Free Republic

Is it really the worst political environment ever in the history of the United States -- or even the worst "in the modern era" (let's define that as "1900+")? Not even close. On January 2nd, 1920, thousands of Americans -- by some measures ten thousand Americans -- were detained and many arrested in the so-called "Palmer Raids" nationwide. Woodrow Wilson's AG orchestrated those raids against purported communists and anarchists, along with anyone they believed supported either. My writing here on these pages over the last 15 years would have certainly landed me on that list -- and behind bars. This...

When New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy tweeted a picture of him observing a moment of silence in honor of George Floyd earlier this month, people were quick to point out that he was doing it from behind a desk that was engraved with the name of Woodrow Wilson. Some found the image ironic because Murphy was remembering the unjust death of a Black man while sitting at a desk that once belonged to Wilson, a former New Jersey governor and US president who defended segregation and slavery.

America’s most toxic two-term president left a lasting welt on the nation. If you were dragging getting out of bed to start this week, thank Woodrow Wilson. Daylight saving time is just one of a battery of ways that Wilson and his presidency changed America, most of them for the worse. I come now not to explain Wilson, but to hate him. A national consensus on hating Wilson is long overdue. It is the patriotic duty of every decent American. While conservatives have particular reasons to detest Wilson, and all his works, and all his empty promises, there is more...

Woodrow Wilson had no qualms about jailing people he disagreed with. His persecution of the Hutterites can attest to that. Campaigning for President of the United States in September 1912, “progressive” icon Woodrow Wilson said something that would gladden the heart of any libertarian: Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of the government. The history of liberty is a history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of governmental power, not the increase of it. That was two months before the election that Wilson won. He garnered...

The media are still feeling the impact of an executive order signed in 1917 that created ‘the nation’s first ministry of information’.. When the United States declared war on Germany 100 years ago, the impact on the news business was swift and dramatic. In its crusade to “make the world safe for democracy,” the Wilson administration took immediate steps at home to curtail one of the pillars of democracy – press freedom – by implementing a plan to control, manipulate and censor all news coverage, on a scale never seen in U.S. history. Following the lead of the Germans and...

Wilson was not only an avowed racist, but also an architect of a sanctions regime that continues to kill to this day. The link between former US President Woodrow Wilson's legacy of 'peaceful sanctions' and his legacy of racism and imperialism are difficult to ignore, writes Nanopoulos [File/AP Photo] ================================================================================ A Nobel Peace prize holder usually remembered for his idealism, Woodrow Wilson, president of the US from 1913 to 1921, supported segregationist policies at home and played a key role in defeating a Japanese proposal to write the principle of racial equality into the Covenant of the League of Nations....

Left-wing demonstrators and rioters have managed to achieve in a matter of weeks what courteous conservative thinkers failed to accomplish in a century: Knock Woodrow Wilson off his progressive pedestal. More than any other figure in American history, President Wilson embodied and popularized the 20th Century ideology known as Progressivism. Wilson’s eight years in the presidency created the template for the modern administrative state: a powerful executive branch, an oversized bureaucracy, the increased centralization of government, an unending demand for so-called legislative reforms, and multiplying federal agencies regulating more aspects of life. In a sense, the Wilson program of 1913...

<p>Now that statues of Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Grant and Roosevelt have been desecrated, vandalized, toppled and smashed, it appears Woodrow Wilson's time has come.</p> <p>The cultural revolution has come to the Ivy League.</p> <p>Though Wilson attended Princeton as an undergraduate, taught there and served from 1902 to 1910 as president, his name is to be removed from Princeton's School of Public and International Affairs.</p>

Student protests at Princeton in November 2015 called attention to Wilson’s racism, and we responded by forming an ad hoc committee, chaired by Brent Henry ’69, to study Wilson’s legacy at Princeton. The committee recommended valuable reforms to increase Princeton’s inclusivity and recount the University’s history more completely, but it left the names of the School and College intact. Student and alumni interest in those names has persisted, and we revisited them this month as the American nation struggled profoundly with the terrible injustice of racism.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez needs to ask herself what party she’s a member of and who those ‘slaveholder’ statues really represent. And SPARE US the BS magical history that Democrats use to pretend their party wasn’t filled with racist monsters who founded the KKK. Those slaveholders would have been in AOC’s party … think she understands that? That’s a rhetorical question, FYI. People really need to ask themselves why their communities chose to erect statues to slaveholders instead of abolitionists.— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 11, 2020 Tone-deaf is the phrase of the day, folks. You might want to ask why you are...

We are constantly bombarded with the "fact" that the mortality rate from the Wuhan flu is 3%. It's surprising that we aren't being told a higher number, because in Hubei Province, China, there have been 59,114 cases with 3,111 deaths, for a rate of 5.3%. But this only tells us about how many who died had been confirmed to have Wuhan flu. Were there other deaths that weren’t confirmed or other cases that never got sick enough to get tested? Science magazine reports that 86% of infections are never documented. This would mean that the Hubei mortality rate is actually...

A Richmond school may soon be named after former first lady Michelle Obama, officials with the West Contra Costa Unified School District said. Board members will consider renaming Wilson Elementary School following a request by the school's PTA president Maisha Cole and a Jan. 23 meeting of an ad hoc committee, which recommended the change. District officials said if the board approves the change, it will be the first time in Northern California a school has been named after Michelle Obama and the second school in the state to get such a name. Wilson Elementary School was named after Woodrow...

...I have long maintained – and the film 1917 brought it vividly back to mind – that one of the causes of the collapse of religion in Europe, and increasingly in the West generally, was the moral disaster of the First World War, which was essentially a crisis of Christian identity. Something broke in the Christian culture, and we’ve never recovered from it. ...For five awful years, an orgy of violence broke out among baptised people – English, French, Canadian, American, Russian and Belgian Christians slaughtering German, Austrian, Hungarian and Bulgarian Christians. And this butchery took place on a scale...

The raids constituted a horrific, shameful episode in American history, one of the lowest moments for liberty since King George III quartered troops in private homes. Friday, January 3, 2020 Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons | Public Domain (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en) Lawrence W. Reed Lawrence W. Reed Politics History Woodrow Wilson First Amendment Communism World War I Police State Exactly a hundred years ago this morning—on January 3, 1920—Americans woke up to discover just how little their own government regarded the cherished Bill of Rights. During the night, some 4,000 of their fellow citizens were rounded up and jailed for what amounted, in...

Why are Americans so Angry? Face it. The U.S. government no longer belongs to the people and it no longer represents them. This causes a rage, an anger because Americans feel helpless. You see, there is absolutely nothing they can do about anything. Nothing. Americans are absolutely powerless, and the ballot box is simply a facade. One reason the American public is so passive relates to the fact many people live in a state of willful denial. To admit your country runs more like the Corleone family than some famed tome of Greek political-philosophy is a difficult step to take....

President William Howard Taft had stated at a missionary conference in 1908: "No man can study the movement of modern CIVILIZATION from an impartial standpoint, and not realize that Christianity and the spread of Christianity are the basis of hope of modern CIVILIZATION in the growth of popular self government. The spirit of Christianity is pure democracy. It is equality of man before God - the equality of man before the law, which is, as I understand it, the most God-like manifestation that man has been able to make." In 1923, in his last public address, titled "The Road Away...

The Treaty of Versailles was signed in Versailles, France, on June 28, 1919. Neither the winners nor the losers of World War I were happy with the formal conclusion to the bloodbath. The traditional criticism of the treaty is that the victorious French and British democracies did not listen to the pleas of leniency from progressive American President Woodrow Wilson. Instead, they added insult to the German injury by blaming Germany for starting the war. The final treaty demanded German reparations for war losses. It also forced Germany to cede territory to its victorious neighbors. The harsh terms of the...

When I was a teenager I remember what passed for wisdom from the older college kids: “Hey man, everyone knows you can’t legislate morality.” I wasn’t comfortable with that and eventually learned why. Law reflects the morality of the lawgiver. It can't be any other way. A self-governing people can’t avoid imprinting the law with the essence of their beliefs and traditions. In contrast, lawgivers disconnected from the people cannot act in the people’s interest. In 2016, one of John Podesta's emails released by WikiLeaks exposed how progressive elites intended, after Clinton won, to exploit the people. The email features...

Today marks the hundredth anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. Though the treaty ended World War I — supposedly the "war to end all wars" — it practically ensured future conflict and charted a course directly toward World War II. A century after its signing, it remains an object lesson reminding us what kind of disasters lurk when self-righteous progressives, who think they can run the world, get their hands on the levers of power. The basis of the treaty was the progressive internationalism of college professor–turned-president Woodrow Wilson. Wilson had only two years of political experience...

Though betting odds had a 20 percent chance that Donald Trump would use his brief prime-time Oval Office address to declare a national emergency at the Mexican-U.S. border, he did not. Instead, he dedicated his time to a hodge-podge of lurid descriptions of violence juxtaposed to a plea for humanitarian aid. In no way does that mean the issue is settled, and a national emergency declaration remains very much in the mix as one way to break the logjam, appeal to the Republican base, reopen the government, and, oh, trigger a legal crisis. Just Wednesday, Trump claimed an “absolute right”...