Free Republic

On our TV talk shows and op-ed pages, and in our think tanks here, there is rising alarm over events abroad. And President Obama is widely blamed for the perceived decline in worldwide respect for the United States. Yet, still, one hears no clamor from Middle America for "Action This Day!" to alter the perception that America is in retreat. If a single sentence could express the seeming indifference of the silent majority of Americans to what is going on abroad, it might be the simple question: "Why is this our problem?" If a Russian or Ukrainian flag flies over...

1. Paul’s intellectual mentor Murray Rothbard was the founder of anarcho-capitalism and opposed the legitimacy of all nation-states, including ours. 2. Paul openly proclaims himself a revival of the Old Right, the movement which opposed our entry in World War II. He and his followers proudly reject the New Right tradition established by William F. Buckley Jr., Ronald Reagan, and Barry Goldwater.  “When I was deciding whether or not to run for President as a Republican, I re-read Justin Raimondo’s Reclaiming the American Right and it gave me hope—that the anti-interventionist, pro-liberty Old Right, which had once dominated the party, could and...

Republicans, I come in peace.Until very recently, Rand Paul’s project of insinuating himself comfortably within the Republican Party, and positioning himself as a plausible presidential nominee, had gone along with remarkable ease. Yes, the author of his campaign book turned out to be an unreconstructed neo-Confederate. That was a speed bump. (Who among us has not entrusted the explication of his worldview to a man who has cheered on the assassination of President Lincoln?) Paul had staged a masterful piece of political theater with his marathon Senate speech denouncing the Obama administration’s drone policy. He has assembled a top-tier campaign...

Estonia is a little nation of 1.3 million people, which was made a member of NATO in 2004. Estonia was once a province of the Soviet Union. It has a Russian minority that is 25 percent of the population, and Russia has vowed to protect ethnic Russians if they are subjected to mass violence by the Estonian majority. Did NATO make a wise decision to bring in itty-bitty baltic nations that were once part of the Soviet Union? I can understand the importance of preventing the Soviet Union from being brought back into existence. But the lives of American troops...

Blaise Pascal wrote that man was full of error. “This error is natural,” he explained, “without grace, ineffaceable. Nothing shows him the truth; everything deceives him.” Along similar lines, Frederick the Great said, “Man is made for error; it enters his mind naturally, and he discovers a few truths only with the greatest effort.” Conservatives are especially guilty in this regard when it comes to the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics, Russia, and Communism. To understand the complex underlying realities, one must first discover the deceptive quality of the thing itself. A Communist is a human being with the...

In the most predictable act in an otherwise completely unpredictable election cycle, the liberal editors of Louisville's The Courier-Journal (CJ) newspaper have decided to "enthusiastically endorse" (to use their words) Jack Conway for election to the U.S. Senate. Conway is running against Republican candidate Dr. Rand Paul for the Senate seat currently held by the retiring Jim Bunning. The CJ editors concluded their enthusiastic endorsement for Conway with these closing statements: "Kentuckians should not gamble on a candidate far out of the political mainstream. The should send Mr. Conway to the Senate." From those statements it is clear that the...