Free Republic

Delegates at the state Democratic convention voted to endorse Initiative 1068, which would legalize the sale and use of marijuana in Washington. The vote was 314-185, a defeat for delegates who said the initiative is too broad and would make it more difficult for candidates to run in more conservative areas.

Globalization: Venezuela's Hugo Chavez is having a grand time cavorting around the world on his Axis Of Evil tour. But we notice he's disgusting as many countries as he's wooing. Vietnam is the most interesting. Chavez blew into Hanoi on Monday and right away began praising Vietnam's government in exactly the way it didn't want: by hailing communism. "Vietnam, with its valor, defeated imperialism not only on the battlefield, but also has maintained socialism in the ideological arena," the South American dictator intoned. Uh-huh. To Vietnam's officials, who've been trying diligently to integrate their nation into the world economy, that's...

Address to: Summer Sounds Symposium Punga Cove, New Zealand February 11 2006 For the past three decades and more, many of the leading opinion makers in our universities, the media and the arts have regarded Western culture as, at best, something to be ashamed of, or at worst, something to be opposed. Before the 1960s, if Western intellectuals reflected on the long-term achievements of their culture, they explained it in terms of its own evolution: the inheritance of ancient Greece, Rome and Christianity, tempered by the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment and the scientific and industrial revolutions. Even a radical...