Free Republic

As Europe wanes, the distance between it and America grows According to Pew International polls, Trump is now intensely disliked in Europe. His endless spats over European trade, the costs of NATO, and differing approaches to Vladimir Putin’s Russia acerbated already tense U.S.–European relations. But Trump neither created European or transatlantic crises nor can be of much help in solving them. In part, they are Western in origin and to a degree shared by all Western allies, but mostly they are innate to Europe and self-induced. We often refer to the “West” of nearly 1.5 billion people without really defining...

The Washington Post has published a guest article by a California teacher arguing that American high school students shouldn’t read Shakespeare because he’s a dead, white man. Dana Dusbiber, who teaches English in Sacramento, says she avoids Hamlet and all the rest because her minority students shouldn’t be expected to study a “a long-dead, British guy” (Dusbiber herself is white). And while Shakespeare is widely regarded as the premier writer of the English language, able to timelessly portray themes central to the human experience, Dusbiber says he only is regarded that way because “some white people” ordained it and he...

Philosopher and historian of science Thomas Kuhn is among the more notable proponents of the view that "facts" are always laden with theoretical presuppositions. This may be an exaggeration, but there is nothing like commentary on Middle Eastern affairs to show that it is not devoid of truth. Almost everyone on the left, and some on the right, insist that Islamic hostilities toward America stem from America's support of the state of Israel. That is, ultimately, it is the existence of Israel that accounts for why Muslims throughout the Middle East (and elsewhere) hate us. For the leftist, however, Israel...