Free Republic

18-minute video of a speech by Tom Klingenstein on the virtues of DJT.

I recently wrote a column about why I believed Trump should not run in 2024. I was wrong. I allowed my distaste for Trump’s personality to override his virtues, which are considerable. Some people want Trump without his vices. I was among them -- until yesterday, when I watched and listened to Tom Klingenstein’s speech titled “Trump’s virtues.” It was masterful and shamed me that I did not make the distinction between Trump's character and his virtues, the former being deeply flawed, the latter being almost perfect. I need to man up in my defense of the former President's virtues....

Trump’s VirtuesWe are still in need of the qualities of great leadership.Many leading Republicans and conservatives want someone other than Donald Trump to run for President in 2024. But this judgment requires an assessment of Trump’s vices and virtues in the context of our current political and cultural circumstances, as well as an assessment of other prospective Republican presidential candidates. Among the talked-about alternatives to Trump, I have not yet seen anyone who possesses either his virtues or his backbone. I am not suggesting that everyone make way for Trump; rather that it is too early to throw him overboard.I...

This excerpt is from Claremont board chairman Thomas D. Klingenstein’s speech, “Winning the Cold Civil War.” In a traditional totalitarian regime, the government uses arbitrary violence to control every aspect of public and private life, all the way down to little league. In America, the government does not control everything. But today, through the power of the purse and the courts, the government influences a lot. And where the government leaves off, the cultural business complex takes over. Education, corporate media, entertainment, big business, especially big tech, are to varying degrees aligned with the Democratic Party, which is now controlled...

According to recent polls, 65% of all Americans now support Black Lives Matter (BLM). Why do so many Americans support an “organization” that is avowedly dedicated to the proposition that America is evil and must be fundamentally transformed? Because the Republican establishment has made remarkably little effort to expose BLM as the revolutionary and totalitarian movement that it is. Leading Republicans do not seem to understand that George Floyd’s death was the excuse for the current crisis, not the cause of it. The chaos in our streets—led by BLM, supported by Democrats, and propelled by higher education—is for all intents...