Free Republic

The witty phrase “late Soviet America” was coined by the Princeton historian Harold James back in 2020. It has only become more apposite since then as the cold war we’re in—the second one—heats up.I first pointed out that we’re in Cold War II back in 2018. In articles for The New York Times and National Review, I tried to show how the People’s Republic of China now occupies the space vacated by the Soviet Union when it collapsed in 1991. (snip) But it only recently struck me that in this new Cold War, we—and not the Chinese—might be the Soviets....

Henry Kissinger, who died on Wednesday night at the age of 100, was the most enduringly influential secretary of state in the history of the United States. He was also the most controversial. But the influence matters far more than the controversy. His critics have wasted no time in ignoring the old injunction that no ill should be spoken of the recently deceased. The scurrilous magazine Rolling Stone led with the repulsive headline 'Henry Kissinger, War Criminal Beloved by America's Ruling Class, Finally Dies'. At a time when anti-Semitism has again reared its ugly head in the wake of the...

Henry Kissinger, who died on Wednesday night at the age of 100, was the most enduringly influential secretary of state in the history of the United States. He was also the most controversial. But the influence matters far more than the controversy. His critics have wasted no time in ignoring the old injunction that no ill should be spoken of the recently deceased. The scurrilous magazine Rolling Stone led with the repulsive headline 'Henry Kissinger, War Criminal Beloved by America's Ruling Class, Finally Dies'. At a time when anti-Semitism has again reared its ugly head in the wake of the...

Long before the rest of us were talking about blue and red America, Tom Wolfe not only recognized the cultural divide; he bridged it. When he began his career in the 1960s, the liberal establishment was more dominant and even smugger than it is today. There were no pesky voices on cable television or the web to challenge the Eastern elites’ hold on the national media. Then along came Wolfe, a lone voice celebrating the hinterland’s culture, mercilessly skewering the pretensions and dogmas of New York’s intelligentsia—and somehow triumphing. How did he get away with it? The most entertaining analysis...

You can take this with a grain of salt, but according to Niall Ferguson, a historian and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, there is a strong possibility that former Donald Trump will emerge the victor in the 2024 presidential election. In an op-ed for The Spectator, Ferguson argued that “A second Trump act is not just possible. It’s fast becoming my base case.”Ferguson quickly dismisses the idea that Trump’s legal issues will hurt him because criminal cases against leading political figures often do not hinder their political success. In fact, he observed that they’re already backfiring because of the...

While Western pundits (I think shills is a more apt description) and media continue to insist that Ukraine is pounding the snot out of Russia, the facts on the ground in Soledar and Bahkmut tell a different story. Before delving into the specifics of the Russian advance, let me highlight some buffoonery from Niall Ferguson, born in Scotland and living in the United States. Ferguson is a Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University:

Will 2022 turn out be a hinge year, as a moment when long-standing trends in geopolitics suddenly shifted in a different direction? This week, two important writers, one a long-established and prolific historian, the other a provocative presence on the internet, have argued persuasively that the answer is yes. But there's one other interesting point in common: Neither sees the United States as having played a decisive role in the sudden shift. Over the years, Niall Ferguson has written admiringly about the 19th-century Rothschilds and the 20th century’s Henry Kissinger and has highlighted the positive achievements of Britain’s empire and...

Until recently, former Democratic President Jimmy Carter might have been seen as the worst president in terms of American foreign policy, having ushered in the Iranian hostage crisis and a rapidly destabilizing Middle East. With the Biden administration's reticence to proactively help Ukraine, one historian told Fox News the Ukrainian president's and his people's heroism could have a tangential effect on helping Biden's widely-criticized behavior.

The left's failed attack on the Hoover Institution was a victory against the academy's intolerance. Yet most conservatives lack the same protection.Cancel culture is successful because of two basic assumptions. One is that all enlightened people within a certain community believe in the same things and that anyone who disagrees with any of the current leftist orthodoxies about politics, race, or sex is a heretic who must be shunned, shamed, and driven out of polite society. The other is that the cultural consensus is so strong that no individual or group of individuals can resist it.Armed with these factors, outrage...

The annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, once again hosted young climate activists spewing their ignorance. Their leader, Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year” teenage eco-warrior Greta Thunberg shouted that “our house is on fire”. Noticeably absent from Ms. Thunburg’s Davos screed was any country other than America. Sure, she blasted America from withdrawing from the Gospel of the Paris Climate Accord. But there was no mention of the world’s largest polluter of poisonous Sulphur Dioxide: China, India, and Russia. China emits more carbon dioxide than the US and the EU combined. China and India are also world leaders...

CNN anchor Chris Cuomo was quick to defend climate activist Greta Thunberg from "Trumpers" who mocked her on Thursday but was quickly reminded about the settlement his network recently made with Covington Catholic High School student Nick Sandmann. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin was asked by reporters about Thunberg's call for countries to divest from fossil fuels, which he didn't exactly take too seriously. “Is she the chief economist? Who is she? I’m confused,” Mnuchin jokingly replied. "After she goes and studies economics in college, she can come back and explain that to...

U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin took a shot at Greta Thunberg -- the famed teen climate activist -- on Thursday over her push at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, for companies to immediately cease all investments in fossil fuels. Mnuchin was at a news conference in the Alpine town when he was asked about Thunberg's earlier appeal to abandon older sources of energy, according to Reuters. "Is she the chief economist? ... After she goes to college and studies economics in college, she can come back and explain that to us," he was quoted saying.

Yesterday, Karen wrote about the contrast between the statements made by President Trump and Greta Thunberg at the World Economic Forum in Davos. The NY Times has published Thunberg’s full remarks at the forum and they are pretty striking. In addition to her usual tone of condescension toward world leaders, Thunberg explained that the only solution was to completely abandon fossil fuels immediately. She doesn’t want to talk about “net zero” emissions she wants to see “real zero” right now. One year ago I came to Davos and told you that our house is on fire. I said I...

Historian Niall Ferguson has slammed Greta Thunberg’s climate change hypocrisy at Davos, asking why “I don’t see her in Beijing or Delhi.” Teenage environmentalist Thunberg gave another hysterical speech at the global confab yesterday in which she claimed, “Our house is still on fire. Your inaction is fueling the flames by the hour. We are still telling you to panic, and to act as if you loved your children above all else.” “We don’t want these things done in 2050, 2030, or even 2021,” Thunberg said. “We want this done now.” Ferguson, Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, questioned...

President Donald Trump said teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg should save her anger for other countries in the world that were worse polluters than the United States. The president spoke about Thunberg during a press conference at Davos before he left Switzerland to return to the United States. He said the United States was experiencing great environmental numbers while other countries were worse polluters of the air and putting tons of garbage in the Pacific ocean. “I think Greta has to start working on those other countries,” Trump said. “Pretty much nothing has been done,” Thunberg lamented at a World...

President Trump on Tuesday said he didn’t know anything about Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg but called her “very angry” in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. “I don’t really know anything about her,” Trump said of Thunberg when asked about her on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The president then called her “very angry.” Trump accused Thunberg, a 17-year-old activist who also spoke at Davos, of having an “anger management problem” after she was honored with Time’s “Person of the Year” award in December. **SNIP** Earlier Tuesday, Thunberg told the gathering of business...

It's a new decade,* so it's time for a new round of panic about the weather killing us all. Swedish child-priestess and chronic truant Greta Thunberg is at the 2020 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, this week, because that's where the spotlight is. And she's scolding all the grown-ups for not doing what she wants when she wants it, because Veruca Salt wasn't fictional.I was scared of the Boogeyman when I was little too. I just didn't have crowds of adults applauding my cries of fear: Watch Greta Thunberg admonish world leaders for doing "basically nothing" to reduce...

"No credible scientific body has claimed climate change threatens the collapse of civilization much less the extinction of the human species," said Michael D. Shellenberger before the House Committee On Science, Space, and Technology. "And yet some activists, scientists, and journalists make such apocalyptic assertions, which I believe contribute to rising levels of anxiety, including among adolescents, and worsening political polarization," said Shellenberger, president of the non-profit group Environmental Progress. Thunberg has claimed the world is "in the beginning of a mass extinction. Ocasio-Cortez has said "we have 10 years left to plan and implement a Green New Deal before...

On Thursday, a Facebook glitch revealed who’s posting on climate change alarmist Greta Thunberg’s Facebook page: her father Svantes Thunberg and “Climate Crisis activist” Adarsh Prathap. “[A] bug that was live from Thursday evening until Friday morning allowed anyone to easily reveal the accounts running a Page, essentially doxing anyone who posted to one,” Wired reported Friday. “We quickly fixed an issue where someone could see who edited or published a post on behalf of a Page when looking at its edit history,” Facebook responded to the controversy in a statement. “We are grateful to the security researcher who alerted...

... The truth, as one anonymous blogger aptly put it, is that your generation is unable to work up to forty hours per week without being chronically depressed and anxious. Its members cannot even decide if they want to be a boy or a girl, or both, or neither, or a “they.” They cannot eat meat without crying. I might add that your generation needs “trigger warnings” and “safe spaces” as pre-conditions for learning in school. Its members have a pathological need to be coddled and protected from the challenging realities of life. Your generation is the biggest demander and...