Free Republic

If we look back at the war that started on September 11, there have emerged some general rules that should guide us in the next treacherous round of the struggle against Islamic fascism, the autocracies that aid and abet it, and the method of terror that characterizes it. 1. Political promises must be kept. Had the United States postponed the scheduled January elections in Iraq — once the hue and cry of Washington insiders — the insurrection would have waxed rather than waned. Only the combination of U.S. arms, the training of indigenous forces, and real Iraqi sovereignty can eliminate...

If Americans of all ages ever recognize the degree to which they’ve been conned by the proponents of failed government programs such as Social Security, they will likely respond in a manner reminiscent of the Boston Tea Party. And it is not hard to imagine a few career politicians floating in the harbor alongside of King George’s cargo.,br> Consider the caterwauling from Democrats in response to President Bush’s efforts to reform Social Security. Originally promoted as merely a retirement supplement, Franklin Roosevelt’s scheme initially involved a minuscule payroll tax. Once implemented however, the road was clear to incrementally grow the...

FOR DECADES, WE HAVE SAT HELPLESSLY WATCHING as a government intended to be of, by and for the people became increasingly all about the Party…All about the politics and the politician. So there is a good reason why the Internet is now the new target for censorship by Washington insiders and media elites alike…. Network news ratings are tanking, newspaper circulations are plummeting and Washington elites are growing weary of answering a steadily increasing volume of mail from we the people… This isn’t how it is supposed to work (in their minds). We the people are supposed to go to...

TOKYO - In a sign of deepening popular and political animosity between China and Japan, Tokyo took formal possession this week of a tiny archipelago in the Pacific waters south of Japan. In the early morning of Feb. 9, Tokyo informed Beijing's embassy here that the Senkaku Islands would be administered by the Japanese coast guard. The unexpectedly bold action by Tokyo received little attention here. But it is seen as a "serious chess move," says one diplomat, in a region where power relations are being redefined, and where tensions over energy, borders, military buildups, and ethnic rivalries are palpable....

Ayn Rand at 100: The Moral Defense of Freedom By Edward Hudgins ehudgins@objectivistcenter.org She was born on February 2, 1905, in Russia. At the age of nine she decided she wanted to be a writer. As a teenager she lived through the horrors of the communist revolution, and at age twenty-one she made her way to the United States. She learned English and became a best-selling author; her books still sell hundreds of thousands of copies a year and in 1991, over a decade after her death, a Library of Congress survey found that her magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged, was...

If a global society forms during the Twenty-first Century, will it necessarily be a contract society, built upon reciprocal trade and agreement, as many people think? Or could it be constructed upon other principles, for instance the left’s dream of universal sharing, nonviolence, peace, and justice, or the Isalmists’ dream of the world converted to Islam by the will of God and His holy warriors? Or will it be a global bureaucracy, a United Nations writ large, the centralized rule of the international experts? When Sir Henry Maine wrote his famous dictum in Ancient Law that the movement of progressive...

HONG KONG -- A Hong Kong-based Briton survived the deadly tsunami that devastated Thailand's coastlines by abandoning a pregnant woman clinging to him and later smashing his knee cap when his leg was trapped underwater, a Hong Kong newspaper reported today. Scotsman Andrew Keith, 35, was swept away by waves that inundated the Thai resort island Phra Thong and found himself weighed down by a pregnant Swedish woman who wrapped her arms around him, the South China Morning Post reported. "It was like being in a washing machine. We were being tumbled over and over under the water." "As the...

Meet Joe Dirt Stuart K. Hayashi In 2001, comedian David Spade came out with a movie titled "The Adventures of Joe Dirt." It now appears that the film was about Joe Conason, the author of "Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth" and an editorialist for the liberal-biased Salon.com. In the person of Brad Pitt, you've already Met Joe Black. Now Meet the Real Joe Dirt. His book purports to expose how right-wingers harness the corporate media to brainwash society. Instead of demonstrating such, however, Joe is too busy flinging his Dirt around. In two...

The Jewish Problem pops up in the strangest places. In the winter of 1991, at the height of the first gulf war, I asked a right-wing Japanese politician who still wields considerable power in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party to explain the Japanese role in the Middle Eastern conflict. After clearing his throat with some perfunctory remarks about oil supplies and United States-Japan relations, he suddenly stopped midsentence, gave me a shrewd look and said: ''Look, we Japanese aren't stupid. We saw Henry Kissinger on TV. We know how America operates. We're perfectly well aware that this war is not...

Recently I have had the privilege of embarking upon a guided tour of one of Illinois Tool Works’ 600 mini-companies, a strap manufacturing plant near the company’s headquarters in Glenview, Illinois. Signode Strap, a product invented within a firm owned by ITW, is the most prevalent of its sort in the market. It is furnished of entirely recyclable materials (pop bottle remnants) into gargantuan plastic sheets that are conveyed through rollers at phenomenal temperatures of over 300 degrees Fahrenheit. I was able to observe the plastic rolled into colossal coils, then unwound again to be sliced into uniform strips, while...

Charles Krauthammer is exceptional man. A psychiatrist by training, he has left his original profession to become a celebrated pundit, applying his unique insights into the world of the demented to the word of the truly demented -- international politics. In a recent syndicated column Bracing for the Apocalypse, Dr. Krauthammer provides us with his chilling diagnosis of humankind's current chances for longevity and pronounces the situation terminal -- unless forceful action is taken immediately. Even more interesting (and just as chilling), he posits a hypothesis regarding the origins of our current terminal condition, tracing the terror and apocalyptic threat...

TODAY'S FEATURED ICONOCLAST COMMENTARY A GRATEFUL EUROPE? YOU MUST BE JOKING!Formulating A Foreign Policy To Deal With Today's Unhappy Global Realities by Yale Kramer The United States is the most generous, magnanimous nation in history. In the twentieth century, we paid billions of dollars to support World Wars One and Two. "Give us the tools and we will do the job," we were asked after World War II erupted. And indeed we gave the Brits the tools Winston Churchill asked for; but they couldn't do the job, not without us. We might easily have hung back in Europe, as...

After the resounding and mostly unpredicted Republican victory in the November midterm elections, Democrats, liberals and the left scurried to find excuses for their debacle. From "the message didn't get out" to the influence of "right-wing talk radio," the left trumpeted every excuse but the obvious -- that voters preferred the Republican Party. The intellectual elite of the left needed a scapegoat for the wounding of their ideology by the American electorate and simply lacked the self-esteem to look inward. So instead they decided that the electorate is not smart enough to understand the left's message. And with the Democratic...

ICONCOLAST DAILY NOTEBOOK.... The Case Against Racial Preferences.... January 9, 2003: The biggest battle in the cultural wars in America will likely occur when the case for affirmative action (read racial preferences) in college and university admissions is argued before the Supreme Court later this year. And certainly, this is always a difficult issue (the case against racial preferences) to argue with the "fairness" crowd without being branded racist, uncaring or championing the preservation of systemic social inequities. However, one scholar who always brings clarity and the calm voice of reason to this volatile subject is venerable Hoover Institution scholar,...

When will the "caring" activists of the left ever learn? Never have so few individuals with so many good intentions created so much misery for so many people whom they wanted to help. As the social-engineering debacles of the last half century in the United States have demonstrated, carelessness in "caring" for the disadvantaged in our society only leads to a glaringly uncaring result.......

THE ICONOCLAST WEEKLY RANT WHEN HELPING YOU HELPS ME --Behind The Left's Selfish Mask Of Caring.... by Murray Soupcoff When will the "caring" activists of the left ever learn? Never have so few individuals with so many good intentions created so much misery for so many people whom they wanted to help. As the social-engineering debacles of the last half century in the United States have demonstrated, carelessness in "caring" for the disadvantaged in our society only leads to a glaringly uncaring result. After all, it was pioneering liberal-left social engineers in the 1940's and 50's who came up...

ICONOCLAST DAILY NOTEBOOK.... WHEN HELPING YOU HELPS ME --Behind The Left's Selfish Mask Of Caring.... December 24, 2002: When will the "caring" activists of the left ever learn? Never have so few individuals with so many good intentions created so much misery for so many people they wanted to help. As the social-engineering debacles of the last half century in the United States have demonstrated , carelessness in "caring" for the poor, vulnerable and disadvantaged in our society only leads to a glaringly uncaring result. After all, it was pioneering liberal-left social engineers in the 1940's and 50's who came...

ICONOCLAST DAILY NOTEBOOK.... The Democrats Play The Reverse Race Card.... December 23 2002: Emboldened by their success in destroying the political legitimacy of former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott by charging him with racism, the denizens of the left are gearing up for more of the same -- cynically seeing this gambit as their last chance before 2004 to deflect the growing swing among the American electorate to the Republican Party. The essence of this race-based libel is the charge that the Republican Party's recent electoral success comes from constantly playing the "race card" while pursuing a "Southern strategy" to...

It was an alliance of two Asian states that felt awkward about their geographic affiliation. Fifty years after the establishment of diplomatic relations between Japan and Israel, it appears this week that the awkwardness has not dissipated, and the alliance still awaits materialization. The ties were first formed when Japan regained its sovereignty after nearly seven years of rule by American occupation authorities, whose presence was imposed on Japan with its surrender at the end of the Second World War. With the resumption of its sovereignty, Japan began to weave a network of international relations but, like Israel at the...