Free Republic

Donald Trump is a fascist. When you call somebody a fascist, you can mean any number of things. Often, it means no more than “somebody I don’t like.” It is an all-purpose epithet, usable by anyone against everyone from university deans to Fox News anchors. For that reason, the label should be used sparingly — saved for special occasions. As with “Nazi” or “Hitler,” it is often said that in any discussion, the first person reduced to using such a word has lost the argument. It’s ridiculous to compare any living person to Hitler or Mussolini.

WHY are we reading Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab his Miranda rights instead of taking him somewhere and forcibly finding out where he got the explosive underwear and whatever else he might know about Al Qaeda? Isn’t this, as well as the forthcoming federal court trial of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, proof that the Obama administration doesn’t really regard the war on terrorism as a war?

The reason Americans have turned against health-care reform, after electing President Obama in part for promising it, is simple: Despite protestations to the contrary, Americans don't like change. You wouldn't know it, of course, if you listen to politicians in high-pander mode, or to talk radio hosts of the right or TV pundits of the left. Or, for that matter, if you listened to the president of the United States. You would think that while we might disagree about what kind of change we want, Americans are in total agreement that the current situation is intolerable in all areas...But as...

Isn't it great to have a president who says something foolish or impolitic from time to time? Obama's rhetorical goofs usually are different from Joe Biden's momentum-mouth, just as they are different from the empty-headed nonsense of George W. Bush and the bizarre country-club-bar chatter of Bush's father. They are also different from the standard political "gaffe," which, as we know, is when a politician accidentally tells the truth. Obama's goofs are generally not a result of speaking the truth. They come from thinking things through incompletely. It turns out that the police officer who arrested Skip Gates was not...

In the Age of Karaoke, more people (including me) like to join in the singing when they strike up the national anthem at public occasions. No one can stop you, no matter how embarrassed she might be by your obvious lack of talent. It's always disappointing when you're invited to stand and enjoy some high school glee club or famous opera singer. But chances are that even the opera singer won't get it right. "The Star-Spangled Banner" is notoriously unsingable. A professor of music, Caldwell Titcomb of Brandeis, pointed out years ago in the New Republic that its melody spans...

From the Left, former Crossfire host Michael Kinsley schools his progressive pals: Miss California’s views on gay marriage have nothing to do with her qualifications for the job and shouldn’t disqualify her for it. This is really Liberalism 101, and it’s amazing that so many liberals don’t get it. Yes, yes, the Bill of Rights protects individuals against oppression by the government, not by other private individuals or organizations. But the values and logic behind our constitutional rights don’t disappear when the oppressor is in the private sector. They may not have the force of law in that situation, but...

It is still okay to discriminate against one group of Americans. This discrimination is not only legal, it is encouraged. You see members of this oppressed minority huddled outside in rain and snow, forbidden to seek refuge. No one feels sorry for them. And yet we may have just elected one of these pariahs as president. Smoking is a disgusting habit that can kill you and those around you. Barack Obama claims to have quit, but the evidence is ambiguous. And the media's lack of interest in this question supports the charge that Obama is enjoying a honeymoon with the...

There is nothing more reviled by the freedom-killing, do-gooder, health police than smokers. They are the modern-day equivalent of lepers: unfit to be around "normal" people and banished to inhospitable locations. The nanny-staters even force business owners to ban smoking, a direct infringement on free markets and freedom, under the guise of protecting employees who have to work there and could not possibly find another job if they don't like the smoke. The point is that lefties are violently intolerant of smokers. But, as with all liberalism, the elites can do what they please, because they are more important and...

[snip] Does McCain think the government is better than the free market at choosing which kinds of companies are likely to flower? (Obama probably does think so, but he certainly would not want to admit as much at this point.) There used to be a term for this: industrial policy. It was generally decided that it is not a good idea. Now industrial policy is back with a vengeance in the banking industry, but that is considered to be a matter of necessity. Special tax breaks for small businesses are not a necessity. Actually, Obama is the guiltier party here....

If you're wondering why a formerly honorable man like John McCain would build his presidential campaign around issues that are simultaneously beside-the-point, trivial, and dishonest (sex education for kindergartners, lipstick on pigs), the numbers presented here may help to solve that mystery. Since the conventions ended, McCain has mired the presidential race in dishonest trivia because he doesn't want it to focus on what voters say is the most important issue this year: the economy. There is no secret about any of this. The figures ... are all from the annual Economic Report of the President, and the analysis is...

All red-blooded Americans hate the Taliban. But what did red-blooded Americans think of the Taliban seven months ago? That's about when John Walker, 20-year-old American citizen, disappeared from sight until he surfaced earlier this month in a prisoner-of-war camp for Taliban fighters. Now many Americans want Walker tried, punished, executed . . . nothing is too terrible to say about, or contemplate doing to, this traitor who abandoned his country and joined up with that incarnation of evil, that rats' nest of anti-Americanism, that oppressor of women, that harborer of terrorists: the Taliban. All this about the Taliban was about ...

In a famous example of ideological flexibility, the American Communist Party changed its mind completely about Adolph Hitler in 1939, when he signed a deal with Joseph Stalin. Previously, they hadn't cared for him much. Suddenly, he looked pretty good. Two years later, when Hitler ratted on the deal and invaded the Soviet Union, the Communists changed their minds again. Both times, it took only days. Now, thanks to the Internet, the same kind of conversion can take place in hours or even minutes. And although it's hard to find many Communists around these days, we happen to have just...

John McCain and Barack Obama are about to face a moral choice. It will probably be made in bits and pieces over the next five months, but we can imagine it as a single dramatic incident: the adviser approaches and says, "Yes or no. Do you want to swift-boat?" If you were the presidential candidate, what answer would you give? Swift-boat is shorthand for the brilliant, despicable Republican campaign strategy in 2004 that turned John Kerry's honorable service in Vietnam into a negative factor in his campaign. The phrase has become more broadly the term for a particular category of...

Short Pants’ Short Memory Swift-boat THIS.by Steve Finefrock Michael Kinsley is wearing his intellectual short pants again, in his essay on Swiftboating. Wishing upon wishes for a ‘clean’ campaign of purity, he asserts, “Swift-boat is shorthand for the brilliant, despicable Republican campaign strategy in 2004 that turned John Kerry's honorable service in Vietnam into a negative factor in his campaign. The phrase has become more broadly the term for a particular category of campaign tactics and has even become a verb. To ‘swift-boat’ somebody is to use these tactics against him or her.” Kinsley is not stupid, nor ignorant, but...

Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, best known recently as friends of Barack Obama, disappeared in 1969 after two of their colleagues in the Weather Underground died while building a bomb. Ayers and Dohrn spent 11 years setting off bombs and putting out statements threatening violent revolution. They promised to kill innocent Americans and praised the lunatic murderer Charles Manson. In 1981 two policemen and a security guard were killed in the botched holdup of a Brinks truck. Fake IDs used to rent getaway cars in an earlier robbery had been traced to a store where Dohrn worked. A grand jury...

Michael Kinsley thinks that Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn are not really such a big deal except to the extent they inadvertently helped Republicans: Ayers and Dohrn never posed any real threat to U.S. national security. Their asinine chatter about killing people and their anti-American sloganeering were as ineffective as their bombs. But they did real harm. Their victims were liberals: the millions of people who were part of the mainstream antiwar movement and who later voted against Ronald Reagan...perhaps you can imagine how infuriating it was to the organizers of the big marches on Washington--struggling to keep them peaceful--that...

[snip]Another question: Why are you so upset about this particular form of lawbreaking? After all, there are lots of laws, not all of them enforced with vigor. The suspicion naturally arises that the illegality is not what bothers you. What bothers you is the immigration. There is an easy way to test this. Reducing illegal immigration is hard, but increasing legal immigration would be easy. If your view is that legal immigration is good and illegal immigration is bad, how about increasing legal immigration? How about doubling it? Any takers?... [snip]But let's not kid ourselves that all we care about...

Time Mag's Michael Kinsley Makes MoveOn.org's 'Betray us' Ad Fault of Limbaugh, O'Reilly Goodness gracious, Michael Kinsley, vaunted leftist, upright "journalist," salt of the earth, is supporting a group that would rather call names and stir hatred for our troops than support a general that the entire U.S. Senate voted unanimously for only a few months ago. The founding editor of Slate online magazine, Microsoft's "serious" news and commentary magazine, thinks brash, slander is a great way to carry out the public debate on serious issues that affect the lives of millions of people. It's disgraceful. It's just beyond the...

If you know anything at all about the federal student loan program, you will not have been surprised by the scandal of recent months. The only amazing thing is that it has taken so long to arrive. Here's how the program works: Banks and other private companies lend money to students. The federal government pays part or all of the interest—currently 7 percent or 8 percent. The government also guarantees the loans. What is wrong with this picture? Well, the government itself borrows the odd nickel to finance the national debt. This borrowing, obviously, is also guaranteed by the government....

If you know anything at all about the federal student loan program, you will not have been surprised by the scandal of recent months. The only amazing thing is that it has taken so long to arrive. Here's how the program works: Banks and other private companies lend money to students. The federal government pays part or all of the interest -- currently 7% or 8%. The government also guarantees the loans. What is wrong with this picture? Well, the government itself borrows the odd nickel to finance the national debt. This borrowing, obviously, is also guaranteed by the government....