Free Republic

Fifty years ago today, July 24, 1959, Vice-President Richard Nixon engaged in what is called the "Kitchen Debate" with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in which they debated back and forth on the virtues of Capitalism and Freedom and Soviet-style Communism. For all of Khrushchev's bluster, here we are 50 years later, and the United States is still the world's greatest superpower, and the Soviet Union is no more. Below is a video clip of the two debating, and then a longer audio clip of their debate . . . . . (Watch Video)

Fidel Castro, the dictator who came the closest in history to igniting a nuclear war, made several public appearances recently to predict an imminent nuclear conflict. The cataclysm he craved in 1962 will erupt, he warned on Cuban TV, when the Israelis and their American cohorts provoke Iran in the straits of Hormuz. You did indeed read the above account correctly. Castro, the man who co-sponsored the famous 1975 UN resolution equating Zionism with racism, is claiming the Israeli tail wags the Yankee dog. Those Yankees are certainly powerful, Castro explained, but also a bit naïve and docile. The main...

When Sputnik took off 50 years ago, the world gazed at the heavens in awe and apprehension, watching what seemed like the unveiling of a sustained Soviet effort to conquer space and score a stunning Cold War triumph. And that winking light that crowds around the globe gathered to watch in the night sky? Not Sputnik at all, as it turns out, but just the second stage of its booster rocket, according to Boris Chertok, one of the founders of the Soviet space program. But 50 years later, it emerges that the momentous launch was far from being part of...

The Progressive Paradigm Watching the commentary in the political arena, there appears to be a disconnect in the direct analysis of the true ideology of the progressive left. How can this be? They attack each other with the vociferousness and vitriolic fervor of combatants in a verbal life or death struggle. I contend it is a battlefield where the observer is watching an illusory confrontation, where the perception of the adversaries are being sold to the audience by a media that seeks to give one side an advantage of perception. It is often painted as a battle between conservative and...