Free Republic

There is a line from John Adams of which conservatives, particularly those of a moralistic bent, are fond: "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people." The surrounding prose is quoted much less frequently, and it is stern stuff dealing with one of Adams’s great fears - one that is particularly relevant to this moment in our history. John Adams hated democracy and he feared what was known in the language of the time as "passion." Adams's famous assessment: "I do not say that democracy has been more pernicious on the whole, and in the long run,...

National Review’s Kevin Williamson believes Donald Trump’s appeals to the white working class is “immoral” because that demographic’s way of life deserves to die out. In a featured article for the prestigious conservative journal entitled “The Father-Fuhrer,” Williamson seeks to rebut criticism that he and other conservatives don’t articulate any policies that would appeal to Trump’s blue collar supporters. Williamson, a long-time critic of The Donald, essentially agrees that he doesn’t support any policies or rhetoric directly tailored to the working-class — particularly about jobs being taken by outsourcing and immigration — because it would be wrong to do so....

There’s been a growing sense of desperation among the #NeverTrump forces for a few weeks now, and as we move closer to largely winner take all states in the primary line-up it was inevitable that full blown panic would set in. One side effect of this increased feeling of urgency is that critics of The Donald have increasingly given up on critiquing the business mogul’s record and frequently mystifying comments, choosing to focus their attacks on his supporters instead. While a seemingly self-defeating strategy, that movement has hit its full stride this weekend with National Review’s endless fountain of Trump...

Beware the bundler. I don't mean the political fundraiser (though those guys can be pretty shady, too) but the lawmaker, the guy who insists that every issue is related to every other issue and that the only solution is a grand "comprehensive" bipartisan compromise resulting in a generation-defining piece of legislation that's 8,000 pages long. Consider the question of illegal immigration. No, not the question of immigration -- illegal immigration. There's a temptation to bundle those together, because we have problems with our legal immigration regime, too, but the more tightly we tie them together, the more closely we bind...

Forgive me for repeating a point that's already been made by Rich and others, but I think it bears sustained consideration. Donald Trump's professed strategy - for everything - is: I'll find the best people, the smartest people, terrific people, and those terrific people will come up with the best solutions possible. Implicit here is a pyramid of terrificness with Donald Trump at its apex. And what was Trump's explanation for his poor performance in Iowa? "People told me my ground game was fine." I.e., "I got bad advice." As it turns out, Trump could not find the best people,...

African American Conservatives interviews conservative icon Michelle Malkin on her latest book, "Sold Out: How High-Tech Billionaires & Bipartisan Beltway Crapweasels Are Screwing America's Best & Brightest Workers" and National Review writer Kevin Williamson on his book "The Case Against Trump."

Donald Trump exemplifies one of the strange and lamentable dynamics in democratic discourse: People tend to have the strongest opinions on those things about which they have the least knowledge. Herr Apfelstrudelfuhrer imagines himself issuing decrees that presidents have no power to issue, and he doesn't seem to understand that illegal immigration -- his headline issue -- isn't in the main driven by people walking across the Mexican border. He doesn't seem to understand how laws are made or how government money is appropriated. He has, to say the least, a lot to learn. Now he wants to launch a...

My favorite criminals are those known in the literature — or at least in the movies — as “standovers,” criminals who specialize in victimizing other criminals. Examples of the type are Omar Little in The Wire, whose occupation is robbing Baltimore drug dealers, and the Joker in The Dark Knight, who loots and extorts Gotham’s mob bosses. The really bold ones who show up at large drug deals and rob both sides. The problem with the standover business model, obviously, is the same as the problem of scorched-earth banditry: It drives away exactly the sort of activity that the criminal...

Americans are funny about taxes: When we complain about them, we don’t moan that we are paying too much — we lament that others are paying too little. In a Pew Research Center poll last year, only 27 percent of Americans cited their own tax liabilities among their complaints about the tax code, while 64 percent complained that other taxpayers — the wicked 1 percenters, the dreaded corporations — were getting off too easy. If you’ve ever met anybody who believes that we can balance the budget by cutting foreign aid, that the Social Security “trust fund” is a real...

In a compelling column, George Will – who knows a thing or two about conservatism – makes the conservative case against Donald Trump. Mr. Will refers to Trump as an “unprecedentedly and incorrigibly vulgar presidential candidate” who is coarsening our civic life. He labels Trump “a counterfeit Republican and no conservative.” And he argues that Trump is an affront to anyone devoted to the legacy of William F. Buckley, Jr., the founder of National Review and a giant in American conservatism. Just as Buckley excommunicated the John Birch Society from the conservative movement in the 1960s, so should conservatives today...

Martin Crutsinger has been a business and economics writer at the Associated Press for over three decades. Certain people in high places apparently hold him in high regard. In early 2014, on his 30th anniversary with the wire service, he is said to have received congratulatory letters from soon-to-be Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen, soon-to-be-former chair Ben Bernanke and Obama administration Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, which he clearly enjoyed as those in attendance munched on a very delicious-looking cake. We can't know whether the congrats from those heavy hitters merely marked a career milestone, or if they included an element...

So Rush Limbaugh is a little upset with your favorite correspondent today, because of some remarks I made on the Bill Maher program on Friday. Rush, usually an astute observer, is off-target here: He has simply misunderstood what I said. ..... ...My advice to Rush is to take a minute, have a cigar, and read my new book on the transformative and revolutionary powers of capitalism, which I suspect he will find useful, as he so often has in the past, back when National Review used to be conservative.

Kevin Williamson, a correspondent for National Review, suggested Monday that women who have abortions should be hanged. Williamson's tweet came in a back-and-forth on twitter that started with Williamson's piece criticizing a blog post by actress and director Lena Dunham on why women should vote. The key part of the exchange was captured by Charles Johnson of the blog Little Green Footballs. Here is the exchange:

March 29, 2014 4:00 AM Which Side Are You On? If you don’t care whether Republicans win, care that Democrats lose. By Kevin D. Williamson For conservatives, the story of the Obama years has been the depressing spectacle of Republicans fighting a rearguard action covering their retreat from a Democratic agenda backed by superior numbers. Republicans began the Obama administration with effectively no leverage: Barack Obama in the White House, Nancy Pelosi in the speaker’s chair, and Harry Reid running the Senate. The outcome of that was the enactment of the Affordable Care Act, the worst domestic defeat for the...

Frank Rich, writing in New York magazine, has taken issue with my pieces on Goldwater, Republicans, and civil rights, calling it part of “the most insidious and determined campaign to rewrite racial history on the right.” If you can dig through Mr. Rich’s characteristically limp and emotive prose, you will discover that his argument amounts to: “Nyah, nyah! Strom Thurmond!”

I am willing to give Herman Cain the benefit of the doubt and assume that the sexual-harassment allegation(s) against him was entirely baseless. Here is what troubles me. Mr. Cain says: “If the Restaurant Association did a settlement, I wasn’t even aware of it, and I hope it wasn’t for much, because nothing happened. So if there was a settlement, it was handled by some of the other offices that worked for me at the association, so the answer is absolutely not.” Okay, so if I’m reading that quote right, then: 1. Herman Cain, in his role as head of...

Your average poorly informed lefty (but I repeat myself) will reliably tell you that our current fiscal straits are the result of three things: 1. Bush’s wars; 2. Bush’s tax cuts for the rich; 3. Bush’s bank bailouts. That is not true, of course: The main bank bailouts (odious as they were) have been paid back, often at a profit. The money-losing parts (and the likely money-losing parts) are the ones insisted upon by Barack Obama and his Democratic colleagues: the foreclosure-prevention programs, the endless maintenance of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, etc. The Iraq War, in its most expensive...