Free Republic

Once there were five-year-old twin boys, one a pessimist and the other an optimist. Wondering how two boys who seemed so alike could be so different, their parents took them to a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist took the pessimist to a room piled high with new toys, expecting the boy to be thrilled. But instead he burst into tears. Puzzled, the psychiatrist asked, "don't you want to play with these toys?" "Yes," the little boy bawled, "but if I did I'd only break them." Next the psychiatrist took the optimist to a room piled high with horse manure. The boy yelped...

We have been robbed. We sit idle as we are plundered. We answer not the call to action. We have but ourselves to blame. The criminals and villains were known to us, we knew they were coming. Yet we did nothing to stop them. We did not meet them in the field, our swords lay rusting. We did far worse to ourselves, for it was we who opened the very gates and allow them to lay waste. Whether it was by our own hands or the hands of the allies of our enemies amongst us, matters not the ending is...

If as it appears Bush will nominate a moderate named Edith Clement to the Court, will the Right bolt from the GOP in next years midterms? Bush, someone I have been a big fan of, is turning out to be a heck of a disappoinment. He hasn't controlled the borders and apparently only used the promise to appoint "strict constructionists" as a cynical ploy to get re-elected. Bush, like his father before him, is proving to be a huge demoralizer for the Right.

Writing about the national and international reaction to Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, Winston Churchill wrote, “Great, judicious and well-considered steps are thus sometimes at first received with public incomprehension.” In recent history this has been perfectly exemplified by what happened after Ronald Reagan gave the March 1983 speech in which he launched the Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars to its detractors). Except for a few true believers the general attitude in Washington was that it was typical Reaganite foolishness and that nothing would ever come of it. Paul Lettow’s recent book Ronald Reagan and His Quest to Abolish Nuclear Weapons clears...

The Siren of Defeatism The visionless Kerry is his own worst enemy. One of the reasons John Kerry is going to lose the foreign-policy debate Thursday night in Coral Gables, Florida, is that he is a pessimist and a defeatist. His recent broad-side attacks on President Bush’s war against terrorism are right out of the Vietnam-era: Blame America. Blame the commander-in-chief. Blame the military. Assume we will lose. Prime Minister Allawi of Iraq seemed to grasp the danger in this when he spoke in the Rose Garden last week: “When political leaders sound the siren of defeatism in the face...