Free Republic

Anti-Israel activism is neo-colonial arrogance in the drag of pacifism.I’m old enough to remember when being a peacenik meant you wanted less Western meddling overseas, not more. Seems things have changed. Exhibit A: the Gaza flotilla. These smug sea-farers pose as peace activists, like Mother Teresa in a keffiyeh. Yet behind the humanitarian pantomime there lurks a brutish neo-colonial urge to rally the mighty nations of the West against the uppity little state of Israel. Some on the flotilla are openly calling on powerful states to send their warships to help ‘break’ Israel’s blockade of Gaza. You can call that...

Troubling developments have highlighted Europe’s continued slide into political turmoil and totalitarianism. As we discussed last time, the EU has no choice but to sharply agitate for war in order to keep its frail political structures intact, because the war drums drown out the organic cries for change and liberation from the EU’s despotic rule. It is the age old tactic used by tyrants time and again, most recently by Netanyahu in Israel. All the while, new undemocratic measures are “slipped in” while the populace is distracted by the hysteria; case in point being the sudden push for national digital...

From Kurt Schlichter: “Quick, everybody care what a bunch of impotent, fussy foreigners think about us! No, really, we should give a damn that some herring-gobbling fjord jockey is mad about Donald Trump. Yeah, Norwegians totally matter. But not really. No foreigner matters. Not Canadians, not the English, not the Arabs (especially of the nonexistent Palestinian variety), not the Papua/New Guineans. Here’s the reality. Most foreigners are trash. Most people who aren’t Americans suck. And treacherous Americans who presume to leverage the puny outrage of second-rate cultures against ours deserve our contempt and mockery almost as much as the foreigners...

No Republican is safe from CBS and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert’s wrath, not even former President and quintessential moderate George H.W. Bush. According to Colbert and actor Jeremy Strong on Thursday, “we risk losing essentially everything” to climate change, and it is Bush’s fault. Colbert teed up Strong, “You have a documentary about our burning world.” An appreciative Strong took the opportunity to promote the project, “Yeah, I executive produced an incredible documentary called The White House Effect that is coming out on Netflix at the end of next month. It’s coming out on Netflix on October 31,...

It was quite a week. The biggest story was the indictment of James Comey, about which I have reservations. But the indictment was a boon to memesters, who recalled Comey’s earlier art project featuring seashells. Much more happened, too. The Trump administration adopted recommendations by the Harvard School of Public Health on the use of Tylenol by pregnant women, which were immediately denounced by leftists, even though it turned out that the manufacturer of Tylenol said the same thing. Jimmy Kimmel returned to television and garnered massive ratings in his first show back, mainly due to people tuning in to...

Well, I feel obliged to post this here because I have now been the victim of fraud three (possibly four) times in the last month. The first and second incidents took place in Dallas at the end of August. I did not know until I looked at my bank statement that my debit card had been used at a Dallas area restaurant. My husband's debit card had been used at a different Dallas area restaurant. We live in San Antonio, so it's not like we were in the Dallas area and forgot that we stopped for bites to eat. My...

Two days ago, Chuck Schumer threatened Donald Trump with a good time. Now, the White House threatens to make the good time permanent. Literally. The deadline for a government shutdown is fast approaching, and Schumer tried to play hardball this week. He and Hakeem Jeffries demanded a meeting with Trump to negotiate, which Trump initially accepted, but canceled after the pair demanded a massive list of concessions before the meeting took place. Schumer then told the press that Trump was "chicken" and that any shutdown would be his fault -- even though the House had already passed the clean CR...

Why is anyone surprised that Allah-fearing Koran-bashers and genderfluid Westerners are struggling to get along?Remember when leftists chanted, ‘Yemen, Yemen, make us proud / Turn another ship around!’, goading the medieval anti-Semites of the Houthi movement to bomb merchant ships in the Red Sea? Well, now those same people are blubbing like babies because Israel allegedly pumped some ABBA on to their flotilla of boats heading to Gaza. So it’s fine for a racist militia to rain missiles on the hard-grafting men of merchant ships, but heaven forbid that the Jewish State subject the lily-handed activist class to a bit...

And it’s never coming back…“I’m so awesome I’m singlehandedly holding back the wave of long-anticipated-but-never-seeming-to-arrive-tidal-wave-of-white-male-right-wing-domestic-terrorism! I’m so noble, no one will ever know it was ME holding them back, getting them caught, defusing their bombs...because I’m so awesome!” - The SavantThis TV show needs to be preserved and kept in the Smithsonian as a benchmark of our strange times, in which ONE PARTICULAR NATIONAL POLITICAL PARTY was making EXTENSIVE USE of highly organized, violent, very dangerous and blatantly anti-American radical revolutionary groups loosely referred to as ANTIFA in order to try to DICTATE SOCIAL POLICY via threat against the public...

When I write about our favorite president, I often recall the CNN headline from May 11, 2017, “Trump gets 2 scoops of ice cream, everyone else gets 1.”2 presidencies, everybody else not named Grover Cleveland gets 1. President Trump went to New York to address the United Nations. He is footloose and carefree. Trump was among the leaders of nations speaking at the UN this week.He was the only world leader.Eli David tweeted:Priceless: Police in New York stop Macron’s car because the street is closed for Trumps convoy.Macron calls Trump to allow him to pass, but Trump humiliates Macron and...

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul thinks backing an antisemitic mayoral candidate will help get her re-elected. Others in the party are wondering and wavering.Was it a sign of growing confidence that his victory in November was inevitable, or merely just another indication of the strength of his hatred for the State of Israel and the Jews? Perhaps it’s a bit of both. Either way, it’s clear that Zohran Mamdani feels no need to feint to the center or water down his fervent anti-Zionism.When the Democratic candidate for mayor of New York City promised to have Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu...

Whatever Happened to Just Going Out for Family Fun? Now that I’m retired, with more time behind me than ahead, I find myself looking back a lot more than forward. I’ve been reflecting on the changes I’ve seen — not just in the world at large, but right here at home, in the way families like mine spend time together. When I was young, family fun meant something simple. Back in the 1950s, when money was tight for most folks, we didn’t need expensive outings to enjoy ourselves. A picnic at the park, a day at the beach, just a...

The title to this essay is a line from Tolkien. But I'm also reminded of two distinct lines from Star Wars, paired:If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.I dunno, I can imagine an awful lot.Charlie Kirk was a powerful force. He went from campus to campus and he talked to people. Generally when he was debating, he would put his microphone down, to reassure his partner that he wasn’t going to talk over them. He was respectful, and he was highly effective. He played a major role in winning over Gen Z...

Edgar Vincent, the first (and, as it happens, the last) Viscount D’Abernon, once remarked that “An Englishman’s mind works best when it is almost too late.” He died in the dark days of 1941 and so did not live to observe how events seemed to corroborate his maxim. For anyone contemplating the fate of Great Britain today, the primary question would be whether that “almost” is still justified. There are, we think, two interrelated set of problems. One is the rapid Islamification of Great Britain. The other is the triumph of political correctness, the intolerant ideology of “wokeness.” The two...

She knew nothing about him and decided to condemn him in Congress anyway.If Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez plans to run for president in 2028, she’s just made the biggest mistake of her political career. That speech of hers will be written in ink, and it will haunt her for years to come. Why? Because she didn’t know the first thing about Charlie Kirk, and everyone who watched her give that speech knows she’s either ignorant or lying.We know that on the Left, they do not believe in any kind of presumption of innocence when it comes to words. Words are harm. Words...

Teddy Kennedy became the lion of the Senate and of American liberalism. His legislative accomplishments have done much to shape the United States into the form he desired. We will be living with, and taking the measure of, his legacy for a long time to come. Certainly in one respect, Senator Kennedy’s contribution to our public life has been indisputably negative. In the role he played opposing the nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court in 1987, Senator Kennedy was responsible for a willfully false and remarkably coarse attack on Bork. When Ronald Reagan nominated then-D.C. Circuit Judge Bork...

Charlie Kirk’s critics branded him “divisive,” but his defense of common-sense values made him a unifying voice for millions—until the Left sought to silence him.Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is exercised that Charlie Kirk once said that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was “a mistake.”Rep. Bennie Thompson sees AOC’s charge and raises it: “The fact is,” he said in an official statement, “Charlie Kirk’s rhetoric was divisive, disparaging, and too often rooted in grievance. The beliefs he evangelized normalized fringe views on race, sex, and immigration. Unfortunately, his rhetoric resurrected dangerous prejudices of a dark past.”Gosh. Here’s a question, Congressman. What...

Promised no new wars. Ended 7 wars (that we know of). But I'm noticing a disturbing pattern. Seems every week, there's a new conflict bubbling up between the U.S. and 'fill-in-the-blank'; all in a lead up to a war against China over ... Taiwan?

This was my home for 18 years when the fire started.I’m disappointed that all the media is saying is that it was “an electrical fire that started in the basement.”I want a lot more information.What is the controlling factor for why the fire started now, and not 10 years ago?How did it start?Why didn’t the city inspectors, the insurance company, or the landlord prevent it from starting?What could have been done to prevent this fire from starting, and why wasn’t it done?Here’s a news article about this fire from the Pittsburgh affiliate of ABC News. It includes a link to...