Free Republic

Communism meant then — and means now — no freedom of speech, art or expression, so Western bands almost never played in any communist countries. Art in the communist countries was art of the state. Smugglers slipped Western music and movies behind the Iron Curtain, though anyone caught with such contraband risked prison or worse. Western rock was subversive and dangerous to the party and its power structure. So it was banned, along with Western thought. The most dangerous items an Eastern Block subject could possess were copies of the U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Bible. But...

Much has been written recently about the fact that Democrats, arguably with malicious intent, mercilessly attack Republican positions, programs, and political appointees without offering any positive alternatives of their own. This has been ascribed variously to their hatred of George W. Bush (which is certainly a factor), to the fact that a significant percentage of the Democrat base and their elected representatives are unrepentant '60s-style liberals (this, too, plays into the current scenario), even, as Michael Medved has put it, to "an internal contradiction deep within the liberal soul." The bottom line is that, no matter how we might characterize...