Free Republic

President Trump’s statement portrays loyalty to the Jewish homeland as positive and consistent with devotion to America US President Donald Trump never criticized Jews for “dual loyalty.” The president did the opposite: He urged greater Jewish loyalty to Israel. Moreover, the president’s statement urging greater loyalty to Israel and the Jewish people was certainly not antisemitic. Rather, it was the opposite of antisemitic; it was philosemitic. Antisemites depict loyalty to Israel as a negative, and as inconsistent with American interests. By contrast, the president upheld loyalty and caring about Israel as a positive good. The president’s detractors also ignored the...

"In the late summer of 2009, as the recession-ravaged economy bled half a million jobs a month, the country seemed to lose its mind," The New York Times says, kicking off its 10th anniversary retrospective of the tea party movement. As you can imagine, the rest of the article continues in this vein, portraying conservatives who organized against Obamacare as a bunch of vulgar radicals. Yet even this kind revisionism wasn't enough for most contemporary leftists, who see everything through the prism of race. "A fundamental flaw in this analysis is there is no mention of race and how much...

At the MTV Video Music Awards on Aug. 26, Taylor Swift won the video of the year award for her latest song "You Need to Calm Down." It's a song that trashes anyone still dissenting from the LGBTQ agenda and begs them to "control your urges to scream about all the people you hate / 'Cause shade never made anybody less gay." The network news shows gushed over her leftist activism and the "Taylor Effect" they expect it to provide. ABC's George Stephanopoulos said, "she's doing it the way she does her music ... with intent and with intelligence." What...

If the left is so loving, tolerant and inclusive, why is it so driven by unquenchable bitterness? What fuels it to divide Americans? No, I'm not talking about the Democratic presidential candidates, though any one of them demonstrates the same theme. The American left is just gorged with angst and apparently on a mission to share its misery. The insanity emanating from leftists today is overwhelming. It used to be that when you came across an outrageous story in the news, you just shook your head and thought, "This is weird." But you found solace in realizing it was not...

This week, we were served some less-than-breaking news. Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., dropped out of the race for the Democratic nomination. If you've never heard of him, that's OK. Few Democrats have. He served in the Marine Corps for four tours in Iraq, but other than that, he hasn't done much. What's interesting is why he's being forced to drop out of the race. By any sane standards, Moulton is a thoroughly liberal Democrat. On every issue, he's more left-wing than President Barack Obama was on the day he left office. Three years ago, Moulton would have been considered a...

Political discourse continues to be a discordant contest between haters and admirers of President Trump. But meanwhile, there has been substantial progress toward an improved strategic environment for the United States and the West. Ever since Pearl Harbor, FDR produced the blueprint for all subsequent American strategic policy. In his war message he said: “We will make very certain that this form of treachery never again endangers us.” The United States must not appease its mortal enemies and must always retain the military power to deter a direct attack on it. All 13 of the presidents who have followed FDR...

Only the audaciously arrogant fired FBI Director James Comey would demand the equivalent of an apology in the wake of a blistering denunciation of his actions by the Justice Department’s inspector general Thursday. As usual, Comey has it backwards. Comey is the one who owes the American public a sincere apology for abusing his position as FBI director, violating government rules, concealing information from his former agency, leaking sensitive documents without authorization, mismarking memos without classification banners, improperly retaining records in an unsecured location, failing to surrender those records to the FBI, and assuming “carte blanche authority” he did not...

Campaign season brings out so many utterly ignorant statements. These seem to be New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's stock in trade. Her most recent was a fallacy-filled Instagram tirade about the racism inherent in the Electoral College. (AOC should read the works of the superb scholar and author Tara Ross.) Ocasio-Cortez is not alone in fomenting public ire with false statements. On Aug. 9, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren -- currently considered a frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination -- tweeted the following statement: "5 years ago Michael Brown was murdered by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri." This is...

Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney immediately called for increased gun control in the wake of an alarming incident where a convicted felon shot and wounded six police officers attempting to serve a drug-related warrant. “Our officers need help,” he told CBS News. “They need help. They need help with gun control. They need help with keeping these weapons out of these people’s hands.” He doubled down in his call for gun control when he told ABC News, “If the state and federal government don’t want to stand up to the NRA and other folks, let us police ourselves. Our officers deserve...

This Monday marks Labor Day, a time when we transition from summer to fall, schools begin and football moves from preseason to regular season. For me, a southerner, it also is the time to store my white shoes and handbags and to pull out my fall clothes -- as soon as the temperatures drop. The first Labor Day was celebrated on Sept. 5, 1882, in New York City. It had nothing to do with sales, shoes or football. Instead, it involved more than10,000 people who had taken an unpaid day from work and marched from City Hall to Union Square...

There are people in every generation who believe the generation following theirs is either going to the dogs or will ruin the country. A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll lends credence to that way of thinking, especially where Generation Z/millennials (those born in the mid-1990s to mid-2000s) and Generation X (those born in the early-to-mid 1960s to the early 1980s) are concerned. The poll of 1,000 adults earlier this month found that "younger generations rate patriotism, religion and having children as less important to them than did young people two decades ago." The poll contrasts with a similar survey...

When UBS banker and father of three Scott Hapgood was arrested and charged with manslaughter in Anguilla, I was one of the first and most vocal observers to sound an alarm. I declared Hapgood an American hero for defending his life and the lives of his young daughters when confronted by an armed attacker inside his hotel room while on vacation. From day one, it was clear to me that he was no murderer but instead a man forced to do the unthinkable when unexpectedly forced into a literal fight to survive. After all, who in their right mind would...

WASHINGTON -- David Koch, one of the two celebrated Koch brothers known to millions of Americans who follow the news, passed away last Friday. He was 79. Now there is only one Koch brother to appear in the news. Yet the name Koch will be around for years. One sees the name frequently when business is being discussed, in discussions of the arts, in discussions of politics, particularly libertarian politics. Does anyone stop to wonder why the name Koch appears so frequently in the news? Well, I have had some experience with the Kochs, and I have an insight into...

When General Motors and Ford sell more cars, they are involved in more accidents. They undoubtedly advertise more in those places where they sell more cars. Does that mean that the car companies are responsible for additional accidents in those places? That they are purposefully plotting to create more accidents? Let’s hope not, but if Monday’s $570 million verdict by an Oklahoma judge against Johnson & Johnson for making opioids is any indication, those types of cases aren’t going to be far off. Oklahoma had refused to settle out of court believing that they could receive a very large verdict....

Seventy-five percent of Republican voters believe it really doesn't matter who the Democrats nominate because none of them will beat Donald Trump in next year's election. On the other hand, ScottRasmussen.com polling found that 49% of Democratic voters say it really doesn't matter who the Democrats nominate because any of them will beat Trump. Among all voters, 41% believe that none of the Democrats running will beat the president, while 36% believe any of them will do so. Those who aren't sure what will happen are the only ones who've got it right. It's too early to know what will...

Beto O’Rourke recently argued that, while unborn life has value, abortion is still a “decision for the woman.” It’s also a decision that becomes increasingly difficult to defend when described in detail – something the media rarely do. On August 26, the Democratic presidential candidate expressed his support for abortion – even up until the day before birth. O’Rourke made his comments during a town hall Q&A held at the College of Charleston in South Carolina. The first question that evening came from a 29-year-old man who was curious about the former Texas representative’s abortion stance. “Someone asked you specifically...

Last week, I wrote about my recent problems with Instagram. After averaging 450 new followers a day since March, when I became active on Instagram, my number of new followers suddenly stopped growing. Dead stop. The count read 68.9K. It remained 68.9K for over two weeks. Then, the number dropped by 100. Meanwhile, over the same two-week period, on Twitter and Facebook, which owns Instagram, I continued gaining hundreds of new followers per day. In response to my last column, I received several letters from people complaining that they were unable to follow me on Instagram. One said: "My husband...

CNN stands for the “Cable News Network.” There was a time that name was accurate – they are on cable, they delivered the news, and they’re a network. But that second “N” no longer applies, and it’s about time they drop it the way they’ve dropped any semblance of journalism. You can watch CNN for an hour, any hour, and come away dumber and less-informed than you were beforehand. That’s some kind of accomplishment, I guess, exactly what kind remains a mystery. Without news to fall back on, they have to fill 24 hours a day with something. The something...

"Socialist! is no longer a McCarthyite slur. Rather, the fresh celebrity "Squad" of newly elected identity-politics congresswomen -- Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) -- often either claim to be socialists or embrace socialist ideas. A recent Harris poll showed that about half of so-called millennials would like to live in a socialist country. Five years ago, septuagenarian Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) was considered an irrelevant lone socialist in the U.S. Senate -- Vermont's trademark contribution to cranky quirkiness. But in 2016, Sanders' improbable Democratic primary run almost knocked off front-runner Hillary Clinton,...

You must have a heart of stone not to burst into uncontrollable, hysterical laughter at the agony of the failing New York Times and the rest of the media over how conservative activists are going to apply the same internet colonoscopy to lib journalistas as they apply to us. Monsters! Fascists! Meanies! Oh yeah, that’s the ticket. Drink in their pain. Drink it all in. Mmmmm, that’s some delicious pain. Yeah, conservatives are fighting back, and to the other side it’s an assault on the free press and further evidence that Trump is totally Hitler and probably Stalin too. But...