Free Republic

It may be hard for most people to imagine, but Spain was the first global Superpower. It gained this status as the defender of Europe against Muslim armies and by leading the West’s exploration of America. In 1492, the same year that Spanish-financed Christopher Columbus discovered the New World, the last Muslim stronghold of Granada was ceded to Ferdinand and Isabella to complete the Catholic Reconquest of the Iberian peninsula... It controlled rich parts of Italy through Naples and Milan, and Central Europe from the Netherlands through the Holy Roman Empire to Austria. In the 16th century it added the...

It is hard to imagine a bigger slight to the memory of the more than 100,000 American soldiers who died liberating Europe than the image of a U.S. president attacking the “arrogance” of his own country on French soil. President Obama’s speech last week ahead of the NATO summit in Strasbourg, barely 500 miles from the beaches of Normandy, marked a low point in presidential speechmaking on foreign policy. The largely French and German town hall audience cheered like ancient Romans in a packed Coliseum. This time, however, it was not Christians being fed to the lions but the symbolism...

America, the shining city on a hill, swollen over centuries into a reluctant empire, faces a long march into the twilight of its greatness. Our duty now is to supervise our relative decline. Other superpowers shall rise to match us: China, surely, and newly consolidated Europe, and maybe Russia or Japan. From ancient Rome through the Ming Dynasty, from the days of the Spanish Armada to the British Empire, the implacable rule of history is that no one stays on top forever. We had our day. It's over. Nice while it lasted. This, at least, is the latest word on...

The only reason anyone would watch tonight’s Democratic presidential debate from Charleston is to see what kind of antics crazy old “Mad Mike” Gravel will pull. Let’s be honest, the guy not only makes us feel good about being Republican, but he makes us feel good about not being senile. High five! So, because the debate is sponsored by YouTube - and because YouTube is the only reason we can even pick Gravel out of a lineup - we decided to count down his five best YouTube moments. We wanted to do 10, but then we got bored and moved...

With hindsight we may see 2006 as the end of Pax Americana. Ever since World War II, the United States has used its military and economic superiority to promote a stable world order that has, on the whole, kept the peace and spread prosperity. But the United States increasingly lacks both the power and the will to play this role. It isn't just Iraq, though Iraq has been profoundly destabilizing and demoralizing. Many other factors erode U.S. power: China's rise; probable nuclear proliferation; shrinking support for open trade; higher spending for Social Security and Medicare that squeezes the military; the...

According to ABC News, 2008 presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., may have recently called his moderate-right credentials into question. "McCain has tapped a controversial academic to be a member of his virtual 'kitchen cabinet,'" ABCNews.com noted. That academic – Niall Ferguson of Harvard University – is, according to David Weigel of Reason magazine, a "foaming-at-the-mouth 'national greatness conservative.'" This academic has presented, according to Priyamvada Gopal of Cambridge University in Britain, an "aggressive rewriting of history, driven by the messianic fantasies of the American right." Who is this dastardly intellectual twisting the liberal media's beloved "Maverick" McCain into a...

Critics of U.S. global dominance should pause and consider the alternative. If the United States retreats from its hegemonic role, who would supplant it? Not Europe, not China, not the Muslim world—and certainly not the United Nations. Unfortunately, the alternative to a single superpower is not a multilateral utopia but the anarchic nightmare of a new Dark Age. We tend to assume that power, like nature, abhors a vacuum. In the history of world politics, it seems, someone is always the hegemon or bidding to become it. Today, it is the United States; a century ago, it was the United...

IN MANY QUARTERS it has long been taken for granted that George W. Bush is an aspiring dictator, ravenous for power and all too willing to shred the constitutional checks and balances that restrain presidential authority. Of course this kind of paranoia is routine in the ideological fever swamps . But you can hear such things said about Bush even in respectable precincts far from the fringe.For example: When it was reported in May that the National Security Agency has been analyzing a vast database of domestic telephone records for possible counterterrorism leads, CNN's Jack Cafferty went ballistic. Thank goodness...

July 4, 2006 -- FOR all the worldwide whining and bellyaching about the United States, today - America's 230th birthday - provides an opportune time for them to consider for just a moment what the world might be like without good ol' Uncle Sam. The picture isn't pretty. Absent U.S. leadership, diplomatic influence, military might, economic power and unprecedented generosity, life aboard planet earth would likely be pretty grim, indeed. Set aside the differences America made last century - just imagine a world where this country had vanished on Jan. 1, 2001.

In many ways, America resembles the great, ancient Persian Empire. Like the Persians, who rarely regret the past, Americans always believe "the best days are ahead." Like the ancient Persian Empire once was, the United States is now the greatest country in the world. Like the Persians who were the first world managers and the most tolerant empire-builders, America, with its rich constitution, is also the most tolerant and benevolent nation in the world. Ancient Persian kings released the Jews from Babylonian captivity, financed the reestablishment of their nation, and restored their national religion. (Zionists, they were!) America has basically...

GUEST COLUMNIST The president's basic vocabulary -- good and evil, war and victory -- has always made his liberal critics uncomfortable. But last week George W. Bush seemed to be speaking to members of his own administration when he made it crystal clear to the world that we're fighting a "war" against terrorism. It's not, as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has recently nuanced it, a "global struggle against violent extremism." It's a war -- plain and simple. Of course, wars are neither plain nor simple. They're messy and unpredictable affairs. But to his credit, the president seems to recognize --...

President George W. Bush's basic vocabulary - good and evil, war and victory - always has made his liberal critics uncomfortable. ... .. But to his credit, the president seems to recognize - in his gut - that a shift in vocabulary will change nothing. A policy is either right or wrong. ... Bush has a firmer handle than even Rumsfield does on how empires think and act. And I don't mean that as a criticism... Imperialism has received bad press for most of the last hundred years.... But ancient Rome - always the brand name in empires - is...

Over the last two years, I have found increasing numbers of conservatives deeply concerned by U.S. military intervention in Iraq. They voted for and admire President Bush, but were profoundly disturbed by his second inaugural address pledging to spread democracy worldwide. Now, there is an important new book that eloquently puts in perspective their alarms about America's course in the post-Cold War world. Sands of Empire by Robert W. Merry, a respected Washington journalist, warns of the United States as the ''Crusader State'' transporting American exceptionalism around the world. The book, to be published this month, contends this crusade threatens...

"... From being a superpower that exerts a potent influence in the Middle East, the United States has become a player that is present in the region. Its pattern of activity in Iraq illustrates not only the determination of President Bush to act consistently to realize his policy in Baghdad. There is a good possibility that Iraq will not be the last country in the region that will require a lengthy American military presence. The U.S. campaign in Iraq was perceived as a signal of long-term American commitment to do whatever is required and to stay in the "neighborhood" for...

Did I miss something? Where did all the “not since Rome” bombast, talk of America’s “benevolent global hegemony,” “Pax Americana,” and the New World Order disappear to? Whatever happened to the “jodhpurs and pith helmets” crowd? Just a year ago, in the Irving Kristol Lecture at the annual AEI dinner, columnist Charles Krauthammer rhapsodized about America’s “global dominion” and our having “acquired the largest seeming empire in the history of the world.” We have “overwhelming global power,” said Krauthammer. We are history’s “designated custodians of the international system.” When the Soviet Union fell, “something new was born, something utterly new—a...

It's bad enough that American films dominate European cinemas. Now Google is trying to do the same for Anglo-Saxon literature with a massive project to put millions of books from major libraries in the U.S. and Britain online. Libraries at Harvard, Stanford, Oxford and the New York Public Library are onboard for the project and it has generated a great deal of excitement in academic circles. Well, some academic circles. A rallying cry has sprung up from -- of course -- France to once again fight the English onslaught. Warning continental Europeans that the move will lead to a skewed...

LET US TALK OF ALLIES, but not, at least for once this week, of Europeans. After all, the United States is human history's one and only superpower. Our security concerns are genuinely global; our political principles are universal. So why should we obsess primarily about how we are regarded only in Paris or Berlin? Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is an irritating man, to be sure, but all the more so for being intermittently insightful. One of Rumsfeld's rules is that the mission determines the coalition. In the early 21st century, the United States has two important missions if it is...

(2005-02-20) -- In an effort to thaw international relations, U.S. President George Bush heads to Brussels today with "open arms" and "an attractive bid to buy Europe and Russia and bring them into the American portfolio of nations." "Rather than view France, Germany and Russia as our contentious friends, we'd like to say they're part of the family," said Mr. Bush. "Call it a merger. Call it synergy. I just think we have so much opportunity in a shared future of unity, that it would be crazy not to do this deal." Mr. Bush, who once owned a Major League...

"A country that makes a film like 'Star Wars' deserves to rule the world." – Philip Adams, former chairman of the Australian Film Commission Love it, hate it, embrace it, deny it, American power, American influence and American values are the defining features of today's interconnected world. Questions of an American "empire" — whether we have one, whether we want one, whether we can afford or keep one — aren't just the white-hot topic of the day among statesmen and political scientists. The world really is becoming more "American." The pervasive pull of American ideals, popular culture and media, and...

The Widow at Windsor 'Ave you 'eard o' the Widow at Windsor With a hairy gold crown on 'er 'ead? She 'as ships on the foam -- she 'as millions at 'ome, An' she pays us poor beggars in red. (Ow, poor beggars in red!) There's 'er nick on the cavalry 'orses, There's 'er mark on the medical stores -- An' 'er troopers you'll find with a fair wind be'ind That takes us to various wars. (Poor beggars! -- barbarious wars!) Then 'ere's to the Widow at Windsor, An' 'ere's to the stores an' the guns, The men an' the...