Free Republic

SACRAMENTO -- He may be assured of his party's nomination for re-election, but Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will find out next weekend how much he really has to do to win back the hearts and minds of the party's faithful. The California Republican Party's convention in San Jose presents a key opportunity for Schwarzenegger to quell a simmering revolt from angry conservatives who feel he has drifted too far to the middle since his special-election defeat in November. Conservatives are frustrated by several recent moves, including the hiring of Democrat Susan Kennedy as his chief of staff, his support for a...

The only thing that was surprising about Google's decision to self-censor its China-based service was that people were surprised by it. In the general media coverage, there were many gleeful references to the company's motto - boasted of in the preface to its IPO prospectus - of 'Don't Be Evil' (a phrase which, at the time, caused Wall Street investment bankers to lie down in darkened rooms). How could people who wore those admirable values on their sleeves kowtow to a corrupt, authoritarian regime which tortures dissenters and denies elementary human rights to its unfortunate subjects?

Arnold Schwarzenegger's selection of archliberal Susan Kennedy, a former Cabinet secretary to Gray Davis, as his new chief of staff "is the last straw for a lot of grassroots California Republicans," says California Republican Assembly president Mike Spence to TAS. Spence describes the appointment as the equivalent of "George Bush appointing Howard Dean to be his chief of staff." Even the jaw of George Skelton (the Los Angeles Times columnist who has spent much of his career telling the California GOP to move left) dropped after the appointment of Kennedy, who is one of the state's leading abortion proponents, a...

Before he became president, George Bush was asked by journalist Tucker Carlson, what activity don't you excel at? He responded, "Sitting down and reading a 500-page book on public policy or philosophy or something." Like his father, Bush suffers from an unwillingness to engage conservative political philosophy seriously. While his political attenae is keener than his father's and he has more access to common sense than his father on certain issues, he, too, stumbles on the "vision thing" and struggles to stake out philosophically rigorous positions. The media are quick to note Bush's laziness of thought, but they are reluctant,...

Over the weekend, I received several emails from readers warning me that I might lose my job over the article I wrote criticizing my university’s new harassment policy. Readers who sometimes suggest that I should learn to hold my tongue fail to understand my simple philosophy of life. It is an uncompromising philosophy that guarantees both peace of mind and success in any important endeavor. It can be roughly summarized as follows: 1. If you want to be happy and successful, you must immediately disabuse yourself of the notion that there is no such thing as good and evil. If,...

IT TAKES AN INSURRECTION TO change a country. It takes an establishment to govern one. Conservatives want both to change and to govern America. Thus we need our dissatisfied, troublemaking, occasionally splenetic, sometimes raffish anti-establishmentarians. After all, without brave resistance and bold insurrection on the part of conservatives, liberal orthodoxy and institutions would still dominate American life. But insurrection isn't enough. At some point, the radicals need assistance, support, and reinforcement from establishment conservatives--individuals ill-suited to insurrection but well-suited to rising through the institutions and moving them gradually but meaningfully in a conservative direction. Thus, we need our sober, calm,...

The upcoming Supreme Court vacancy resulting from Justice Sandra O’Connor’s retirement, when considered in conjunction with the ongoing terror war, highlights the pivotal times in which Western Civilization finds itself. On the one hand, the slaughter of innocent civilians is the chosen weapon that Islamists ruthlessly employ to subjugate their enemies. Among liberals, it is by the iron-fisted use of judicial power that they intend to further their cause. Certainly, nobody is suggesting that liberals engage in terrorist bombings, beheadings, or the torture of their political enemies. Although, the left regularly makes just such accusations against the United States military,...

In basketball, the head-fake move is used to temporarily distract your opponent. The head-faker, the player with the ball, first gets his opponent to commit to one direction on the court. When his opponent falls for the fake, the head-faker can dribble right around him to score. Congressional Democrats have attempted more head-fakes in recent weeks than Michael Jordan ever did in an entire season. Their Republican counterparts would be wise not to fall for these calculated issue deceptions. The head-fakes began with Democratic Party Committee Chairman Howard Dean calling Republicans the “white Christian Party” and stating that they have...

With each passing day, the Democrats prove once again that they are primarily interested in furthering their efforts to hurt the President of the United States. In doing so they seem totally indifferent to the fact that such efforts hurt America period! Who can argue that Democrats are continuing to politicize a war on terror that took our troops to Afghanistan and ultimately to Iraq, or that this politicization is not only making the war more difficult for those troops, but also emboldening America’s enemies to continue the fight worldwide? Our country is in no way immune to further attacks...

"The unifying belief for Democratic philosophy is that corporate capitalism will manipulate economic and social interactions to the benefit of the corporate capitalists and to the detriment of the society as a whole and especially to the detriment of economically weaker elements of the society." To continue click here

Famed Clinton pollster Stanley Greenberg is, I think, correct, but for the wrong reasons when he says that Democrats have lost major elections in recent years because they have not "run with conviction." It's true that they haven't run with conviction, but it's not because they lack convictions as much as that they can't risk being open about them. Greenberg said the Democrats' major weakness today is that "they do not know what they stand for, they don't know their policy direction, they don't know their underlying values, they don't know who they fight for." As a Democrat, Greenberg can't...

Far too few among the Christian community are willing to remain steadfast in their beliefs, in the face of the enormous pressures of liberal social change. Fortunately, Bruce N. Shortt exemplifies the meaning of such worthy resolve. Last year Shortt, along with T.C. Pinckney, made waves at the 2004 Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) by stating the obvious. America’s educational system has, over the past several decades, completely degenerated from any pretense of promoting academics. Instead, it is primarily focused on a program of indoctrinating students towards countercultural social transformation. Relentlessly working to eradicate any references to God or traditional morality,...

Bishop Harry R. Jackson Jr. has found himself in a wide range of settings across church and state since he unveiled his "Black Contract With America on Moral Values." One day, the conservative minister is on stage with some of the nation's top African-American thought leaders at an Atlanta church. Less than two weeks later, he's at a U.S. Senate office building in Washington addressing a room filled predominantly with white evangelical leaders. Despite criticism from some African-American ministers that he's the black equivalent of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Jackson says he is comfortable in both places. As he...

There is a reason, a very good reason why the founders established America as a free nation guided by basic rights endowed by our Creator rather than man made and issued by our government. But many have either forgotten or never been taught that reason. It’s natural for men to desire dominion over man, but it is also a deadly proposition…These men sooner or later attain the appropriate title of tyrant… Those who seek to remove God’s dominion over America fail the most basic test of understanding America. Any thinking person with a third grade education could tell you that...

Liberals may think of themselves as people who believe in certain principles but, if you observe their actual behavior, you are likely to discover most liberals have a certain set of attitudes, rather than principles. Liberals may denounce "greed," for example, but in practice it all depends on whose greed. Nothing the government does is ever likely to be called "greed" by liberals. Even when the government confiscated more than half the income of some people in taxes, that was not greed, as far as the left was concerned. Nor is it greed to them when local politicians across the...

"The great object of my fear is the Federal Judiciary. That body, like gravity, ever acting with noiseless foot and unalarming advance, gaining ground step by step and holding what it gains, is engulfing insidiously the special governments into the jaws of that which feeds them." – Thomas Jefferson to Spencer Roane, 1821. Interview with North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Paul Newby NCC: Justice Newby, thank you for taking the time to acquaint our readers with your judicial philosophy. I just have a few questions for you this evening. You ran on a platform emphasizing judicial restraint, could you elaborate...

A short 229 years ago, our founding fathers declared our independence as a free sovereign nation and established a set of moral principles that would become the foundation for the greatest nation on earth. Those basic moral principles began with a belief that all men were Created equal, endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable Rights. The first of those basic Rights established was a common inalienable Right to Life, followed by an individual Right to personal Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. In their clear determination to design a truly free self-governed nation, they placed their trust in God...

Many judges these days like to refer to the Constitution of the United States as a "living, breathing document", implying that its text is designed to be flexible. It is not. The Constitution is a set of rules, and like any other set of rules, it is meant to be strict and uncompromising. Of course, the Constitution can be modified through the amendment process, but once ratified, any amendment becomes like the rest of the Constitution; rigid. And while any amendment may be repealed, as was the case with the 18th Amendment (The Prohibition Act), until that happens, it is...

We'd have more sympathy for this argument if the same liberals who are complaining about the possibility of the federal courts reviewing Mrs. Schiavo's case felt as strongly about restraining the federal judiciary when it comes to abortion, homosexuality, and other social issues they don't want to trust to local communities. In any event, these critics betray their lack of understanding of the meaning of federalism. It is not simply about "states' rights." Conservatives support states' rights in areas that are not delegated to the federal government but they also support federal power in areas that are delegated. .... The...

"A compromise is an adjustment of conflicting claims by mutual concessions. This means that both parties to a compromise have some valid claim and some value to offer each other. And this means that both parties agree upon some fundamental principle which serves as a base for their deal. It is only in regard to concretes or particulars, implementing a mutually accepted basic principle, that one may compromise... There can be no compromise between a property owner and a burglar; offering the burglar a single teaspoon of one's silverware would not be a compromise, but a total surrender - the...