Free Republic

Liberals are perplexed by conservatives' increasing use of the word "groomer" to describe opponents of the Florida parental rights law and similar policies elsewhere. They are right that the term is hyperbolic at best and worst conflates a host of complex issues with pedophilia. But liberals (and conflict-averse conservatives) are wrong to confidently predict it will necessarily be perceived by persuadable people as QAnon craziness. It's not entirely clear that many such people even know what QAnon is. And it is just as risky for liberals to reduce all concerns about child pornography and age-appropriateness of sex education to Pizzagate....

Former national security adviser John Bolton and his newfound opposition to President Trump have become a campaign issue in the Republican primary in Maine’s Democratic-controlled 2nd Congressional District, a top GOP target this fall. “John Bolton lies about President Trump, and now, his henchmen are doing the exact same thing to Trump conservative Eric Brakey,” says a new ad from the Protect Freedom PAC. “They’re scared of Brakey because they know he will stand with Trump, fight to drain the swamp, and advance an America First agenda.” The group’s spokesman, Michael Biundo, urged Maine Republican voters to “ignore the Bolton...

Is communism making a comeback? On its face, the question seems more than a little absurd. The Berlin Wall came down over 24 years ago. We are more than 22 years removed from the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. All that remains are the Stalinist museum pieces of North Korea and Cuba, the former an isolated country known mainly for its absurd dictator and starving population, the latter a beautiful island stuck in a 1950s time warp due to backwards economic and social policies. Even China, the one major power still ruled by...

Conservatives and libertarians are often allied against common enemies: the growth of the redistributive state, the assault on private property, the denigration of the free market and various socialist plots large and small. Ron Paul, Walter Williams, Jacob Sullum, Stephen Chapman and Charles Murray have seen both labels applied to them and have had their written work appear in the flagship publications of both movements. The Cato Institute is variously described as a conservative and libertarian think tank. A reminder of this overlap could be found in the reaction to a brief item on the Drudge Report suggesting that libertarian...