Free Republic

What Would Buckley Do? Malcolm A. Kline, June 9, 2010 Two years after his death, William F. Buckley, Jr., the ultimate conservative man of letters, still has a lot to teach the young and the rightward. In turn, there is no better person to pass on these lessons than the man who has become the preeminent historian of the conservative movement—Lee Edwards. Edwards, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, relays the insights that can be gleaned from the National Review founder’s life and work in his invaluable new book, William F. Buckley, Jr.: The Maker Of A Movement. For...

Keeping Communism Down Allie Winegar Duzett, November 9, 2009 November 9th is the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and even if news stations like CNN and ABC do not, other people worldwide will be celebrating this defeat of communism. November 9th marked “the effective death of the Cold War,” Dr. Lee Edwards said at the Heritage Foundation Bloggers’ Briefing earlier this week. The Cold War was “a war which America participated in for forty-six years—it’s the reason why we fought in Korea, the reason we fought in Vietnam: fighting and opposing communism,” he explained, noting that...

Truly Heroic Victims by: Alana Goodman, June 25, 2009 The atmosphere was somber at the Victims of Communism Memorial on June 16th, as speakers urged attendees to remember those who perished under past communist regimes as well as those who suffer under them still. Lee Edwards, chairman of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, noted that it was the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall, but that democratic nations still have a long way to go before we can rid the world of “an ideology that took the lives of an estimated 100 million [people].” Some of...

Barry Goldwater: The Most Consequential Loser Lee Edwards, Ph.D. Distinguished Fellow in Conservative Thought The Heritage Foundation Barry Goldwater was the most consequential loser in modern presidential politics. His conservative candidacy forty-one years ago has had a more enduring impact on our politics and our nation than the losing candidates usually mentioned in the history and political science texts--Theodore Roosevelt in 1912, Al Smith in 1928, George Wallace in 1968, George McGovern in 1972, and Ross Perot in 1988. This judgment might be challenged by some, given that Goldwater received less than 39 percent of the popular vote and carried...

The flag is still there: Firemen and rescue workers climb through the rubble at ground zero of the World Trade Center catastrophe.ince the agonizingly narrow presidential election last November, Americans have been haunted by the specter of a divided America. Etched in our minds is a twin-hued map--the "red" Gore nation of the secular, elitist East and West Coasts and the "blue" nation of the observant, populist heartland.         Our politics became increasingly rancorous and partisan, fueled by politicians who could not let go of the last election or stop plotting for the next. Our economy, after 18 years of ...

<p>On the two epic events of the last 50 years -- the waging of the Cold War and the growth of the welfare state -- Ronald Reagan was indisputably correct. Communism was evil and had to be defeated, not merely contained. And the welfare state had grown dangerously large and had to be rolled back, not simply managed efficiently.</p>

Ronald Reagan was not an accidental leader. He possessed certain personal characteristics that set him apart from other seemingly as talented and ambitious men and women. Physically, he had remarkable vitality and stamina. He did not need energizer batteries to keep going through crises and challenges that would have hospitalized the rest of us. Mentally, he was able to penetrate quickly to the heart of a matter and to shift from issue to issue with little apparent effort. Philosophically, he had a set of core beliefs from which he rarely strayed. He did not hesitate to go against the popular...

It's no secret that conservatives are independent, opinionated and contentious. But of late there seems to be an inordinate amount of feuding and fussing going on. Conservatives, neoconservatives and paleoconservatives are using pretty strong language about each other. Not too long ago, National Review featured a cover article by David Frum who declared war on paleoconservatives, calling them "unpatriotic" conservatives who should be read out of the movement for "turning their backs on their country" and failing to support the war on terrorism. Chairman David Keene of the American Conservative Union responded that Frum had painted "with far too broad...