Free Republic

You really can't have "gay marriage," you know, irrespective of what a court or a legislature may say. You can have something some people call gay marriage because to them the idea sounds worthy and necessary, but to say a thing is other than it is, is to stand reality on its head, hoping to shake out its pockets. Such is the supposed effect of the Iowa Supreme Court's declaration last week that gays and heterosexuals enjoy equal rights to marital bliss. Nope. They don't and won't, even if liberal Vermont follows Iowa's lead. The human race -- sorry ladies,...

Up in the air (where it generally stays anyway) went the New York Times' snooty nose. Those conservatives, clucked the Times - railing the way they do against the Obama administration's lurch toward "socialism"! And calling the president "Comrade Obama"! What - so went the strongly implied question - do we do with such folk? How about, for starters, listen to them? They might be less wacko than the Times often considers people who disagree with the Times. "Socialism," tightly defined, is outright government ownership. It is not, strictly speaking, socialistic to propose that government take over health care policy,...

As Charles Darwin's 200th birthday (Feb. 12) looms, evidence mounts: No way is all the furor over the teaching of evolution going to disappear, or even abate. Not in our own time, brothers and sisters. A Gallup Poll of June 2007 found Americans equally divided as to whether they believe or disbelieve Darwin's theory of evolution. Just a month ago, another poll showed belief in the devil running stronger among Americans than belief in the teachings of Darwin, who, to some opponents, is himself a sulfurous figure in red tights. Then there's the foofaraw over the Texas state education board's...

Advice for conservatives in the Age of Obama. 1. What is, is. Don't waste valuable time with rehashes of how wonderful things used to be, or would be right now, if only! A romantic streak informs conservatism: a dreamy connection to realities unglimpsed because they are dead or yet unborn. Don Quixote was a conservative. We can honor his idealism without wishing to replicate his practice. The realities of the present are the ones that need wrestling with. Barack Obama is president-elect of the United States. Instead of whining, cringing, or foretelling disaster, let us figure out what to do....

So here we are -- wherever "here" is, economically, financially speaking. The House balks at the bailout. The markets tumble. What next? No expert who tells you he knows what's ahead is to be believed, and you can tell him a colleague said so. I wonder if we might, anyway, engage in some guess work. I have a few notions of my own. I think the election of Barack Obama has not been cinched, but that the Democratic ticket's chances are vastly enhanced. It is a melancholy thought. I share it with reluctance. If I correctly read human nature, I...

There had better be something to this "divinely anointed" business, because if there isn't, Barack Obama is setting himself up for the biggest political spill in recorded history - all the way down the slopes of Olympus to whatever gunk lies below. Which is to say, nobody, probably, can be as good as Mr. Obama's adoring followers, whether in Portland or Berlin, seem to believe he is. Disillusionment is ugly to see in action: The higher the expectations, the angrier the eventual response to reality. What gives these musings their relevance isn't just the unfortunate track record of idols who...

"Nation of whiners"? I don't know how you flesh out with mathematical exactitude ex-Sen. Phil Gramm's famous assertion of last week concerning how we talk about the economy. I'll say this: There's a lot of whining go on, and if, as Phil avers, he was "talking about our leaders," not our people in general, he makes a serious point with something of the blunt force requisite to the task. Alas for him! The glory of the First Amendment to the Constitution is that it lets you say practically anything about practically everything. The fly in the buttermilk is you can't...

Politics is crazier even than we sometimes think. Half the time, it seems, instead of addressing issues of great solemnity with the attention they deserve -- foreign foes, energy supplies, government overspending -- we talk endlessly about ... would you believe Jeremiah Wright? What on earth? The Barnum & Bailey of the black church as center ring attraction in the presidential campaign? Not lastingly so, perhaps. These fads pass. And yet over the last few days of April, Barack Obama's pastor went around the country -- from the Bill Moyers show to Dallas to Washington, D.C. -- calling into question...

Goldwater In '08 I've just now figured it out — the right conservative candidate for these confused and disturbing times. I'm voting for Barry Goldwater, and nothing can stop me. Save — I admit — the inconvenience of Barry's residence in a venue other than the land of the living. Still, I want to suggest to perplexed conservatives sorting through the credentials of Romney-Huckabee-Giuliani-Thompson-Paul-McCain that no one matches in substance and appeal the man who, in our hearts, we knew to be right: Barry himself. I want to suggest this not by way of whomping up some sentimental pilgrimage back...

I don't see glee oozing from between every comma in David Kirkpatrick's New York Times magazine article this past weekend on the "evangelical crackup." He's a good reporter, whose coverage of conservatives I regard as generally well balanced. On the other hand, it isn't hard to visualize street dancing and fireworks displays outside Clinton headquarters. Kirkpatrick's focus is on the glug-glug sound as evangelical enthusiasm for conservatives and Republicans drains from the tub. No one can predict, for certain, the speed or volume of the drainage. It suffices momentarily to note the potential effects of this once-unlooked-for phenomenon. Didn't Republicans...

Living in 21st-century America is about -- so I gather, from living there -- leaving behind the awful memories of exploitative acts perpetrated by the old white male ruling caste and, from here on, incorporating into our lives and loves Barack Obama? Hillary Clinton? Barney Frank? "What about Bobby Jindal?" I would reply. What about the newly elected Republican governor of Louisiana, the son of Hindu immigrants and a convert to Roman Catholicism? And a conservative -- a believer in markets, limited government, intelligent design, the sacred character of unborn life and the power of the Lord God Almighty? Aren't...

Vamos a ver, as we say down at Bo's Hardware Store. According to an ABC News "Good Morning America" poll, two thirds of Americans don't mind hearing Spanish spoken as a matter of course right here in the United States. I doubt this rather seriously, given the tendency of poll respondents to avoid saying anything that might make a polltaker say under his breath, "Racist, racist!" But the poll does bring to the fore a significant question: How much sense does it make for the United States to accommodate the widespread speaking of a tongue other than English in a...

So, now (or just about now) -- Fred Thompson, Republican candidate for president! As Jack Benny replied when the stickup man gave him the choice of his money or his life, "... I'm thinking." One thing I'm thinking about is the eclipse in our time of the commanding figures who used to line up for the privilege of running America -- the Goldwaters, the Tafts, the Ikes, the Roosevelts, the Johnsons, the Nixons. Where did they all go? I mean no disrespect to ex-Sen. Thompson of Tennessee, for whom I might well vote. We tonsorially challenged souvenirs from the great...

We always get back to the same place, don't we, whenever something goes wrong -- the place known as How Can the Government Help? Already Democrats, without too much contradiction from nervous Republicans, are sifting ideas to help the subprime mortgage victims keep their homes despite rising mortgage costs. Denunciations of "predatory" lending practices fill the air, though I'm not aware of a single presidential candidate's having fingered specific predators -- or even having attempted to prove that predatory practices are at the bottom of the problem. Meanwhile Hillary Clinton talks of a $1 billion federal fund to help families...

What? Karl Rove leaving the George Bush White House? I read the words; I can't digest them. Going home to Texas to write a book and, not only that, leaving politics altogether? So he announces. We'll see. One thing we'll see soon enough is what object of derogation the Democrats fix on in the future to explain (to themselves as much as to the voters) their inability these past six years to control the political agenda. Dick Cheney, Alberto Gonzales, Don Rumsfeld, Bush himself, of course - Always Rove was the No. 1 bad guy; the puppet master sitting in...

Anybody want to review the bidding on the presidential race? All right, then, let's see. Hillary leads Barack in the polls, though he's been raising all this cash online, and John Edwards wants to raise taxes. As for the Republicans, McCain is fading, and people are debating whether America is ready for a Mormon president, while Fred Thompson looks like the great conservative hope, though Giuliani is gaining some traction with the right, and, hey, how about that YouTube debate, and and Operator, might I please have a 5 a.m. wakeup call, somewhere around Labor Day 2008, meanwhile zzzzzzzzzzzz, awk,...

The Democrats are poised to hurl America right over the cliff, to the rocks below. Wait -- I didn't say they long to do such like, or that, in suicidal mood, they'd take the chance if they got it, assuming they win big in 2008. I think if they do win, much of the creepy teeth-baring and chest-pounding they presently go in for will likely just . . . go away. Which could be one reason for electing the Democrats: to make them put up or shut up. To oblige them to quit griping about the President from Hell and...

The Democrats are poised to hurl America right over the cliff, to the rocks below. Wait -- I didn't say they long to do such like, or that, in suicidal mood, they'd take the chance if they got it, assuming they win big in 2008. I think if they do win, much of the creepy teeth-baring and chest-pounding they presently go in for will likely just . . . go away. ....break...... I mean, one can't help wondering: Aren't we talking about two different things here -- 1) talking up American abandonment of Iraq and 2) actually watching as U.S....

Bill Murchison offers us a sliver of hope for the world in 2009. With the raging hordes of the Dementiacratic Party out raising GOP House candidates by a margin of 10:1,the Senate field tilted against the GOP, and Caligula Rodham Clinton nuking Fred, John, Rudy and Mitt in the latest RCP polls, it looks like a good time to invest your money in gold coins and stock up your fallout shelter for the coming anarchy. My proudly partisan biases aside, 2008 looks bad for both the GOP, and any moderate Democrat to the right of Jean Paul Sartre. It isn’t...

Will the federal courts, and the people who rely on the federal courts to enforce secular ideals, ever get it? The anti-school-prayer decisions of the past 40 years—not unlike the pro-choice-in-abortion decisions, starting with Roe vs. Wade—haven’t driven pro-school-prayer, anti-choice Americans from the marketplace of ideas and activity. Neither will U.S. Dist. Judge John Jones’ anti-intelligent-design ruling in Dover, Pa., just before Christmas choke off challenges to the public schools’ Darwinian monopoly. Jones’ contempt for the “breathtaking inanity” of school-board members who wanted ninth-grade biology students to hear a brief statement regarding Darwinism’s “gaps/problems” is unlikely to intimidate the millions...