Free Republic

One reason the genuine right considers National Review a joke is that the magazine long ago lost the ability to distinguish between friends and enemies. NR spills considerable ink cozying up to the left and trying to show that they are not like those unacceptable bad conservatives but are instead harmless and reliable good guys. It attacks and backstabs those who ostensibly are, or should be, its friends and sucks up to its supposed enemies. Or perhaps NR is simply lying to its readers—and donors—and is playing Schmittian politics after all, but having switched sides? I couldn’t say, but that...

Perennial Democratic White House aide, congressman, Chicago mayor, and ambassador-in-waiting Rahm Emmanuel’s sole memorable utterance—his only candidate for Bartlett’s—is his cynical 2008 maxim that the good guys (i.e., his team) must “never let a serious crisis go to waste.” He was speaking of using the financial crisis to usher in sweeping changes to law, policy, the economy, and society that would otherwise not have been possible through ordinary democratic processes. The same logic applies now to the Democrats’—and many Republicans’—insistence that America be flooded with Afghan “refugees.” Importing as many immigrants as possible, from cultures as alien to traditional America...

It’s impossible to know what would have happened in a Trump second term, but had he done what Biden just did, the result would have been the same. In truth, the only way out of Afghanistan was just to get out: order home all civilians, close the embassy, destroy anything that couldn’t be shipped, keep the military there just long and strong enough to protect the evacuation. And then go. The Biden Administration didn’t do any of that because it, and the whole “national security” establishment, knew that doing so would be to admit failure, to advertise its own bankruptcy....

Gaslighting getting you down? Feel like the regime has dialed the Megaphone up to, and past, eleven? You’re not crazy. It’s definitely happening and likely to get worse as our masters’ ability to cope with reality further worsens—or worse, they gain the complete and absolute control they seek. They’re both scornful and terrified of dissent, which explains why they incessantly shriek at us and lie to our faces. So, to help you navigate the storm, I present a guide to seven of the regime’s most common, oft-deployed lies.

Many leftists have directed some deeply disturbing rhetoric at conservatives and Trump supporters in recent months, claiming President Trump’s bombast is responsible for the political polarization of today’s America. This is pure nonsense.Sure, Trump talks about MS-13 as “animals,” Antifa as “thugs,” and Hillary Clinton as crooked enough to “be in jail.” His supporters know his presentation to be a bombastic and theatrical schtick, but he never threatens any group of voters.By contrast, some ominous tones, even homicidal and terrorist tones, are coming from the mainstream left. Increasingly, through mainstream media and Big Tech, high-profile leftists are speaking openly...

Earlier this month, Michael Anton (a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, and a former national security official in the Trump administration) published an article at the American Mind entitled “The Coming Coup?” in which he wondered aloud what the Democrats are up to with all their talk about “dragging Trump from the White House on January 20” and urging Biden not to concede “under any circumstances.” All he did was quote their own words: the words of Democratic grandees such as Joe Biden, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, and John Podesta; the words of two highly-placed Democratic former...

NILS GILMAN, THE FOUNDER OF THE SO-CALLED “BIPARTISAN” TRANSITION INTEGRITY PROJECT, CALLED FOR THE EXECUTION OF FORMER TRUMP ADMINISTRATION NATIONAL SECURITY OFFICIAL MICHAEL ANTON IN LIGHT OF ANTON WRITING CRITICALLY ABOUT THE GROUP’S EFFORTS TO STEAL THE 2020 ELECTION AND SECURE A VICTORY FOR DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE JOE BIDEN. Gilman, who serves as Vice President of Programs at the Chinese Communist Party-linked Berggruen Institute, took to Twitter to express his desire that Anton be executed in the same fashion as Robert Brasillach. Specifically, he insisted “Michael Anton is the Robert Brasillach of our times and deserves the same fate.” Brasillach...

Tonight at 8 PM eastern on Life, Liberty & Levin: Candace Owens on the Democrats’ plantation politics and Michael Anton on the Democrats coming election coup. Please don’t miss it on Fox tonight! If you can’t watch the show Live, you can DVR it! See you at 8 PM eastern! pic.twitter.com/1C0YXwq1Xz— Mark R. Levin (@marklevinshow) September 13, 2020

Why The Atlantic’s smear of the president as disrespectful of fallen soldiers does not hold up. I had never met Donald Trump when I began serving in his White House. I took the job expecting that I would never meet him. My (former) role—head of communications at the National Security Council—is not one whose occupant traditionally interacts with the president all that much (my immediate predecessor notwithstanding). The NSC comms director’s “principal,” as we say in the flak trade, is the national security advisor, not the president. The president has higher-ranking aides to look after his interests. Plus, the top...

Democrats are laying the groundwork for revolution right in front of our eyes. As if 2020 were not insane enough already, we now have Democrats and their ruling class masters openly talking about staging a coup. You might have missed it, what with the riots, lockdowns and other daily mayhem we’re forced to endure in this, the most wretched year of my lifetime. But it’s happening.   It started with the military brass quietly indicating that the troops should not follow a presidential order. They were bolstered by many former generals—including President Trump’s own first Secretary of Defense—who stated openly what the...

Democrats are laying the groundwork for revolution right in front of our eyes. As if 2020 were not insane enough already, we now have Democrats and their ruling class masters openly talking about staging a coup. You might have missed it, what with the riots, lockdowns and other daily mayhem we’re forced to endure in this, the most wretched year of my lifetime. But it’s happening. It started with the military brass quietly indicating that the troops should not follow a presidential order. They were bolstered by many former generals—including President Trump’s own first Secretary of Defense—who stated openly what...

As if 2020 weren't insane enough already, we now have Democrats and their ruling class masters openly talking about staging a coup. You might have missed it, what with the riots, lockdowns and other daily mayhem we’re forced to endure in this, the most wretched year of my lifetime. But it’s happening.

In his new book, The Stakes: America at the Point of No Return, Michael Anton, now a lecturer and research fellow at Hillsdale College, again urges Americans to vote for Trump, disappointed though they may be with his performance, because they know even better than before how much this country’s ruling class would use control of the presidency to hurt us in our private and public lives for having dared to reject their mastery. Trump, imperfect as he is, is like a finger in a dike that, if removed, would loose a deluge. Anton describes how the Democratic Party-led complex...

A top National Security Council (NSC) official was forced to leave the group on Thursday, the most recent departure since national security adviser John Bolton joined the administration earlier this ear, Politico reported Friday. Jennifer Arangio, a senior director in NSC who worked with global groups, was escorted off White House premises and told that she was no longer needed at the administration, according to Politico. A NSC spokesman told Politico that the group doesn’t comment on personnel issues, and Arangio and didn’t return the publication’s request for comment. A former White House official told Politico that Arangio is “fiercely...

People capable of feeling shame would not have immediately followed up the Russiagate hoax fiasco with another transparently phony—and in “substance” nearly identical—attempt to remove President Trump from office, overturn the 2016 election, and shower deplorable-Americans with contempt and hatred. But our ruling elites have no shame. That is not to say, however, that they are entirely cynical. The means by which they’ve so far tried to crush the Trump presidency may be nasty and illegitimate, but our overlords are 100% convinced of the righteousness of their cause, and of themselves. Hence they do not even need recourse to the...

On Wednesday, Cockburn stopped by ‘Sovereignty or Submission: Restoring National Identity in the Spirit of Liberty’, hosted by conservative publications American Greatness and The New Criterion at a private club in Washington. Cockburn heard a wide-ranging discussion about nation states and governance, featuring Spectator columnists Daniel McCarthy and Roger Kimball, as well as the Hoover Institution’s Victor Davis Hanson, the Heritage Foundation’s David Azerrad, American Greatness editor Chris Buskirk, National Review’s John O’Sullivan, and Hillsdale College and Claremont Institute fellow Michael Anton. Over lunch, Tucker Carlson delivered a keynote speech on what he has learned since Trump’s election. The Fox...

Tucker Carlson’s cable-tv show begins identically each night. After the words “Good evening and welcome to Tucker Carlson Tonight”—always intoned and inflected exactly the same way—the host launches into an opening monologue on the news of the day, or what he thinks ought to be the news of the day. On January 2, 2019, though, there was no news. So Carlson used the holiday lull to deliver a non-stop, 15-minute, 2,571-word evisceration of America’s ruling class—political, industrial, financial, intellectual, and cultural. Our rulers, he insisted, had failed at their ostensible tasks: to improve the health of the country and the...

On a late January afternoon, as press secretary Sean Spicer walked into the White House media briefing room, a tall, thin, bespectacled man poked his head in the doorway for a moment before turning around and heading back into the West Wing. Later that week, at another briefing, the man stayed longer, standing in the corner behind the podium, out of view of the array of television cameras. The reporters peppering Spicer with questions were unlikely to know it, but the wallflower watching over the proceedings happened to be the leading conservative intellectual to argue for the election of Donald...