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Paul Kengor
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July 12, 2017
When Ted Kennedy's Russian Pal Wanted to Kill the PopeAs longtime readers of American Thinker know, I’ve here several times reported the story of Ted Kennedy’s undisclosed outreach and offer to the Kremlin, as revealed in a remarkable May 14, 1983 memo from KGB head Victor Chebrikov to his b...
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May 26, 2016
Barack’s Vietnam TourBarack Obama has an exquisite sense of timing with things communist. In March, he caught a ballgame in Havana with Raul Castro, where the national pastime since 1959 has been less baseball than bean-balling dissidents and destroying a beautiful co...
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May 13, 2016
Trump is the Anti-ReaganFor months now I have avoided writing this. I dreaded the process and hoped it wouldn’t be necessary. But alas, events and the pleas of others have compelled me. Three emails in the span of about 30 minutes last Tuesday sealed the deal. “...
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April 8, 2016
Donald 'Jesus' TrumpIt has been hard enough for me, as a Reagan scholar, to forebear claims by Trump supporters of alleged commonalities between Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump. Some lost soul, in a fit of madness, composed a list of 15 uncanny “similarities”...
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March 25, 2016
Would President Trump dump Melania?Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are in a spat right now involving their wives, prompted by a super PAC’s ad that Trump didn’t like. “MEET MELANIA TRUMP,” beams the ad, sporting an eye-opening photo of an unclothed Melania in GQ maga...
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December 10, 2015
Obama's Syria Suckers - Mayors Offer Themselves as Dupes to ObamaPresident Obama has duped his allies before, resulting in political disaster for them, and now he could be doing it again, to a group of progressive mayors. On March 24, 2010, a group of 12 beaming pro-life Democrats, led by Michigan’s Bart ...
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October 23, 2015
Would Obama Pardon the Rosenbergs?In its latest fit of leftist madness, the City of New York again displayed its colors when its City Council enacted a resolution honoring convicted and executed spy Ethel Rosenberg on the centenary of her birth. The council declared September 28 ...
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July 21, 2015
Bruce Jenner, Brett Favre, and the cultural totalitariansIn a truly surreal display, NFL great Brett Favre is being denounced by the left’s new cultural commissars for not clapping long and hard enough at ESPN’s ESPY awards, as Bruce/“Caitlyn” Jenner received a “Courage”...
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July 16, 2015
Communists Celebrate Lowering of Confederate FlagDisplaying their usual grace to their defeated opponents, leftist forces of “tolerance” and “diversity” chanted and sang, “Na na na na, na na na na, he he hey, goodbye,” as the Confederate flag was lowered in South...
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July 7, 2015
Union Pride Becomes Gay PrideThe fundamental transformation of the New America, the country once stabilized by vital Judeo-Christian underpinnings, continues to “progress” at stunning speed in a culture rapidly secularizing and careening to disaster. The transformati...
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June 30, 2015
Communists Close Blessed-Historic 'Gay Month'“Blessed is he who has no family,” Karl Marx wrote to Friedrich Engels, his partner in crime who detested family and marriage so much that he refused both. The partners were not shy about their thoughts on the family. In their most famous...
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June 11, 2015
Bruce Jenner, Cultural Marxist?A colleague who has read my book on the left’s takedown of family and marriage, as well as my recent related articles here at American Thinker, has been urging me to write on Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner. I demurred, noting my training is in history, n...
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June 4, 2015
'The institution of marriage should not exist'The title of this article is a quotation from a gay activist, which I’ll address momentarily. But first, my reason for writing today. I got a lot of response last week to my column on my new book, Takedown: From Communists to Progressives, H...
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May 28, 2015
From Communists to Progressives, the Left's Takedown of Family and MarriageAs the Supreme Court considers rendering unto itself the right to redefine marriage -- that is, to arrogate to itself something heretofore reserved to the laws of nature and nature’s God -- it’s a good time to have something that liberals...
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May 14, 2015
Why is Castro's Cuba Suddenly Pro-Gay?“More than 1,000 gay, lesbian and transgender Cubans marched through Havana on Saturday,” reports Reuters, “proudly displaying their truest selves.” This once-unthinkable display in Cuba was no less than its eighth annual ...
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March 26, 2015
The Washington <em>Post</em> Sugarcoats Obama's Communist MentorSomeone in the mainstream press has finally bothered to look into Frank Marshall Davis, the Communist Party member who influenced a young Obama from 1970-79, the long period of our current president’s adolescence. It took Rudy Giuliani to call ...
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March 12, 2015
Obama, Selma, and Anti-Communism as RacismWhen Rudy Giuliani dared to name Frank Marshall Davis (Communist Party card no. 47544) as an influence on a young Obama, liberals ripped their garments and wailed “blasphemy!” Rudy’s unpardonable sin reminded them of all sorts of no...
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January 30, 2015
Obama's Communist Mentor Wins Big in GreeceThe Greeks have elected a communist as their new prime minister, or at least a onetime communist. As noted by an appreciative People’s World, the flagship publication of Communist Party USA, after gleefully “eschewing the traditional reli...
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December 22, 2014
What was Obama taught about Cuba?Barack Obama has moved to normalize relations with Cuba, which assumes, at some point, a lifting of the U.S. embargo. Liberals, of course, have supported lifting the embargo for years, hailing Cuba as a magical land of “free” healthcare a...
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October 9, 2014
Communists Continue to Agitate on FergusonIn this space in August, I wrote on how communists had seized the chaos in Ferguson, Missouri to advance their agenda. This is nothing new. The American Communist Party has long exploited racial flare-ups for its own revolutionary purposes. America...
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September 24, 2014
Climate Marchers, Unite!Last weekend in New York, the People’s Climate March came to town. Thousands descended upon the city to promote what some touted as “climate equality,” a curious environmentalist variation of other secular-progressive sacred cows: i...
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August 22, 2014
Communists Descend on FergusonI’ve stayed out of the Ferguson controversy. These racial conflagrations are awful, and I learned long ago that any conservative who wades in, even with the best intentions, is eviscerated by the political left. Liberals have decided that all c...
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July 25, 2014
Progressive Death Agenda ProgressesRight now, in the aftermath of the Hobby Lobby decision and Obama HHS mandate, we’re witnessing another crucial evolutionary stage in the progressive movement’s ever-changing and forward-advancing embrace of the abortion culture. In 20...
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January 15, 2014
The Communist Party Hails De Blasio and ObamaFor a long time, the communist left has used the word "progressive" to cloak its agenda. This phenomenon is hardly new. It has gone on since at least the 1930s, not long after the American Communist Party was founded in Chicago. I know this well, hav...
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August 12, 2013
Bill Clark, a great man rememberedIf you were to list the Americans most critical in facilitating the collapse of the Soviet Union, the name of Bill Clark, or "Judge Clark," might not be on your list -- but it should be. Many of us know that no president was as crucial to that collap...
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July 29, 2013
The Real J. Edgar Hoover?Edward S. Miller, a lifetime FBI man of high rank and stature, recently passed away at the age of 89. A good man and good American, Miller, who was also a veteran of World War II (Okinawa), faithfully served his family, country, and God. He also fait...
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July 1, 2013
Another Obama ComradeWhile doing my usual survey of People's World, Communist Party USA's (CPUSA) successor publication to the Daily Worker, a particular headline caught my eye, "Beatrice Lumpkin's extraordinary book about her extraordinary life." Given my research in th...
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June 13, 2013
Liberalism's Willing ExecutionersHere at American Thinker last week, my friend Herb Meyer wrote a piece that's getting a lot of attention. He noted that as the Obama administration erupts into scandal, we look everywhere for a smoking gun leading back to the president. Don't bother,...
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October 11, 2012
Remember Nick Berg?The rapidly evolving Libya scandal provides yet more opportunity for extraordinary pro-Obama media bias. To appreciate the staggering level of bias, just ask yourself a simple question: what if this were George W. Bush? Yes, end of argument. Bu...
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September 21, 2012
Obama's Redistribution: What Did Frank Marshall Davis Say?Given my book on Barack Obama's communist mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, I'm regularly asked whether the latest Obama statement -- on economics, on wealth, on business, on the middle class, etc. -- rings of Davis. Invariably, yes, it does. ...
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September 4, 2012
Frank Marshall Davis and the Subversion of the Democratic PartyA curious specter will be hovering over the Democratic convention this week. It is the ghost of Frank Marshall Davis, Communist Party USA member 47544 and mentor to a young Barack Obama. Readers of this site are well aware of Davis, from my wri...
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July 18, 2012
Socialist? Communist? Three Questions for ObamaThe intrepid New York Times stoically took up the task of considering whether its president, Barack Obama, is a socialist or a communist. Pause right there: anyone familiar with the Times knows how that process would unfold. Namely, the T...
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July 13, 2012
Is Obama's Brother a Conservative Republican?Here's an intriguing thought: is Barack Obama's brother a closet conservative? Might George Obama endorse Mitt Romney for president? The thought -- mostly facetious, yes -- was prompted by Dinesh D'Souza's fascinating new feature film, 2016: Ob...
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July 9, 2012
David Maraniss and Obama's Communist MentorIt's interesting that not only does Barack Obama need continued vetting, but so do his biographers. The culprit is the same: the liberal bias that dutifully protects Obama like white knights guarding the king's castle, shamelessly tossing journ...
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July 2, 2012
Supreme Court Helps Obama Fulfill Dreams from His Communist MentorAs readers of this site are aware, thanks especially to Jack Cashill's recent posts, I've been researching and writing a book on Barack Obama's mentor, Frank Marshall Davis. That book, titled The Communist: Frank Marshall Davis, The Untold Story of B...
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May 25, 2012
Cuba Abandoning Its Persecution of Gays?Last week at American Thinker, I posted an article on Obama's position on "gay marriage," which I considered in light of the Marxist/communist position against traditional marriage. I noted that the current president of the United States now po...
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May 16, 2012
Obama and the Marxist/Communist View of Marriage and AbortionConservatives are not shy about highlighting what they perceive as Marxist/communist roots in various aspects of Barack Obama's policies, vision, and rhetoric. Some of these alleged parallels are a stretch; others are not. Many are merely...
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May 8, 2012
'Forward!' with Obama, Axelrod, Jarrett and Frank Marshall DavisThere has been some interesting commentary in the conservative media regarding the new Obama campaign slogan for 2012: "Forward!" The slogan debuted on April 30 -- May Day eve -- in a seven-minute video by the Obama campaign, with the "O" in "Forward...
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February 16, 2012
Obama's Catholic Church Gambit: Lessons from American CommunistsA fascinating theory has been advanced by Dick Morris, which, in turn, is being considered by Rush Limbaugh and other leading conservatives. Morris speculates that the Obama HHS mandate on contraception, sterilization, and abortifacients is a f...
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December 25, 2011
A Kim-Less ChristmasThis Christmas, the people of North Korea are without their messiah. For a sense of just how pathetic and evil was Kim Jong-Il, I thought I'd share a few anecdotes reflecting the singularly pernicious and even blasphemous nature of this man and what ...
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October 20, 2011
Communism's African-American Soviet RepublicOrganized Communism has long targeted black Americans, an ongoing effort which has survived the fall of the USSR. Kudos to Peter Wilson, who here at American Thinker highlighted the manifesto of the Revolutionary Communist Party, who are in the...
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October 7, 2011
On Steve Jobs, Roseanne Barr, and the Wall Street MobI got a double-shock yesterday morning when I turned on my radio. "Steve Jobs has passed away," I heard a DJ remark. "That's a shame." Yes, it is a shame. I was saddened to hear that. I was equally shocked as I turned the dial and heard s...
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September 6, 2011
The Democrats' Invincible IgnoranceI've only recently come to realize the nature of the hurdle this country faces in trying to turn around a stalled economy and horrendous deficit. Here it is: liberal Democrat politicians have completely convinced huge numbers of their followers...
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August 19, 2011
It's the Spending, StupidLiberal Democrats have failed to heed the lessons of economic history, and it's killing our economy. In the 1980s, they blamed President Reagan's tax cuts for fueling deficits, when, to the contrary, Reagan's tax cuts had a tremendous stimulative eff...
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August 13, 2011
Dems' Risky Tea Party Smear StrategyI was sitting in my office, checking my email, minding my own business, when I was suddenly assaulted by a most bizarre news item: Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) had blamed the Tea Party for S&P's downgrade of America's credit rating. No, Kerry did...
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July 4, 2011
Obama's InalienablesEach time President Obama ventures to mention America's inalienable rights, I get emails. Last week was no exception. "Did you see Obama left out 'Creator' again?" began this one. The most recent occasion was a June 17 presidential statement in respo...
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May 5, 2011
The Sacrificial Presidency of George W. Bush"Yeah, we waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed," former President George W. Bush told an audience in Grand Rapids, Michigan in June 2010. "I'd do it again to save lives."When Bush said this a year ago, the howls from the left weren...
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April 28, 2011
The Trouble with IndependentsThe latest edition of The New Republic has an interesting piece, titled, "The Trouble with Independents." T he subheading is even more on target: "What if these voters are just a clueless horde?" The article is written by th...
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April 5, 2011
Obama, The God That FailedAs someone who has studied, taught, and written about the Middle East for years, I'm the first to concede that President Obama has a tough task. What would I do about Libya if I were president? How about Egypt?I'm not exactly sure. The situations are...
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March 29, 2011
Assassinating GaddafiWhen we think of the French, America, and Gaddafi's Libya, we tend to think of April 1986, when America fighter planes swarmed Tripoli, lighting up the Libyan night, barely missing Moammar Gaddafi, who had been sleeping in a tent outside his compound...
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March 11, 2011
Ted Kennedy's Vietnam PlotLast week at American Thinker (click here), I wrote on the latest declassified FBI files on Ted Kennedy. I looked at several intriguing claims, mainly based on Kennedy's July-August 1961 "familiarization tour" of Latin America. According to...
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March 4, 2011
The Ted Kennedy Chronicles: A Look at the Latest Declassified FBI FilesAnother round of declassified FBI files on Senator Ted Kennedy has been released (click here and here). Fittingly, in Kennedy's case, they are as troubling as they are amusing, once again raising all sorts of questions, from the moral to the politica...
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February 9, 2011
Dueling Narratives: Reagan vs. ObamaThis February marks the centennial of Ronald Reagan's birth, with all sorts of commemorations happening throughout the month. Having written a lot on Reagan, I've been asked countless questions about the man. Lately, some of those questions dovetail ...
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January 26, 2011
The 40-Percent President: Obama's Cruise to ReelectionWe're at the halfway mark of Barack Obama's first term as president. I say "first term" because I'm confident that this isn't his last. Conservatives will not want to hear this, but I've felt all along that Obama will be a two-t...
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December 30, 2010
Obama Dims the Light on Missile DefenseOn December 13, 1981, under direct orders from Moscow, Poland's communist regime declared martial law. The move was another in a series of several decades of Russia's jackboot on the necks of Poles. A few days later, President Ronald Reag...
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December 10, 2010
Obama's 'Missing Link'Like many political Americans, right or left or center, I'm still grappling with what President Obama did this week. I'm trying to get a handle on what it means not so much for the country and the economy, but rather for Barack Obama.On Monday ...
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November 26, 2010
Duped in North Korea: From Obama's Mentor to Jimmy CarterThe North Korea situation is not going away. Personally, I'm sympathetic to the complexities of the situation. I've dealt with it since the early 1990s, beginning at the Center for Strategic & International Studies. I had few answers then, and st...
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November 2, 2010
Barbara Boxer and the 'Star Wars' SabotageSenator Barbara Boxer is locked in a tight race against Republican challenger Carly Fiorina. I've written about Boxer in the past, focusing mainly on her fanaticism on the abortion issue. There has been no one in the Senate -- and I mean no one -- as...
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October 26, 2010
Vivian Schiller and the Party Line at NPRThe Juan Williams/NPR flap isn't going away -- and shouldn't. Basically, Williams was fired for not toeing the party line at NPR. A number of observers, including Williams himself, are protesting the hypocrisy of NPR not dismissing the likes of Nina ...
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October 22, 2010
Harry & FriendsHarry Reid, the Senate Democrat leader who blasted the Iraq War effort, who assailed President George W. Bush, and who paved the way for the Obama presidency and current governing troika of Obama-Pelosi-Reid, is in serious danger of losing reelection...
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October 4, 2010
Progressives and Communists: Out of the Closet -- TogetherA close look at the Saturday "One Nation" rally in Washington reveals something quite telling. It was a major gathering of the "progressive" left, highly billed, vigorously promoted. And it happened to include -- in fact, it warml...
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September 23, 2010
Jimmy Carter vs. Ted Kennedy: Forget Health Care -- What about the Kremlin?Jimmy Carter's recent criticism of Ted Kennedy struck me with personal irony. Just as Carter's book hit the media, my latest book, which features Carter on the cover kissing Leonid Brezhnev, was likewise just hitting the media. The irony is that Cart...
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September 1, 2010
Remembering America's Iraq War 'Patriotic Opposition'In his speech to the nation Tuesday night, President Obama offered a tepid acknowledgment to George W. Bush for his patriotism and love of country through the hellacious ordeal of the Iraq war -- made hellacious by the bilious criticisms leveled by u...
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August 11, 2010
Howard Zinn's Dupes?After years of digging into countless pages of FBI files, KGB documents, Soviet media archives, dusty old copies of the Daily Worker, declassified Comintern Archives on Communist Party USA, and much more, my book was finally going to press, exposing ...
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July 16, 2010
Obama and the Call for 'Economic Justice'Historically, social justice has meant different things to different people, and equally so today, where the term remains as frustratingly elusive as ever -- an ambiguity to the left's advantage. Like the progressives who champion the term, the defin...
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May 2, 2010
Progressive DeathProgressivism is all the rage nowadays, with liberals having jettisoned the "liberal" label for the less maligned tag of "progressive." In truth, "progressive" is a better name, more accurately describing the movement an...
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April 3, 2010
Paying the Price for ObamaCall it karma, cosmic irony, or just plain socialism, but many of the very groups most in support of Obama will be hit hardest by ObamaCare.In this space a year ago, I wrote a piece called "Let 'Em Pay." I noted that while conservatives wer...
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December 23, 2009
A Candle for Iran?President Obama could learn a lesson from President Reagan on dealing with Iran.Twice in this space last summer, I wrote about Iran -- specifically, about the dramatic June protests against the theocratic-totalitarian regime of Holocaust-denying desp...
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November 22, 2009
Obama -- and Reagan -- Go to ChinaPresident Obama last week held a "Town Hall Meeting with Future Chinese Leaders" in the thriving city of Shanghai, itself a remarkable sign of what free-market forces can produce in a short time, even in a place that only decades ago was aw...
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August 31, 2009
Kennedy and the KGBShortly after the announcement of Ted Kennedy's death, I had already received several interview requests. I declined them, not wanting to be uncharitable to the man upon his death. Since then, I've seen the need to step up and provide some clarificat...
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July 11, 2009
James Earl Obama?In one of numerous infamous moments during a disastrous presidency, President Jimmy Carter, in December 1978, was asked by reporters if he thought the Shah of Iran would survive the crisis that threatened to give birth to history's worst theocratic-t...
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June 20, 2009
'Freedom Fighters' and the American PresidentI frequently get asked how Ronald Reagan would react to certain situations. I've gotten those questions a lot lately given the penchant for central planning by the new team Americans elected in Washington.But nowhere is there a Reagan lesson that nee...
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April 10, 2009
Why Not Manage Universities, Mr. President?I hear it again and again, even from some pro-business conservatives:Hey, I have no sympathy for AIG and the automakers and the banks. When you take government money, you can expect the government to tell you what to do. Besides, some of these compan...
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March 26, 2009
Love That Hate!"We must teach our children to hate," Vladimir Lenin instructed his education commissars. The Bolshevik godfather declared that hatred was not only "the basis of communism" but "the basis of every socialist and Communist move...
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March 10, 2009
Let 'Em PayThere's a collective outcry from conservatives bemoaning the "generational debt" that President Obama is in the process of placing upon this country, particularly its youth. They're right, of course. But why complain?It seems only fitting t...
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February 26, 2009
Where Have You Gone, Bill Casey?"We win and they lose." -Ronald Reagan, January 1977As an unprecedented, colossal "stimulus" package was passed by, literally, 100% of Congressional Democrats and 1% of Republicans, something rather extraordinary slid ...
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January 24, 2009
Obama's Curious Inaugural RhetoricSomething quite notable was said before an audience of tens of millions of Americans on January 20, 2009. And although I wasn't the only one who noticed, the full implications seem to have been missed.Alluding to the American founders, President Bara...
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January 18, 2009
Bush at the Stone Table: The Sacrificial Presidency of George W. BushSome time ago, writer Andrew Klavan wrote a compelling review of the movie "Batman," comparing the caped hero to George W. Bush. Both figures gave of themselves on behalf of good in a knock-down, drag-out battle against pure, unmitigated ev...
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December 13, 2008
Obama's Abortion SocialismConservatives rightly fear that President Obama will produce the Democrat Party's third great expansion of the welfare state, extending Leviathan beyond FDR's and LBJ's most fertile imaginations. Yet, Barack Obama constitutes an altogether different ...
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November 18, 2008
How the Academic Left Elected ObamaOf all the reasons why America voted the way it did on November 4, one factor stands out: young people and first-time voters turned out and voted overwhelmingly for Barack Obama. MSNBC's exit polling, which is consistent with other exit polling, show...
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October 30, 2008
Dreams from Frank Marshall DavisAs more and more audio and video emerge on Barack Obama's desire to redistribute wealth, not to mention his views on the housing crisis that has torpedoed the U.S. economy, I keep returning to two columns I've read by Frank Marshall Davis, the commun...
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October 10, 2008
Why Obama's Communist Connections Are Not HeadlinesThere's a lot of frustration among conservatives over how Barack Obama's radical past seems to be making no impact whatsoever among the American public. His connection to communists in particular, from communist-terrorists like Bill Ayers to the comm...
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August 10, 2008
Solzhenitsyn, Reagan, and the Death of DétenteIn a tribute I wrote earlier, posted at National Review, I noted that it is impossible to capture in one column what Solzhenitsyn meant, experienced, and how he went about translating it to the West. Professors like me know such frustration well, as ...
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July 19, 2008
Bush's Mission AccomplishedIt was a little over five years ago, on May 1, 2003, that President George W. Bush was set to speak aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. It was assumed the president would arrive on the aircraft carrier in the way a president arrives on an aircraft carrie...
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June 27, 2008
Where are the Bush Democrats?"The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things. He's the one who gets the people to do the greatest things. And that's what's lacking now." -Ronald ReaganRonald Reagan made that remark in a 1975 interview...
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June 13, 2008
Return of the Dupes and the Anti-Anti-CommunistsSince literally the founding of the American Communist Party in 1919, the extreme left -- specifically, the communists -- have relied upon genuine liberals to be dupes, or suckers, to help further their cause. Here's how it typically worked: the comm...
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May 23, 2008
Bush at the Knesset: Another Historic, Unheralded SpeechLast week President George W. Bush gave an outstanding speech to the Knesset, the Israeli parliament. It stands out among the top five or so best speeches of Bush's two terms, and probably one of the top two speeches dealing with his long-term vision...
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April 18, 2008
Compassion, Conception, and the DemocratsIt was Des Moines, Iowa, December 13, 1999. The occasion was a Republican presidential debate. The governor of Texas was asked to name his favorite philosopher or thinker. "Jesus Christ," was the quick answer of George W. Bush.Bush's respon...
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April 11, 2008
Blessing vs. Damning America"I've spoken of the shining city all my political life.... [I]n my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed...." - President Ronald Reagan, Farewell Address, January 11, 1989...
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March 3, 2008
The Kremlin's Really Bad Month: March 1983"[T]he powers that be in Washington are threatening the course of world history, neither more nor less." -Grigori Dadyants, Sotsialisticheskaya Industriya, March 1983"It is an Evil Empire. It's time to close it down." ...
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January 12, 2008
Whose War? Separating Fact from Fiction in 'Charlie Wilson's War'"Reagan specifically urged the supplying of U.S. shoulder-launched, heat-seeking missiles that can shoot down Soviet helicopter gunships." -Martin Schram, Washington Post, January 10, 1980 Last evening I drove to a nearby theat...