Free Republic

Where does all this stuff that you�ve heard about this morning � the victim feminism, the gay rights movement, the invented statistics, the rewritten history, the lies, the demands, all the rest of it � where does it come from? For the first time in our history, Americans have to be fearful of what they say, of what they write, and of what they think. They have to be afraid of using the wrong word, a word denounced as offensive or insensitive, or racist, sexist, or homophobic. We have seen other countries, particularly in this century, where this has been...

One field in which the next conservatism will probably depart abruptly from current policy is homeland security. The departure will begin with foreign policy and national strategy. As previous columns have suggested, the next conservatism's foreign policy will seek to preserve a republic here at home, not build an American empire overseas. Logically, that will lead to a defensive rather than an offensive national strategy. In both cases, the next conservatism will not be innovating but returning to the policies our country followed through most of its history. It is no accident that when we eschewed empire and followed a...

It sometimes happens that the worst characteristic of an otherwise valuable book is its title. Such is the case with Paul Gottfried’s latest work, The Strange Death of Marxism. Instead of Marxism’s obituary, what Gottfried has actually written is the story of its transmutation into—well, into exactly what remains in dispute. Whatever it might best be called, it is clearly the basis for the political correctness and multiculturalism that have become the state ideology in most of Europe and the United States. Along the way, Gottfried does chronicle the death of classical, economic Marxism-Leninism both in and beyond European Communist...

The recent votes in France and the Netherlands against the proposed constitution of the European Union are not merely political phenomena. They represent significant actions in the development of Fourth Generation war. Why? Because the root cause of Fourth Generation war is a crisis of legitimacy of the state, and the two referenda saw the French and Dutch people rebel against their elites’ efforts to empty the state of its content. Understanding what happened in these two votes requires a counterintuitive mindset. Normally, we would think of elites as representing the state and the common people rebelling against the state....