Free Republic

The Democratic president, a former senator from a border state, was lightly regarded and not so hot in the polls. He had made plenty of mistakes in the Oval Office, and yet his aides knew one big thing: If they stayed on the right side of a key issue—the income security of Americans—and could paint the Republicans as being on the wrong side of that issue, they’d be fine. In fact, Republicans, enjoying newfound power on Capitol Hill, chose to pursue an unpopular ideological agenda. They played right into the Democrats’ hands.

What should we do when a majority of Republicans want Trump, but the Republican Party says we can’t have him? Last week I wrote about Teddy Roosevelt and Donald Trump. My comparison wasn’t between the two men as presidents—though they had some similar personality traits—but between how the two men were treated by the Republican Party. The Republican Party of 1912 decided it would be better off renominating William Howard Taft, even though its voters would have preferred another Roosevelt term. The resulting split ushered in Woodrow Wilson and the first academic globalists, whose bright ideas laid the groundwork for...

David McCullough, who was known to millions as an award-winning, best-selling author and an appealing television host and narrator with a rare gift for recreating the great events and characters of America’s past, died on Sunday at home in Hingham Mass. He was 89. The death was confirmed by his daughter Dorie Lawson. Mr. McCullough won Pulitzer Prizes for two presidential biographies, “Truman” (1992) and “John Adams” (2001). He received National Book Awards for “The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal” (1977) and “Mornings on Horseback” (1981), about the young Theodore Roosevelt and his family. Deep...

“The fact of the matter is that when he left the White House, Truman was loaded,” says Paul Campos, a law professor at the University of Colorado Boulder who has done what no Truman historians seem to have bothered to do — examine the financial records in the Truman archives in Independence, Mo. “He wasn’t just comfortably well off. He was Rich with a capital ‘R,’ and way into the 1%.”

In February 1958, the immense prime-time audience that tuned into Edward R. Murrow’s CBS program See It Now was treated to a historical first: a television interview with a former president of the United States. Among various other topics, the great journalist asked Harry Truman about how he was getting along financially. As was his custom, the plainspoken Missourian minced no words about his situation. “You know,” Truman told Murrow, “the United States government turns its chief executives out to grass. They’re just allowed to starve.” Truman went on to claim that only his recent inheritance of the family farm...

Say what you will about President Harry Truman, but at least he didn't leave the White House a suspiciously rich man. He also actually went home, to Independence Missouri, and moved into a modest house he didn't own. It was the same house belonging to his wife's family where he had lived with Bess (and his mother-in-law!) decades earlier. Flat broke, and unwilling to accept corporate board positions or commercial endorsements, Truman sought a much-needed loan from a local Missouri bank. For several years his sole income was a $113 monthly Army pension, and only the sale of a parcel...

For most of his presidency, Harry S. Truman maintained a friendly relationship with General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower. Truman knew a hero when he saw one, and Eisenhower was viewed as a national hero for leading the Allied invasion of Normandy that helped bring about the demise of Hitler’s Third Reich. Truman even indicated he would support Eisenhower for President on the Democratic ticket in 1948, with Truman stepping down to be Vice President once again. But the bitter 1952 election campaign put an end to the cordiality that had developed between the two. Truman, campaigning for the...

On August 6, 1945, 30-year-old U.S. Air Force pilot Col. Paul W. Tibbets Jr. took to the sky in the Enola Gay, his Boeing B-29 Superfortress heavy bomber. His destination, the Japanese city of Hiroshima, was not an especially notable target. His payload, however, a single bomb nicknamed “Little Boy,” would change the course of history. True watershed moments in history are rare — the agricultural revolution is one such example, as was the Battle of Salamis, the advent of Jesus Christ, and the fall of Western Rome. Yet in the last 1,500 years, no two distinct epochs of time...

"FREEDOM IS NOT FREE" is the inscription on the Korean War Memoria l in Washington, D.C. The Korean War started June 25, 1950. Communist North Korea invaded South Korea, killing thousands. Outnumbered South Korean and American troops, as part of a U.N. police action, fought courageously against the Communist Chinese and North Korean troops, who were supplied with arms and MIG fighters from the Soviet Union. Five-star General Douglas MacArthur was Supreme U.N. Commander, leading the United Nations Command from 1950 to 1951. MacArthur made a daring landing of troops at Inchon, deep behind North Korean lines, and recaptured the...

As a student of history, it is painful to watch today’s so-called reporters and analysts pontificate about the Nov. 3, 2020 election outcome. We are currently six months away from that event. Yet analyst after analyst and TV host after TV host will claim if the election were held today Joe Biden would win – as if the Trump supporters should panic or collapse in despair. To some extent, this kind of presentism even infects the White House and Republican leaders and activists. Yet, presentism is incredibly misleading in a period of change. Remember: At this point in 2015, it...

In the 8th century before Christ, the Prophet Isaiah wrote (7:14): "Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel." The Gospel of Matthew, 1:20-23, relates: "The angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus: for he shall save his people from...

In poor health two months before his death, Franklin Roosevelt met with King Abdul Aziz ibm Saud on the USS Quincy in the Suez Canal on February 14, 1945. Later, on April 5, 1945, Roosevelt wrote to King Abdul Aziz ibn Saud, promising that as long as he was President, America would not recognize a Jewish State: "I communicated to you the attitude of the American Government toward Palestine ... that no decision be taken ... I assured you that I would take no action, in my capacity as Chief of the Executive ... with regard to the question of...

A new analysis by The College Fix this week reveals that the federal Truman Scholarship was only awarded to leftist students in 2018. None of the 59 recipients identified as a conservative American. The Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation offers $30,000 scholarships to promising high school students who pledge to spend three years after graduation in public service. The federal scholarship is awarded to 59 students each year. “We identify young people at an important inflection point in their development—when they are college juniors—and recognize and reward their commitments to devote themselves to public service,” the scholarship’s website reads. According...

Jan van Risseghem was only a teenager when his mother ordered him to flee Nazi-occupied Belgium for her native England with his brother Maurice. After hiding in a convent, and an epic journey across the war-torn continent, they reached safety in Portugal, then took a ship north. Once in England, the pair signed up with the Belgian resistance, and with the help of an uncle enrolled for flight training with the RAF, a decision that shaped not just their war, but the rest of their lives. Half a century later, flying skills he learned in Britain would also make the...

So powerful to watch POWs returning home. History...

Ernesto Davila Marin was in elementary school when rebellion interrupted class. As he left the schoolhouse that October day, black smoke rose from the town center where nationalists had set Jayuya ablaze, shooting police officers and declaring the independent republic of Puerto Rico from a rooftop. In the struggle for sovereignty from American colonial rule, Puerto Rican independence fighters staged uprisings in nearly a dozen cities that day in 1950 and later attempted to assassinate President Harry S. Truman. They held the central mountain city for three days until U.S. Air Force bombers buzzed over the emerald peaks packed with...

At noon today I sent a message to the Congress about the situation in Korea. I want to talk to you tonight about that situation, and about what it means to the security of the United States and to our hopes for peace in the world. Korea is a small country, thousands of miles away, but what is happening there is important to every American...

THIS IS a solemn but a glorious hour. I only wish that Franklin D. Roosevelt had lived to witness this day. General Eisenhower informs me that the forces of Germany have surrendered to the United Nations. The flags of freedom fly over all Europe. For this victory, we join in offering our thanks to the Providence which has guided and sustained us through the dark days of adversity. Our rejoicing is sobered and subdued by a supreme consciousness of the terrible price we have paid to rid the world of Hitler and his evil band. Let us not forget, my...

""" American Minute with Bill Federer "Through Jesus Christ the World will yet be a Better Place"-Pres. Truman, & notable Christmas Acknowledgments Through History!""" "When the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law so that we might receive adoption as sons." (Galatians 4:4-5) "The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many." (Mark 10:45) On CHRISTMAS EVE, DECEMBER 24, 1947, President Truman lit the National Community Christmas Tree, stating:

[I begin] with the story of a series of Socialist scholars conferences that Barack Obama attended when he lived in New York City between the years 1983 and 1985. And when I finally reconstructed what had gone on at these Socialist conferences that Barack Obama attended, I truly was amazed because what I saw was a kind of map of Barack Obama’s entire subsequent political career. It was at this Socialist conferences in New York in the mid-’80s that Barack Obama encountered the groups, the strategies, and the mentors who would guide him throughout his entire political career. [T]hese Socialist...