Free Republic

Your thoughts on forgiving Donald Trump Oct 23, 2020 by NCR Staff Opinion This article appears in the Your thoughts feature series. View the full series. In the latest Soul Seeing column, Mike Leach talks about how he need to forgive President Donald Trump, even though it's hard to do so. "How do I forgive someone I don't even know but who drives me nuts every time I see him boast and lie and cheat?" he writes. Following are letters to the editor responding to the column. The letters have been edited for length and clarity. You can join the...

Utopia! It's the holy grail of egalitarian busybodies far and wide. If only outcomes were equal, as defined by the egalitarians themselves, the world would become a place of balanced chi and seamless harmony. These societal engineers have long believed in their unique intellects and superlative abilities, which qualify them to distribute wealth and contentment to a longing world. Sadly, there's no shortage of these do-gooders. A New York State Assemblyman envisions an increased millionaire tax. If passed, high income earners -- who already bear a disproportionate share of New York's tax burden -- will pitch in an additional 11...

"What is it then that drives some intellectuals in free countries to hate their native land and wish for its annihilation?" - Eric Hoffer I left the campus library at the University of Colorado, Boulder some time after noon. Outside in the library courtyard, I heard something strange and unsettling drifting down from the student union complex just up the hill. It was the raucous roaring of a crowd -- similar to the Saturday football games -- but with an eerie flavor of something dark and unhinged. I turned toward the noise and began walking. I was running late on...

We all know liberal condescension. "Why are Americans so anti-intellectual?" your liberal friend might ask. But Gerard Alexander has written about it -- in the Washington Post. "Why are liberals so condescending?" he asks. Why indeed? Your average liberal exhibits four kinds of condescension, according to Alexander. There's the notion that conservatives win elections and policy debates not because of the power of ideas, but "because they deploy brilliant and sinister campaign tactics." Obviously this leads into the second notion that "if conservative leaders are crass manipulators, then the rank-and-file Americans who support them must be manipulated at best, or...

The Center for Public Intellectuals & The University of Illinois-Chicago (UIC) April 19th-20th, 2002, Conference [Participants include: William/Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, Sen Barack Obama] April 19th-20th, 2002 Chicago Illini Union 828 S. Wolcott This conference is part of the Center's mission of helping to create a more engaged civil society, working towards social change, fostering coalitions between theorists and activists, and combating anti-intellectualism in contemporary culture. It will be both a celebration of ideas and a rigorous examination of the roles and responsibilities that intellectuals play in society. I. Why Do Ideas Matter? (a keynote panel) We introduce the “meta”...

Among the many wonders to be expected from an Obama administration, if Nicholas D. Kristof of the New York Times is to be believed, is ending "the anti-intellectualism that has long been a strain in American life." He cited Adlai Stevenson, the suave and debonair governor of Illinois, who twice ran for president against Eisenhower in the 1950s, as an example of an intellectual in politics. Intellectuals, according to Mr. Kristof, are people who are "interested in ideas and comfortable with complexity," people who "read the classics." It is hard to know whether to laugh or cry. Adlai Stevenson was...

The Tuesday edition of NPR's All Things Considered included a story titled "Illegal Immigration Divides Americans, Poll Says." The story started out with very short sound bytes of comments by passersby in Washington DC. It ended with coverage of polling data from the Pew Research Center for The People and The Press. It was this poll caught my ear as I drove home. The poll seemed to me to be unusally silly, but they saved the silliest part for the last. I went to their website and found the audio of the story; I transcribe the last question and answer...

Bush personifies all that pseudo intellectuals detest President George W. Bush is reviled by the Lib-Left media and its adherents and the pseudo-intellectual set in much the same way as President Ronald Reagan was reviled by the Lib-Left media and the pseudo-intellectual set. As we now know, Reagan was actually smarter than all of his detractors, and it may well be Bush will turn out that way, too. The likes of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Pope John Paul ignored the hyenas and the catcalls of the Liberal-Left and backed Reagan to the hilt and thereby brought down one...

The McLaughlin Group is a political debate show that's nationally syndicated and will air a show this weekend on "Shelving the Shuttle FOR GOOD". Presumably it's showing on NBC in your area, although one can check at: http://www.mclaughlin.com .

...Richard Gere of "The Jackal" fame elaborated: "If you can see [the terrorists] as a relative who's dangerously sick and we have to give them medicine, and the medicine is love and compassion. There's nothing better." Cher often sings of losers and so drew on her artistic insight to share a complex portrait of the president: "I don't like Bush. I don't trust him. I don't like his record. He's stupid. He's lazy." What's so disturbing about our leftist celebrities lecturing us on what has gone wrong after September 11? Nothing, as long as we realize why they do it....

There's another website I participate in,and I often find myself crossing verbal swords with the self-defined "intellectual elite". Today was no exception. On one thread,an anonymous poster was making snotty remarks about "neo-cons" in the Administration.He/she (whatever!) listed several by name,and it suddenly occurred to me all of the names were Jewish . I responded politely-which took a bit of effort.I'm not Jewish,but 3 of my grandchildren are.My closest friend in high school was the son of death camp survivors-(and yes,I saw the tattoos with my own eyes !) I expressed my concern to "Anonymous",saying I knew anti-Semitism had become...

What a revealing line in Richard Cohen's column in the Washington Post about the media-generated furor over Bush campaign ads that include images of the President at the site of Ground Zero in New York only days after September 11th, 2001. Cohen with a typical, and typically unsuccessful, attempt at cleverness writes that he is happy for Bush to take credit in the ads for his behavior after 9/11 so long as he acknowledges his responsibility for the attacks themselves. "Sandy Berger," he writes, "the national security adviser under Bill Clinton, had told Condi Rice, the national security adviser under...