Free Republic

The war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon is not the only one brewing. Here on the homefront, sydicated columnist Pat Buchanan has launched a broadside against what he says are "neo cons" -- America conservatives who support Israel and are really pushing for a wider war between the United States and Iran. Writing in a recent column headlined, "This is not our War," Buchanan bemoaned the violence directed at Lebanon by the Israelis. Fellow conservative David Horowitz's online magazine, Frontpagemag.com, has opened up a front against Buchanan, with an article that levels charges of anti-Semitism against Buchanan and other...

My country has been "torn to shreds," said Fouad Siniora, the prime minister of Lebanon, as the death toll among his people passed 300 civilian dead, 1,000 wounded, with half a million homeless. Israel must pay for the "barbaric destruction," said Siniora. To the contrary, says columnist Lawrence Kudlow, "Israel is doing the Lord's work." On American TV, former Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu says the ruination of Lebanon is Hezbollah's doing. But is it Hezbollah that is using U.S.-built F-16s, with precision-guided bombs and 155-mm artillery pieces to wreak death and devastation on Lebanon? No, Israel is doing this,...

In America, parties enter periods of hegemony when they are seen as having resolved the crisis of the age.Lincoln, the first Republican president, reunited in blood a Union that had sundered over his election and a Southern rebellion against the ascendancy of an industrializing North.With the crushing of the Confederacy by the armies of Sherman and Grant, the assassination of Lincoln on Good Friday, 1865, and the abolition of slavery, the Republican Party appeared to have solved the crisis of the age. The GOP owned the patriotism issue, "waving the bloody shirt," and the morality issue, emancipation, and thus became...