Free Republic

Wondering why the country’s spiraling out of control under Keir Starmer’s watch? He’s quick to point fingers at the so-called “far-right,” but what’s really behind the chaos on our streets? Today, we’re diving into the wave of protests and riots shaking the UK — and how Starmer’s failure to get a grip on the situation is only making things a lot worse. Dissenting voices are getting louder, with folks like Nigel Farage leading the charge, saying Starmer’s completely lost touch with what’s actually going on in the country. Transcript linked below video.

Last week at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Vice President Kamala Harris officially became the Democratic nominee for US president. The symbolic and celebratory event — which included a live concert and dance party with rapper Lil Jon — was the culmination of a carefully choreographed, by-the-powers-that-be process unprecedented in American politics. President Joe Biden was removed from the race, dubiously replaced by Harris to run against GOP nominee Donald Trump. In an unusual virtual roll call, Harris secured 99% of the participating delegates’ votes — along with hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign funding that donors had...

Below is my column in the New York Post on the withdrawal of Robert Kennedy, Jr. from the presidential race and his endorsement of President Donald Trump. Kennedy’s speech resonated with many long-time Democrats who have found themselves estranged from the party. While Kennedy remains an independent, it is a cautionary tale that is being missed in the “joy” theme of the Democrat National Convention. The fact is that new Republicans are often not the product of ideology and association but anxiety and exclusion. Democrats make Republicans. Here is the column: The withdrawal of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from the...

Bernard-Henri Lévy takes on the Israeli crisis. Born in 1948 in French Algeria to a family of Sephardic Jews but raised from infancy in France, where he has spent his long and productive life, Bernard-Henri Lévy has led a distinguished career as a philosopher, war correspondent, and prolific author and commentator. Unlike many members of his generation in France, he was not seduced by Marx, and has in fact spent much of his life criticizing Communism and other forms of tyranny, championing oppressed peoples around the world, and defending Israel and the United States at a time when most of...

Amid doubts about Biden's ability to effectively lead the U.S. in his remaining months as president, our enemies abroad might see an opportunity to alter the global balance of power. There are three current hot or cold wars: on the Ukrainian border, in the regions surrounding Israel, and in the strategic space between Taiwan and mainland China. All three conflicts could not only expand within their respective theaters but also escalate to draw in the United States. And all three involve nuclear powers. Various Russian megaphones routinely threaten to use tactical nuclear weapons against Ukraine. Some boast about sending strategic...

Opinion The American military-industrial complex, coined by President Eisenhower in 1961, has shaped US foreign policy and military strategy while perpetuating global conflicts The American military-industrial complex, a term popularized by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his farewell address in 1961, refers to the synergistic relationship between a nation's armed forces, its defence industry, and its political establishment. This complex has played a pivotal role in shaping U.S. foreign policy and military strategy, leading to extensive global influence and numerous conflicts over the past century. While wars undoubtedly bring immense destruction and suffering, they have also generated substantial profits for...

Multiple Democrat lawmakers are quietly telling allies worried about Vice President Kamala Harris’s controversial grocery price-control plan that the proposal will die in Congress, Politico revealed. After economists pushed back on Harris’s “Soviet-style” plan to centrally administer price controls on food in her first policy-focused speech on August 16, one anonymous Democrat told the outlet that it was a “lofty goal.” “I honestly still don’t know how this would work,” a second lawmaker said.

Mondays and Wednesdays are loud at the vast Boeing factory in Everett, Washington. As the Machinists’ contract campaign heats up, the workforce has been serenading management at lunch with air horns, train horns, and vuvuzelas—plus chants of “Out the Door in ’24.” Forty miles south, in Renton, where workers construct the moneymaking 737, second shift workers have used their meal breaks to blast Bluetooth speakers at top volume with ’90s rap, death metal, ’80s pop, and opera—all simultaneously, said Jon Voss, a 13-year mechanic in the wings building. The resulting racket “really drove management and HR nuts.” The Boeing contract...

There is a creeping sense that our society has turned upside-down. Healthy debate is replaced by activist hysterics. Speech is declared violence; violence is excused as speech. Masculinity is condemned as “toxic,” while men in dresses are celebrated in the public square. It feels as if we are in the midst of a society-wide mental breakdown. … A strange new pattern of psychological dysfunction has infiltrated all our institutions, from humdrum bureaucracies to the highest offices. Wherever we turn, that creeping feeling sets in: our society is sick; our institutions are out of balance; our public life has been consumed...

Jewish delegates at the DNC have to meet in hiding. “As the highest-ranking Jewish official in American history, I want my grandkids and all grandkids to never, never face discrimination because of who they are,” Senator Schumer concluded his speech. “But Donald Trump. This is a guy who peddles antisemitic stereotypes.”Meanwhile Jewish Democrats were literally hiding out at the DNC.Most Jewish events at the DNC were held at undisclosed locations with organizers having to approve attendees and only then provide them with the secret location shortly beforehand.Agudath Israel, a traditional religious and not particularly Zionist group, whose members wear black...

Lyin' Tim Walz Wants To Be Your Neighbor CHICAGO—After listening to Wednesday night's keynote speaker, vice presidential nominee Tim Walz, an MSNBC reporter observed that the Minnesota governor and his family were "so remarkably normal after what we've been through the last four years." It wasn't entirely clear if the comment was intended as a dig at the dysfunctional Biden family, or if Democrats have spent so much time this week vowing to "turn the page" and embrace the future that their supporters have simply forgotten they still control the White House. (RIP, Sleepy Joe.)

Douglas Murray joins the Spectator's Freddy Gray to discuss free speech in Britain following the sentences handed down after the riots, how the use of the term 'far-right' had become a tool to attack the working class in Britain and how Douglas himself became a victim of online hate. Transcript link below video.

When the Jewish State has to go it alone. The New York Times insists that if Israel rejects the Bidenites’ advice to pull out of Gaza, it does so at its peril: “NYT admits US officials were wrong about the IDF in October, and wrong about Rafah, but thinks they are right now,” Elder of Ziyon, August 15, 2024:So these officials were completely wrong in October. They were also wrong about Israel’s taking Rafah, which they now admit is exactly what destroyed Hamas’ supply lines from Egypt – and cost far fewer casualties thna they had confidently predicted.By ignoring warnings...

And therefore should not exist. The DNC 2016 party platform began by claiming that “Democrats meet in Philadelphia with the same basic belief that animated the Continental Congress when they gathered here 240 years ago.” Four years later, out went the Continental Congress and all of America. The 2020 DNC platform began with a politically fashionable ‘land acknowledgement’ asserting that America was an illegitimate entity operating on stolen land “built on Indigenous homelands.” The 2024 platform likewise begins with a ‘land acknowledgement’ claiming that Chicago properly belongs to 13 different Indian tribes. Once again, the DNC asserts that they “recognize...

Wen Raiti, a Chinese American community leader in Jacksonville, Florida, has been a Republican for more than a decade. As a small business owner, she said, the party’s fiscal conservatism and small government ethos resonated with her. But last May, when Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation banning Chinese citizens from buying property in Florida, Raiti changed her party affiliation and began campaigning for local and national Democratic candidates. Leading up to Florida’s Aug. 20 primary election, anger toward Senate Bill 264 has turbocharged voter mobilization efforts in the Chinese American community in the state, organizers and elected officials said, pushing...

Let's have a convention where the voices of the balaclava-clad angry mob outside don't drown out messages of unity and love on the inside. Let's wear our stupid hats and sunglasses as big as the moon. Let's shake our signs and cheer our cheers whenever a talking point is raised up upon the stage. Let us hear speeches from the men and women of the moment and let us search for the voices of the future. Let's have a convention where we offer thanks to the man who got us here—President Joe Biden. It's enough to turf out the man...

The already-long 2024 presidential campaign has become the strangest in modern history. Here are 10 unanswered questions that illustrate how and why we’ve entered this bizarro world: 1. How can Kamala Harris merely promise us fixes to come in 2025 for inflation and an open border when she is still vice president for another six months? Why can’t she enact her proposed solutions to these problems (which she helped create) right now? 2. Would the media prefer to help her win but lose further credibility themselves by failing to ask why she has disowned her last three decades of leftist...

ProjectionismProjection is a Freudian psychological term. It describes a particular defensive mechanism, when people, often unconsciously, attribute their own (usually undesirable) behaviors to others who do not have them. These mental gymnastics are intended to alleviate one’s own guilt or sense of inadequacy at the expense of another. Sound familiar? But in the political sphere, projection involves more overt dissimulation. It is increasingly common for leftist candidates or political parties to falsely accuse their opponents of the very destructive behaviors and unpopular agendas that they themselves embrace, but out of political necessity must deny. Rather than an unconscious Freudian defense...

Extreme misogyny will be treated as a form of terrorism for the first time under government plans, it was reported. Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, has ordered a review of the counter-terrorism strategy to address violence against women and girls and identify gaps in current legislation and examine emerging ideologies, according to the Sunday Telegraph. Under the proposals, teachers would be legally required to refer pupils they suspect of extreme misogyny to Prevent, the UK government’s counter-terror programme. Cooper told the Telegraph: “For too long, governments have failed to address the rise in extremism, both online and on our streets,...

First came the guns — the Mausers from Germany, the Carcanos from Italy — and then came the moral pretexts. These days, the American right is forever touting firearms as matters of principle or heralding them as hallmarks of a certain sort of rugged identity. But guns, before fetishists succeeded in converting them into symbols, were simply commodities, as unglamorous as washing machines. In his crisply written and incisive new book, “,” historian Andrew C. McKevitt chronicles the transformation of guns from tangible weapons to ideological ammunition. Sharp, fascinating, devastating, exhaustively researched and often wryly funny, this indispensable book —...