Free Republic

/begin my translationUT Arlington Students, "to burn N. Korean flag and Kim Jong-il's effigy"Students at University of Texas, Arlington, notified the school authorities that, on Sept. 11, the fifth anniversary of 9/11 attack, they will hold a rally in which they will burn N. Korean and Iranian flags, along with the effigies of N. Korea leader Kim Jong-il and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Texas local papers reported that students want 'to hold a rally for one and a half  hour in front of the main campus building since N. Korea and Iran have become deadly threats to U.S. and world...

"President Likens Dewey to Hitler as Fascist Tool." So ran the New York Times headline on Oct. 26, 1948, after what Dewey biographer Richard Norton Smith called a "particularly vitriolic attack in Chicago" by Harry Truman. What brings this to mind is President Bush's assertion that we are "at war with Islamic fascism" and "Islamo-fascism." After the transatlantic bomb plot was smashed, Bush said the plotters "try to spread their jihadist message I call – it's totalitarian in nature, Islamic radicalism – Islamic fascism; they try to spread it, as well, by taking the attack to those of us who...

Neoconservatism: Why We Need It is a vigorous defence of the most controversial political philosophy of our age. In this timely book Douglas Murray explains what neoconservatism is, in theory and practise. He defends it against its critics and explains why – despite the noisy claims of its opponents - neoconservatism is good. Murray is the first person to make a sustained case for why neoconservatism is relevant to Britain. And neoconservatism, it is argued, is the future not just of the British Conservative party, but of any political party committed to the ideals of freedom at home and abroad....

Time Magazine in its July 8 issue makes a rather bold statement declaring "The end of cowboy diplomacy" of George W. Bush. These type headlines are seen during the slow news season of August or September in Washington when the U.S. Congress is in recess and not much is happening. But there is no lack of high drama right now. Kim Jong Il's decision to defy the United States by firing a series of missiles has a created a mini-crisis in the nation's capital and in East Asia. The next event of high interest is Iran's impending decision of this...

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran knows what he wants: nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them; suppression of freedom at home and the spread of terrorism abroad; and the "shattering and fall of the ideology and thoughts of the liberal democratic systems." President Bush, too, knows what he wants: an irreversible end to Iran's nuclear weapons program, the "expansion of freedom in all the world" and victory in the war on terrorism. The State Department and its European counterparts know what they want: negotiations. For more than five years, the administration has dithered. Bush gave soaring speeches, the Iranians...

Senator John Kerry has been comparing the wars in Vietnam and Iraq, and indicating that they are very similar; his conclusion is its time to get out. Not for the first time, Kerry is dead wrong. There are indeed similarities, but — not withstanding what we read and see in the media — there are important differences as well. Let me offer a blunt appraisal. It is not regarded as polite to mention it — almost no one does — but most of the grunts in Vietnam were draftees; in Iraq, they all volunteered. On the Vietnam Memorial in Washington...

"WHO TODAY IS CALLED a liberal for strength and confidence in defense of liberty?" Harvey Mansfield asked this question almost 30 years ago in the preface to his Spirit of Liberalism, and the answer was almost self-evident. This was during the Carter administration, and things haven't gotten better since. There have been some exceptions to the rule of liberalism's weakness, but these exceptions have been fleeting, and the rule seems stronger than ever in the America of 2006.Not so in Great Britain. There, Tony Blair has shown strength and confidence in defense of liberty, and it turns out he is...

Francis Fukuyama has been hailed in Britain and the US as a supporter of the Iraq war who has now courageously defected to the anti-war camp and shredded the neoconservative arguments justifying it. If that were so, it would be quite a coup. The American philosopher and political economist made his name in 1992 with his influential bestseller The End of History and the Last Man, written after the cold war and fall of the Berlin Wall, in which he argued that wars of ideology had ended in the permanent triumph of democratic capitalism. An early neoconservative, at 53 Fukuyama...

Francis Fukuyama's recent essay in the New York Times, "After Neoconservatism," isn't just a call for neo-realism in lieu of neoconservatism. It's a call for nothing in lieu of something. Admittedly, sometimes doing nothing is the best policy. But after 9/11, as we survey the threat of Islamic terror and rogue states, should we really settle for so little? After excoriating the real and imagined sins of neoconservatism, Fukuyama offers the following plan for reforming our foreign policy: 1) "In the first instance, we need to demilitarize what we have been calling the global war on terrorism and shift to...

<p>Being someone of a liberal persuasion, it might come as a surprise that I not only sympathize with neoconservatives, I genuinely agree with much of what they have to say. Unlike traditional conservatism, neoconservative philosophy amounts to more than just “Leave us alone.” It inherently rejects both “Fortress America” isolationism and Kissingerian realism in favor of an activist foreign policy of promoting human rights and propagating democracy.</p>

E-mail Author Send to a Friend Version February 20, 2006, 7:23 a.m. Presidents, Today Good advice. By Alan Dowd For all their flaws and gaffes and imperfections, America's presidents have given us a treasure trove of good advice and wise counsel over the centuries. Perhaps some of their advice will help guide us through these unpredictable times. For those who are dubious about the spread of representative government, George Washington reminds us of the irresistible power and momentum of freedom: "Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth." Burnishing their neoconservative credentials, albeit about...

On the evening of January 29, 2002, President Bush strode to the podium in Congress to deliver the State of the Union address. His speech was a triumph of triumphalism, with roars and applause punctuating nearly every sound bite. Fresh off a quick and massive victory in Afghanistan, Bush outlined his vision for U.S. foreign policy. Speaking firmly, almost with an auditory swagger, Bush told the public that the war on terrorism had given the United States a new mission. We would hunt down terrorists, destroy regimes seeking weapons of mass destruction, and spread freedom throughout the world. He called...

At a time that American “neoconservatives” are under almost daily attacks by a coalition of all those unhappy about the Bush presidency, one might think neo-conservatism is the last product anyone would want to market anywhere else. And, yet, here we have one of the rising stars of British conservatism offering a whole book to propose precisely such a product. As the British Conservatives choose a new leader they may also want to have a look at what this book, by Douglas Murray, offers to fill what he sees as the party’s ideological vacuum. “If the Conservative Party can adopt...

The nation that neocons most despise has followed their immigration prescription. American pundits have been crowing about how much better America is at handling minorities and immigrants than is France, which got what it had coming during the weeks of car-burning riots. As in France, where the political class seemed more interested in the riots’ impact on the 2007 presidential election than in stopping the destruction, few talking heads here were inclined to blame the rioting on the rioters. After all, the columnists feel, the North and West Africans setting cars on fire are just a bunch of lowbrow punks,...

Now that Cindy Sheehan turns out to be a disaster for the antiwar movement -- most Americans are not about to follow a left-wing radical who insists that we are in Iraq for reasons of theft, oppression and empire -- a new spokesman is needed. If I were in the opposition camp, I would want a deeply patriotic, highly intelligent, distinguished establishment figure. I would want Brent Scowcroft. Scowcroft has been obliging. In the Oct. 31 New Yorker he came out strongly against the war and the neocon sorcerers who magically foisted it upon what must have been a hypnotized...

Washington, according to some reports, feels like a city at war. A few days in the US capital are enough to reveal the splits, not just between Democrats and Republicans, but also the various factions on the right, squabbling for the president's fickle attention. Much depends on the outcome of these struggles. Several people I met, none of them even vaguely on the left, were convinced there would be no war. The president, they assured me, was backtracking. Others told me, with equal conviction, that Bush certainly would go to war. Then there are those who talk as if the...

<p>The White House said on Wednesday it was confident a Senate committee would back John Bolton for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, but Democrats said they will make a compelling case that Bolton is unfit for the post.</p> <p>The White House said on Wednesday it was confident a Senate committee would back John Bolton for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, but Democrats said they will make a compelling case that Bolton is unfit for the post.</p>

MEMORANDUM TO: OPINION LEADERSFROM: GARY SCHMITTSUBJECT: Half Measures in Egypt According to press reports, Egypt’s parliament is likely to pass a constitutional amendment today that would allow opposition figures to run for president. This apparent democratic breakthrough, however, is undermined by the amendment’s stipulation that to be placed on a presidential ballot a candidate would need the approval of 300 members from various “elected” Egyptian government bodies – bodies now under the control of the sitting president, Hosni Mubarak.The decision by Egypt to take this half measure is the result of pressure put on President Mubarak by President Bush and Secretary...

IT WAS ONLY 7:15 a.m. on October 26, 2003, and Paul Wolfowitz was already thinking about Saddam Hussein. The deputy secretary of defense had been awake for just over an hour when he and two civilian Pentagon advisers walked into a large office for a briefing on electricity.Wolfowitz wasn't happy. The office was in one of Saddam's opulent palaces. Six months after the fall of Baghdad, there were still three-story busts of the former Iraqi leader perched atop the four corners of the massive structure. Virtually all of the images of the deposed dictator throughout Iraq had been defaced or...

ABOUT Q&A C-SPAN's New Interview Series Every Sunday night on Q&A, we introduce you to interesting people who are making things happen in politics, the media, education, and science & technology in hour-long conversations about their lives and their work. The show airs at 8pm & 11pm ET on C-SPAN each week, every week of the year. But if you miss a program, you can catch up on previously aired shows on this web site. Either stream the video at any time convenient to you, or read the accompanying transcript. Also, you can do a keyword search against all the...