Free Republic

On September 1862, weeks before he issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, Abraham Lincoln wrestled with the enormous dilemma of whether to change the stakes of the Civil War…In a private document found after his death, the president struggled to understand what God expected of him and of the nation. “The will of God prevails,” Lincoln began. “In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong. God can not be for, and against the same thing at the same time. In the present civil war it is...

Over the past week, as Taliban fighters shattered the brittle façade of Afghanistan’s armed forces, many commentators noted the unnerving similarity to 1975, when television viewers shuddered at images of frantic embassy personnel and their South Vietnamese allies climbing a ladder leading from the roof of the American embassy in Saigon to awaiting helicopters, while in the background, the steady rumble of enemy tanks grew heavier. It was an undignified end to a long and costly war, and it was President Gerald Ford’s poor luck that it happened on his watch. Commenting on the almost simultaneous fall of Cambodia and...

President Joe Biden’s proposed infrastructure legislation has the political class seemingly locked in a debate about what “infrastructure” means. Biden and Democratic leaders—backed by a majority of the U.S. population—believe that “infrastructure” is more than just roads and bridges and encompasses all the structures that help modern society function. Their new bill reflects that understanding, including improvements to water pipes and the electrical grid, universal broadband access, charging stations for electric vehicles, physical upgrades to schools and universities, and—perhaps most innovatively—home care for the elderly and disabled, support for families with children, and expanded access to health care. Republican elected...