Free Republic

The title to this essay is a line from Tolkien. But I'm also reminded of two distinct lines from Star Wars, paired:If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.I dunno, I can imagine an awful lot.Charlie Kirk was a powerful force. He went from campus to campus and he talked to people. Generally when he was debating, he would put his microphone down, to reassure his partner that he wasn’t going to talk over them. He was respectful, and he was highly effective. He played a major role in winning over Gen Z...

First they came for Jimmy Kimmel, but I didn’t say anything because I wasn’t…a lame-a**? No. In this Niemöller scenario, the deplatforming of the host of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” comes at the end of the slippery slope, not the beginning. ABC canned Bill Maher 23 years ago for mocking Bush-era propaganda about our sainted Middle East occupation troops. Also at the request of right-wing Bushies after 9/11, MSNBC fired Phil Donahue—despite having the network’s highest ratings—for being too liberal and not pro-war. CBS News fired Dan Rather on a trumped-up ethical breach, and CBS radio fired Don Imus. Lenny Bruce...

I’ve written before about preference cascades — where large portions of the public, often a majority, conceal their views for fear of punishment, only to reveal those views when some precipitating event takes place. Classic examples include the fall of Communist regimes, like Ceausescu’s Romania, where even Ceausescu himself thought everyone loved him until shortly before he was stood in front of a wall and shot. Usually those happen in one direction. But in contemporary America, they’re happening in two. The murder of Charlie Kirk at the hands of a leftist gunman has revealed that many, many more Americans —...

Karen Attiah A left-wing columnist revealed in a Substack on Monday that she was fired by the Washington Post over social media posts amid the assassination of Charlie Kirk and the Colorado school shooting. "On Bluesky, in the aftermath of the horrific shootings in Utah and Colorado, I condemned America’s acceptance of political violence and criticized its ritualized responses — the hollow, cliched calls for ‘thoughts and prayers’ and ‘this is not who we are’ that normalize gun violence and absolve [W]hite perpetrators especially, while nothing is done to curb deaths," Karen Attiah wrote. Kirk, a leading conservative activist, was...

... I was in an empty house when I prepared to have the discussion that I did about dangers to women’s reproductive lives, with Charlie Kirk. I knew very little about Kirk at that time; indeed what I “knew,” from my lifetime being bathed in liberal media propaganda, was negative. But by then I also was realizing that most of what I had been told by those sources were not based in fact. My press manager had told me that Kirk had huge reach and that he was greatly respected, especially by college audiences; so I was very willing to...

Ten days ago, I posted a list of the century’s MVPs, most valuable people. As I noted, “With a quarter of the century under our collective belt, I think it a good time to reflect on those individuals that have helped make America a saner, freer, more wholesome, more productive, more enlightened country.” This time around we reflect on those individuals who have done their best to make America a less sane, less free, less wholesome, less productive, and less enlightened country. The competition for the top ten was so fierce that the likes of Kamala Harris, Rachel Maddow, Bill...

The common denominator is India’s rivalry with China...Trump recently made a show of doubling his 25% tariffs on India as punishment for its continued purchase of Russian energy and military-technical equipment.Influenced by Lindsey Graham, he expected that India would dump Russia after the costs of doing business with it spiked, the Kremlin would thus lose this important foreign revenue flow, and then Putin would make concessions to Ukraine in exchange for lifting these secondary sanctions in to avoid bankruptcy.Here’s why India defied the US:1. The “Voice Of The Global South” Can’t Bow To US DemandsIndia has presented itself as the...

VIDEOThirty-five! THIRTY-FIVE!!! As of the morning of July 16, 2025 there were THIRTY-FIVE AI shills hyping Terry Moran's new Substack. Different voices but with almost identical YouTube videos and scripts featuring the same still shot of Terry Moran arrayed in different ways. Does Terry Moran have multiple loyal fans that think almost exactly alike or is that really YOU, Terry Moran?

Any use of nuclear weapons likely will result in immediate global escalation.Israel has lost the initiative. Clearly losing the war. Large numbers of Israelis have fled or are fleeing Israel. “The tribe” is migrating.United States is staking all of our might on defending what amounts to maybe a couple million core Israelis. A country dependent on massive American support while we bleed.More than two million Arabs live in tiny Israel amid a total of only about 9 million people.Iran’s allies are powerful, proximate, and easily resupply Iran. Such as China using the new rail system:The global center of mass —...

Former ABC News veteran correspondent Terry Moran has launched his independent journalism career. The 65-year-old journalist resurfaced his Substack account and vowed he would get back to the “important work,” he said Wednesday, a day after he was booted from the Disney-owned network. Moran was dismissed Tuesday for violating the company’s policies with a viral social media attack against top White House official Stephen Miller. “For almost 28 years, I was a reporter and anchor for ABC News, as you may have heard, I am not there anymore. I’m here with you, on Substack,” Moran said in a video posted...

The US under President Donald Trump has once again taken up the mantle of Western civilization. The State Department raised some eyebrows when it launched a Substack last month. Its latest Substack essay highlighting both the importance of renewing Western civilization and the failure of global liberalism might be enough to give liberal establishmentarians ulcers and national conservatives butterflies. Blaze Media senior politics editor Christopher Bedford said of the recent essay, "To put it simply, the Department of State has been ground zero for undermining Western values and putting American interests last. This turnaround is just incredible to see, and...

Chuck Todd scoffed at the premise that the media failed to adequately cover the decline of former President Joe Biden ahead of the 2024 election. Speaking with Chris Cillizza on his Substack channel Monday, Todd — the former moderator of NBC’s Meet the Press — rejected the idea that media outlets dropped the ball and did not question whether Biden’s cognitive function was sufficient to run the country for another four years. “This is not a media failure,” Todd said. “This was a failure of the Democratic party. And the virtue signaling that some people have done to try to...

There is controversy at George Mason University after Nicholas Decker, an economics PhD student published an essay asking “When Must We Kill Them?” in reference to Trump and his supporters. The essay captures the growing violent ideation on the left, fueled by rage rhetoric from politicians and commentators. The danger is that, for some on the extremes of our society, the question is not “when must we kill them?” but “when can we kill them?” On his Substack “Homo Economicus,” Decker warns that “evil has come to America” and that Trump is “engaged in barbarism” and seeking “to destroy the...

No joke: Wired wants you to believe this is a bad thing. The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Government Takeover Engineers between 19 and 24, most linked to Musk’s companies, are playing a key role as he seizes control of federal infrastructure. WWW.WIRED.COM https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-government-young-engineers/ "Elon Musk's Government Takeover" Gotta love the pea-sized brains over at Wired. Elon Musk's takeover of federal government infrastructure is ongoing, and at the center of things is a coterie of engineers who are barely out of — and in at least one case, purportedly still in — college. Elon isn't taking over anything. He's...

WATCH: Jim Acosta's New Show on Substack Is Even Worse Than Expected Former CNN host promises to 'bro out' in premiere episode plagued by charmless banter, technical difficulties ...responded by quoting "the great Christiane Amanpour...

Rubin, widely regarded as the most courageous and intellectually dynamic opinion columnist in the history of American journalism, finally “resigned” from the Washington Post on Monday and launched a “pro-democracy” website, the Contrarian, on Substack. In a note announcing her alleged resignation, less than a week after the Post laid off roughly 100 employees in an effort to stop losing $77 million a year, Rubin accused the paper’s owner, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, of sabotaging journalism’s “sacred mission” of “defending, protecting and advancing democracy. The Contrarian is built on a premise some would describe as delusional. In Rubin’s view, the...

John Eastman, the Claremont Institute scholar and conservative firebrand who stood by President Trump’s side all throughout some of the darkest days in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election when the republic was on the line, will have his story told for the first time on the silver screen come the new year. The documentary, titled The Eastman Dilemma: Lawfare or Justice, is slated for a fitting January 6th, 2025, release date, the fourth anniversary of the January 6th demonstration (but will premiere at Mar-a-Lago in a special event two days earlier). The film marks the culmination of a...

Moments after Donald Trump was declared the winner of the 2024 election, Dana White, the Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO, took the stage to thank those who helped deliver him the victory. “I want to thank the Nelk Boys, Adin Ross, Theo Von, Bussin’ With The Boys and last but not least, the mighty and powerful Joe Rogan,” White said. While half the country is reeling from the potential consequences of another Trump term, concerned about deepening social divisions, the dismantling of democratic norms and the normalization of far right extremism, there is one group that has emerged from this election...

The left had everything and then lost it trying to destroy Trump

Blogger Taylor Lorenz has left the Washington Post several weeks after she posted an Instagram story that showed her attending a Joe Biden speech at the White House with the caption “war criminal :(.”Lorenz’s departure is being billed as her opportunity to become an internet “content creator” more than a traditional news reporter. She is starting a Substack called “User Magazine,” where she says she will discuss social media from a user perspective. Lorenz is a 40+-year-old New Yorker who often attempts to ingratiate herself within the culture of much younger, often sub-20-year-olds online. She gained notoriety by doxxing the...