Free Republic

I remember 1989 and 2001. I remember how in 2001 Bill Clinton was scrambling around like some great booby trying to find his legacy. Ronald Reagan, a humble man, let his legacy speak for itself in 1989. That year the Berlin Wall came down and Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, East Germany and Romania tasted freedom after decades of bitter Soviet occupation. After the better part of a year trying to convince us how great he was for us, we still only remembered Bill Clinton for his romp with Monica Lewinsky. One might argue that that was all he deserved to be...

What the new literature on the Gipper won't tell you. Over the past several months, Nancy Reagan has quietly been alerting friends and family that the health of her husband Ronald Reagan, the nation's 40th president, is failing rapidly due to Alzheimer's. Reagan will turn 92 on Feb. 6, and the signs seem to suggest that he won't be with us for very much longer. It is not uncommon, when such circumstances involve a national figure, for the media to prepare tributes and obituaries in anticipation of the event. But in the case of Ronald Reagan, the magnitude of this...

As Washington insiders pore over the latest low job-approval ratings for George W. Bush, and as aficionados of British politics ponder the latest low ratings of Tony Blair, let's take a longer look at the political ebb and flow in America and Britain over the last quarter century or so. There is a certain parallelism.In the late 1970s, both countries experienced something like collapse -- a collapse of the Keynesian economics dominant in the post-World War II years, a collapse of the accommodationist foreign policy prevailing since the setback in Vietnam.From that collapse arose two improbable leaders on the political...

Last week, I published a new book, "Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy." A lot of my friends are not happy with me for writing it, and I have been embraced by a number of people on the left whom I would ordinarily consider my political enemies. Both are mistaken about why I wrote the book and what I hope to accomplish with it.Some of my former friends on the right have attacked me as an opportunist who sold out his party and his president to get a best-seller. They would not think so...

In this war freedom should come first not after! In New Hampshire the Motto is Live free or Die! I don't need Bush spying on law abiding americans and taking our freedoms. Anyone who surrenders a square inch of freedom to the government in the name of saftey is a traitor and should be treated like one! Let the Bush Fashists all drop dead! Filthy Commys! LET FREEDOM RING!

He would have turned 95 on Feb. 6 – the most recent former president to die and likely the most popular and inspiring chief executive of the 20th century. Ronald Reagan – known as unflappably pro-defense yet able to forge friendships with his adversaries. Staunchly partisan and loyal to the Republican Party yet deft at crafting compromise with Democratic lawmakers to move his agenda forward. A tax cutter who presided over a significant expansion in revenues to the federal government. Though Reagan's legacy includes accomplishments in all areas of public policy, it is his success in toppling the "Evil Empire"...

WASHINGTON — Twenty-five years ago, President Reagan came to Washington with bold plans to move the Supreme Court to the right. He and his lawyers wanted a high court that would uphold state laws that impose the death penalty, restrict abortion and allow a greater role for religion in public life. They favored property rights over environmental regulation, states' rights over broad federal authority and executive power over Congress and the federal courts. Now, with the Senate about to confirm Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr., a second generation of Reagan disciples stands ready to fulfill the former president's vision for...

Last February, as rumors swirled about the failing health of Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, a team of conservative grass-roots organizers, public relations specialists and legal strategists met to prepare a battle plan to ensure any vacancies were filled by like-minded jurists. The team recruited conservative lawyers to study the records of 18 potential nominees — including Judges John G. Roberts Jr. and Samuel A. Alito Jr. — and trained more than three dozen lawyers across the country to respond to news reports on the president's eventual pick. "We boxed them in," one lawyer present during the strategy meetings said...

I have distinct recollections of that historic day January 20, 1981. First was the setting. I recall that it was a cold, crisp, though not frigid day, certainly nothing like the snowstorm that paralyzed the city during JFK’s inauguration or the frigid conditions just four years later that required Reagan’s second inaugural to be moved indoors. This inaugural was the first to be held on the West side of the Capitol facing out over the entire mall -- a symbol of the rise of the Western US that was Reagan’s electoral base and of the Western Pacific Region and the...

Ronald Reagan ran for President to change America. In the end, he changed the world. Today, on the 25th Anniversary of his Inauguration, we should remember his legacy and remind ourselves that what brings Republicans together is far stronger than what pulls us apart. When we are the party of ideas, we win because our ideas are better. As Republicans, we believe in a smaller, more efficient federal government, returning power to the states, lower taxes, and individual freedom. None of these beliefs is shared by our Democrat colleagues, who continue to rely on old-fashioned, big government solutions to every...

Ohio’s Republican gubernatorial front-runner Ken Blackwell is “Jesse Jackson’s worst nightmare.” Ken Blackwell has just finished regaling a group of Ohio retailers with his vision of how to turn around the state’s struggling economy with a heavy dose of fiscal restraint and tax cuts. The crowd, accustomed to Republicans who tax and spend as furiously as Democrats, is rapt. But as Blackwell works the room afterward, on a warm fall afternoon in Columbus, one well-dressed woman stops him to outline her concerns. “I like your ideas on taxes,” she tells the former college football star, who at 6 foot 5...

During the Reagan campaign of 1980 one felt part of movement or “revolution” that was going to change not only the nation but perhaps the world. Then “Governor” Reagan’s vision was clear and concise and left little room for doubt... America must shrink the size of the federal government, reduce regulations on business, and cut taxes “across the board” for all Americans. In other words, Reagan instinctively knew that -- given the tools -- the American entrepreneur would lead the country back to prosperity and out of double-digit inflation and double-digit interest rates. Reagan also understood that communism’s worldwide influence...

Speech to the House of Commons Ronald ReaganJune 8, 1982"The Evil Empire" We’re approaching the end of a bloody century plagued by a terrible political invention — totalitarianism. Optimism comes less easily today, not because democracy is less vigorous, but because democracy’s enemies have refined their instruments of repression. Yet optimism is in order because day by day democracy is proving itself to be a not at all fragile flower. From Stettin on the Baltic to Varna on the Black Sea, the regimes planted by totalitarianism have had more than thirty years to establish their legitimacy. But none —...

“Both major parties have been around so long that they exude the seedy, unmistakable odor of entrenched and callous old age. But in the eye (or nose) of public opinion ... the GOP unquestionably forged into a commanding lead in this unhappy respect.” Sounds familiar, right? Except this observation of the Republican Party was penned in 1975 by National Review editor and revolutionary thinker William Rusher in his critically acclaimed book, “The Making of the New Majority Party.” In the wake of Watergate and the unprecedented resignations of Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew and after Nixon’s successor, Gerald Ford, continued...

Broadcast excellence continues after an Operational Pause. Go get 'em, Rush!

CHEYENNE - The Peacekeeper nuclear missile, credited by some with helping with the demise of the Soviet Union and winning the Cold War, is to be officially deactivated. F.E. Warren Air Force Base here oversaw the only squadron of 50 Peacekeepers deployed in the United States. Each 71-foot-tall, 8-foot-diameter missile, deployed in the 1980s, carried 10 warheads. Almost 15 years after the end of the Soviet Union and the Cold War, the last Peacekeeper, also known as the MX, has been removed from its hardened silo. A ceremony was scheduled Monday at F.E. Warren to mark the deactivation of the...

Trade: The House's cliffhanger 217-215 passage of the Central America Free Trade Agreement is a decisive victory for free markets and democracy. It's also Ronald Reagan's final triumph. This victory is President Reagan's legacy. Because CAFTA, by slashing duties and giving free markets a boost, makes Reagan's Caribbean Basin Initiative permanent. As such, CAFTA creates a vast permanent bulwark against totalitarianism that will benefit the U.S. and its southern neighbors. Central America now has a bright future based on the one thing that makes democracies strong and nations viable — free markets. Reagan knew that in the struggle against tyranny,...

Reagan is the greatest American!

It’s been one year since the death of Ronald Reagan, whose standing as a president grows steadily. He is now ranked as a “great” or “near-great” president in most public polls, although the reaction among political historians and commentators remains somewhat mixed -- perhaps because first judgments are not easily set aside. The number of experts who in 1980 dismissed Reagan as too old, too dumb and too conservative to be president is legion. Some remain skeptical. Anthony S. Campagna, a professor of economics at the University of Vermont, says flatly that Reaganomics failed, leaving “many more serious problems to...

THERE ARE AT LEAST THREE major cycles to the historical process of judging presidents. There is the initial summation upon leaving office. Then there is a reappraisal period, when we start to recall the unappreciated virtues of these men, and when previously secret documents and circumstances shed new light on a president's designs and actions. And finally there is revisionism, which has epicycles of its own.Modern presidents usually fare poorly in the initial summation upon leaving office: Harry Truman was unpopular, Dwight Eisenhower was a dunce, Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, and George H.W. Bush were failures, while Richard Nixon and...