk rock fans should never demand sameness, be it from the left or the right. A healthy democracy depends on a free thinking, engaged citizenry -- and a healthy punk rock scene should be the FIRST to welcome ideological diversity. I call punk rock conservatives gonzo conservatives. This is not your father's conservatism. Gonzo conservatives have done and seen things their fathers never could have imagined, and right alongside punks on the left. Gonzos are inked and scarred and...

George W Bush: Punk icon? By Damian Fowler BBC reporter in New York It sounds unlikely, but there is a surprising new subculture emerging in the United States: Republican punk rockers. In his knee-high Dr Martens and with his head shaved, Michale Graves is the Bush-friendly face of punk rock. He is the front man for the band Gotham Road, which has just kicked off its US tour. On stage he belts out angry, obscure lyrics, but offstage he is also known for his conservative rants and raves. "The leftist radical agenda seems to be resonating loudly from within pop...

With his mohawk, ratty fatigues, assorted chains and his menagerie of tattoos — swallows on each shoulder, a nautical star on his back and the logo of the Bouncing Souls, a New York City punk band, on his right leg — 22-year-old Nick Rizzuto is the very picture of counterculture alienation. But it's when he talks politics that Mr. Rizzuto sounds like a real radical, for a punk anyway. Mr. Rizzuto is adamantly in favor of lowering taxes and for school vouchers, and against campaign finance laws; his favorite Supreme Court justice is Clarence Thomas; he plans to vote for...

"The "Right" Side of Punk As of January 31, 2004, ConservativePunk.com officially launches. The site has been created to educate, inform and increase the little known demographic of the Conservative Punk. This is not C-SPAN meets MTV; this site boasts conservatives from well-known artist Michale Graves of Gotham Road and former lead singer of the Misfits, to conservative talk show host and former rock jock Andrew Wilkow, to the average person on the street. This site has been created to counteract the multiple liberal punk sites on the web, which are run by only a small number of punk artists...