Free Republic

Classical theory may not care where the steel mills, chip foundries, shipyards, research labs, aircraft plants, oil fields, and supply chains are, but the real world of power politics does. I spent most of my time during 20 years in Washington, D.C. working in a bipartisan manner on trade policy with the aim of keeping here, then bringing back, strategic industries. There was then a coalition of national security Republicans (on my side of the aisle) and labor union Democrats. Democrats did not want to lose the middle-class blue-collar jobs when factories closed. Republicans did not want to lose the...

The U.S. originated as colonies of a global empire. It won its independence with the help of foreign powers that intervened with money, weapons, and troops. French soldiers and warships helped General Washington win at Yorktown, and the Spanish siege of Gibraltar played its part as well. War and diplomacy paved the way west for the new United States. By the end of the 19th Century, the U.S. was the largest industrial economy in the world, which gave it the means to become the Arsenal of Democracy and leader of the Free World in the 20th Century, beating back the...

The Defective Right   By William R. HawkinsFrontPageMagazine.com | Thursday, September 27, 2007 Last weekend, the John Randolph Club held its annual meeting in Washington, DC. It is a project of the Rockford Institute, a group with which I have been associated for a quarter century. The JRC was founded eighteen years ago to bring together traditional conservatives and right-libertarians for a dialogue on issues of common concern. As Rockford President Thomas Fleming noted in his opening speech, the libertarians don’t much attend the JRC these days. Unfortunately, they have been replaced by left-wingers (libertarian and Marxist) whose mission...