Free Republic

How unfair it is on Chipping Norton, that handsome, decent town, to be burdened by a link with David Cameron, the second worst Prime Minister of the modern age... Mr. Sunak cannot want Mr. Cameron's expertise on foreign policy. His major achievement in that field was to destroy Libya, replacing the despot Gaddafi with wild, burning chaos. This one action triggered the giant explosion in human trafficking across the Mediterranean which has utterly transformed Europe and European politics for the worse. He also supported the failed attempt to overthrow the nasty Syrian dictator, Bashar Assad, supposedly in the name of...

Peter Hitchens on Russia's dark future & the West's war hysteria | The Colin Brazier Podcast | Ep 3 Podcast...

Why does the Prime Minister think it does her good to be seen with that global embarrassment, Donald Trump? Why do politicians and media commentators in Britain prattle about how the ‘Special Relationship’ between Britain and the USA is still flourishing?

War in the White House: attorney general Eric Holder and top Obama adviser David Axelrod 'had to be separated' Eric Holder, Barack Obama's attorney general and David Axelrod, his top political adviser had to be separated after squaring up during a furious row over attempts to impose White House operatives in the justice department. By Jon Swaine, Washington 6:22PM BST 03 Jun 2012 Eric Holder, who heads Mr Obama's justice department, is said to have become "incensed" after being accused by David Axelrod of complaining publicly about political interference in his office. "That's bull****," Mr Holder said in a confrontation...

The campaign to get rid of marriage has not gone away. Civil partnerships for heterosexuals were not thrown out by the Appeal Court last week, only put off till later. They will come. In fact, after 20 years of New Labour government (some of it nominally Tory) we can now look back and survey the smoking ruins of marriage. It's not that the New Labour radicals and their Tory imitators wrecked marriage on their own. It's just that they have more or less finished it off. The very words 'husband' and 'wife' have been erased from official forms and even...

I wish I thought our fashionably liberal ruling classes, throughout what remains of the free world, would learn from the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States. But they won't. They are incapable of learning anything, ever. After years of taunting. spiting. ignoring and scorning the rest of us and our opinions, they have now created a monster, President Trump is entirely their fault. But they blame others. I have politely warned the liberal elite for years they were taking this risk. I have many times said and written to such people: "Please listen to me now....

The Faith of Christopher Hitchens May. 5, 2016 Larry Alex Taunton is a columnist who started the Fixed Point Foundation, an apologetics organization that is probably best known for arranging high-profile debates between well-known atheists and Christians. For example, it arranged the famous “God Delusion” debate between Dr. Richard Dawkins and Dr. John Lennox. Other notable debates include The “Is God Great” debate between Christopher Hitchens and Dr. John Lennox and the “God on Trial” debate between Christopher Hitchens and Dinesh D’Souza. Because his organization has arranged such debates (and because he often moderates them), Taunton has met and gotten...

"How is it that domestic politics in this country is at once so rancid and so banal, so embittered and yet so uninspiring? Why should it be that two parties with few if any essential differences are ready to speak of each other as if a cultural or even a civil war were only a few speeches away? Obviously, much of this fatuous rhetoric arises from the need to disagree more and more about less and less, to maintain the mills of fundraising in a churning condition, and to keep the dwindling groups of genuine loyalists and activists in a...

The Radical Intolerance of Radical Gays August 26, 2013 by Richard Larsen Tolerance is a virtue. But to be a positive force in a nation, or a community, it must be applied universally, not selectively. Definitionally, it denotes not only forbearance of behavior, but of opinions that are disagreed with. Yet the degree of intolerance shown to those who oppose the radical homosexual agenda is immensely disturbing, especially coming from those who are such ardent advocates of toleration. Those who oppose the leftist agenda are often subjected to threats, obscene anonymous phone calls, character assassination, and disturbing mischaracterizations in social...

If the Devil had his own bible, it would probably take the form of a computer game. It would be sly and witty, enjoyable and slick. It would start with small, almost funny misdeeds. It would offer the player the joys of money, successful violence and easy, responsibility-free sex. There would be drugs which didn’t fry your brain or burn holes in your nose. You would be made to feel brave, while not actually needing to be. None of your pleasures would be paid for in coin, pain or grief. Everyone else in the game would be disposable and forgettable....

In James Baldwin’s account of the Atlanta murders, “The Evidence of Things Not Seen,” he recalls a dreadful earlier moment from 1965. The swamps and creeks of Mississippi were being dragged for the bodies of Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman (done to death by the political ancestors of Bob Barr), and the search parties kept turning up corpses. Examination proved that these were not the cadavers that the authorities were seeking. It took a while for the subject to change, or at least for it to change enough for someone to exclaim: Wait a minute! What are all...

Over the past few years, evangelical atheists have switched places with fire-and-brimstone Christians: where once it was the Christians who brooked no disagreement, now it is the atheists; and it is the atheists, too, who perform cartwheels on the heads of pins. Christopher Hitchens once even managed to argue of the Reverend Martin Luther King, of all people, that ‘In no real as opposed to nominal sense . . . was he a Christian’. A weaselly self-righteousness is now the hallmark of the celebrity unbeliever. Meanwhile, it is the Christian who nods diligently in any discussion, taking pains to reassure the atheists...

The rich heritage of Tunisia, maybe the only place where the Arab Spring stands a chance Modern-day Tunisians, more Westernized than most Arabs, see themselves as descendants of the great Carthaginian general who invaded Italy. The Arab Spring began in Sidi Bouzid, a small Tunisian town, at the end of 2010. In a desperate protest against the corrupt and oppressive government that had made it impossible for him to earn a living, food-cart vendor Mohamed Bouazizi stood before City Hall, doused himself with gasoline, and lit a match. His suicide seeded a revolutionary storm that swept the countryside and eventually...

Who Dares Attack My Chesterton? OpinionJune 4th, 2012 Zac Alstin The late Christopher Hitchens  It is a cliché of pop psychology that we are least able to tolerate people who remind us of our own selves. There’s only room for one Life Of The Party and we feel a twinge of antagonism toward anyone whose excellence threatens to outshine our own. I was reminded of this when I read Christopher Hitchens’ posthumously published review of a biography of the great British journalist G.K. Chesterton. It certainly was a curious valediction. As an obituary for Hitchens described: “Consider the mix. Constant pain, weak as...

Little Keith" called him a suffering auto-contrarian and likened him to Houdini; Graydon Carter said he was a "bit of a scallywag" but an editor's dream; and the doctor who treated him for the cancer of the oesophagus that killed him said he was a "pioneer at the frontier".

The death of Christopher Hitchens on December 15 was not unexpected, and that seemed only to add to the tragedy. His fight against cancer had been lived, like almost every other aspect of his colorful life, in full public view. He had told numerous interviewers that he wanted to die in an active, not a passive sense. Then again, there may never have been a truly passive moment in Christopher Hitchens’ life. Long before he was known as one of the world’s most ardent atheists, he was known as a world-class essayist and a hard-driving public intellectual. Born in England,...

Hitchens had a serious problem with Jews, Israel and anti-Semitism. The universal encomia for the departure of Christopher Hitchens, the most celebrated atheist in the world, has been matched only by the earlier demise of Apple’s guru, Steve Jobs. Some of Hitchens’ praise is deserved, since he had been an exception in the leftist debacle after 9/11. But Hitchens had a serious problem with Jews, Israel and anti-Semitism. Despite the well known fact that the journalistic superstar boosted a deadly Judeophobic propaganda, Hitchens was given a pass by many US Jews for the anti-Semitic cheap shots about Israel just because...

In accordance with his wishes, Christopher Hitchens’ body was donated to medical research following his death less than two weeks ago; many of his followers have applauded his decision. “That is very Hitchens style,” wrote one commenter on Daily Hitchens, which first announced the news of his donation through an email from his literary agent Steve Wasserman. The agent also revealed that memorial services would be held sometime next year for the God is Not Great author. “Body donation makes absolute sense,” 5ecular4umanist penned. “Why waste a body in burial or cremation when it can be used to teach medical...

In writing this piece, I’m reminded of a little exchange between the late William F. Buckley and friend and fellow National Review writer Florence King. Buckley had just penned some less-than-flattering words about a recently deceased person of prominence whose name escapes me, and King chided him, saying something to the effect that he had broken ground in journalism: the “attack-obit.” Buckley’s response was, “Wait till you see the obituary I have planned for you!” And in writing this critical article about bon vivant Christopher Hitchens in the wake of his death this past Thursday, I expect some ridicule as...

Cancer weakened, but did not soften Christopher Hitchens. He did not repent or forgive or ask for pity. As if granted diplomatic immunity, his mind’s eye looked plainly upon the attack and counterattack of disease and treatments that robbed him of his hair, his stamina, his speaking voice and eventually his life. “I love the imagery of struggle,” he wrote about his illness in an August 2010 essay in Vanity Fair. “I sometimes wish I were suffering in a good cause, or risking my life for the good of others, instead of just being a gravely endangered patient.” Hitchens, a...