Free Republic

Last Wednesday, Sen. Rand Paul rose on the Senate floor to declare a filibuster and pledge he would not sit down until either he could speak no longer or got an answer to his question about Barack Obama's war powers. Does the president, Paul demanded to know, in the absence of an imminent threat, have the right to order U.S. citizens killed by drone strike on U.S. soil? By the time he sat down, 13 hours later, Paul had advanced to the front rank of candidates for 2016, and established himself as a foreign policy leader whose views must be...

Mitt Romney gave a generally fine speech today on the Middle East. Sensibly, he criticized the Obama administration for its Benghazi shenanigans, for the “daylight” with Israel, fecklessness vis-à-vis Tehran, and the cuts in military spending. Very justifiably, he called it “time to change course in the Middle East.”But I worry about three specifics.First, Romney’s policy ideas echo the rosy-tinted themes of George W. Bush’s failed policies in the region. Flush with optimism for Afghanistan, Iraq, and “Palestine,” Bush spoke a language that now seems from another world. For example, almost exactly nine years ago he predicted “a free Iraq...

I keep hearing a lot of moaning at the bar from the right wing; most notably from Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard. It seems like every time I see this guy, whom I refer to as “The Wincer” because he always looks like he thinks he’s about to be slugged, he’s going off on Mitt Romney. No matter what Romney says or does, Kristol and a few of his fellow ivory tower pinheads can’t wait to dissect it, as if they’re performing the world’s longest autopsy. I’ll admit that Romney doesn’t always say things in the best way possible,...

The Muslim Brotherhood, a group that was once thought virtually extinct in Syria, has surprised everyone by staging a comeback. The Islamist group is, according to Reuters, a “dominant force” in the Syrian opposition. Similarly, in Egypt, the MB has become perhaps the most powerful group in the wake of the Revolution.This doesn’t sit well with everyone in the American conservative movement, and two factions are vying to define the Republican response to the increased power of political Islam. Leading what might be called the ‘to-hell-with-democracy’ strain of thought is Andrew McCarthy, a national-security columnist for National Review and senior...

On Fox News Sunday today, Bill Kristol threw cold water on Herman Cain‘s presidential candidacy, arguing that regardless of his popularity among conservative voters and whether or not his sexual harassment scandal will end up helping or hurting him, there was very little chance in the first place he was ever going to be the Republican nominee. Chris Wallace brought up Cain’s contentious exchange with a reporter last night over the allegations over his sexual harassment controversy, and asked the panel if there was a connection between what Cain is currently going through and what Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas...

"Your people, sir, is ... a great beast." So Alexander Hamilton reputedly said in an argument with Thomas Jefferson. At the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Hamilton explained: "Real liberty is not found in the extremes of democracy, but in moderate governments. If we incline too much to democracy, we shall soon shoot into a monarchy, or some other form of dictatorship." In his column, "Democracy Versus Liberty," Walter Williams cites Hamilton, James Madison and John Randolph, who wrote of "the follies and turbulence" of democracy, and John Adams: "Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There...

Yesterday, when writing about the fallout from Mike Huckabee’s decision not to run for president, I picked Michelle Bachmann as the candidate who might benefit the most from this turn of events. But I also noted that this was predicated on Sarah Palin’s not running. The deathly quiet from her camp about a 2012 campaign is encouraging presidential hopefuls and pundits alike to think that she is staying out of the race. But it is also frustrating her fans. A visit to Conservatives4palin, one of her leading fan websites, shows that the former Alaska governor’s followers are still hoping that...

Let’s Blame Israel by Ari Bussel I am reminded that many thought (and some still do) that the United States went to war in Iraq on Israel’s request and for her sole benefit. President Bush, close with the Saudis, apparently cared so much more about Israel that, notwithstanding any threat to his friends the Saudis, he mobilized the entire US military to protect and defend Israel against an enemy she knew well how to handle. We can use as an example Israel’s 1981 bombing of the Iraqi nuclear reactor. For the past two weeks, our series “Postcards from America –...

Because the conservatives most likely to be employed in academia are of the neo variety, students may not get an accurate picture of conservatism or, for that matter, America. In fairness, because many neoconservatives are reconstructed leftists, they can counter the Campus Left in ways that more mild-mannered conservative Ph.D.’s could or would. “The neocons have waged a matchless intellectual war against the practices of America’s tenured radicals,” C. Bradley Thompson writes in Neoconservatism: An Obituary for an Idea. “They have been trenchant critics of the major ideas that have dominated America’s universities since the 1960s, such as nihilism, relativism,...

Link only due to copyright issues: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sheldon-filger/what-if-sarah-palin-was-e_b_784443.html

No matter the reluctance of neo-conservatives to engage in this type of egotism, the fact remains that there does exist a movement of intellectuals who share similar commitments to a strong national defense and a recoupling of politics with traditional morality. And, for better or for worse, the world knows this movement as neo-conservatism. But what the world generally fails to recognize is that this philosophy has made the neo-conservatives, the only real moderates in American politics and political philosophy, the eternal purveyors of centrist common sense.

I thought we had seen it all after a Trenton, New Jersey, sixth grader had to teach the Vice President of the United States, Dan Quayle, that potato is not spelled with an "e" on the end. But then we had eight years of "Dubya" and his malapropisms. Now we have Sarah Palin, no, not elected yet, but waiting in the wings. Someone said, "Get all the fools on your side, and you can be elected to anything." The more I watch politics, the more that statement rings true. To even think for a minute that this country could actually...

Two schools of thought have traditionally competed to determine how America should approach the world. Realists believe we should care most about what states do beyond their borders—that influencing their foreign policy ought to be Washington's priority. Neoconservatives often contend the opposite: they argue that what matters most is the nature of other countries, what happens inside their borders. The neocons believe this both for moral reasons and because democracies (at least mature ones) treat their neighbors better than do authoritarian regimes. I am a card-carrying realist on the grounds that ousting regimes and replacing them with something better is...

Bush did everything bad for America but one thing he did good, never betrayed his neo con extremists who got him the Whitehouse by hook or crook. Republicans are rejoicing and Democrats reeling in the wake of Scott Brown's stunning triumph in a special Massachusetts Senate election, a devastating Democratic defeat that triggered soul-searching within President Barack Obama's party. You do not have to find the reasons. It is obvious even to a tenth grader. Those who voted for the Democrats and President Obama have understood that after all said and done, neo cons control America through their financial powers...

Sarah Palin enjoys considerable support among libertarian Republicans, and many libertarian independents are giving her a second look. Adam Brickley believes that the Sarah Palin John McCain scooped up out of Alaska to be his running mate was much more libertarian than the vice presidential candidate who had to support McCain's policy positions on the stump. What we are seeing now, says Brickley, is "more of the original, pre-McCain Sarah Palin": "A lot has been said lately about the idea that Sarah Palin is positioning herself as a the libertarian in the 2012 field... This is exactly I have been...

A year ago this week, I wrote the following concerning liberal Democrat Joe Lieberman being invited to speak at the 2008 Republican National Convention and conservative Republican Ron Paul being shut out: "If you are pro-gun control, pro-socialized healthcare, pro-choice, pro-amnesty, all of these liberal positions can be tolerated so long as you are pro-war. If you are a staunch conservative on virtually every issue, if you're not pro-war, you're no longer welcome in the Republican Party." The name of my piece was "The War Party" and that's exactly what the GOP was in September 2008. What a difference a...

Back in April, when the debate over torture was roaring, Jon Stewart invited Cliff May, a national-security hawk and former spokesman for the Republican Party, to come on The Daily Show and defend waterboarding. May was hesitant. He thought Stewart would paint him as a crazy extremist. The audience would jeer. It would be a disaster. "I was apprehensive about going on, even though I've been on TV for a dozen years," says May. "A lot of my friends told me: 'Don't do it. You're meat going into the sausage factory.'" But May had a change of heart after soliciting...

"Neoconservative" and "neocon" have become terms of abuse, denoting right-wing extremism. But the original neoconservatives began mostly as left-leaning intellectuals who only deserted the Democratic Party after it fell under the influence of the counterculture during the Vietnam War. With Barack Obama about to become president, is there any chance neoconservatives will finally return to the roost? A month or two ago, the question would have seemed preposterous. Mr. Obama, after all, was the most left-wing member of the U.S. Senate -- not to mention a former pal of Weatherman Bill Ayers and other extremists. Yet in his presidential campaign,...

At some point in the very near future, the neoconservative moment will cease to exist and conservatism as we know it today will be relegated to the political fringe. The movement's ultimate demise isn't due to its inherent flaws, however (although it has many), but rather from Mother Nature's less poetic spouse, Father Time. The neoconservative moment is going to die of old age within the next quarter century. This is inevitable (and its not like Mr. Rove and Mr. Cheney are in great shape either). So the question now becomes, what takes over as the main rival to American...

The increasing vitriol of the Democratic presidential WrestleMania shouldn't distract from the opportunity before progressives. The election this year has the potential to be not simply a change election but a sea-change election, one that marks the end of the conservative era that has dominated our politics for nearly three decades. It could be the progressive equivalent of the conservative triumph of 1980. In 1980 Ronald Reagan, the self-described "movement conservative," took the White House from incumbent Jimmy Carter while Republicans picked up thirty-four seats in the House and gained control of the Senate, sweeping out liberal stalwarts like George...