Free Republic

Mr. Paul’s attempt to paint Christian defenders of the free market as “ardent followers of Ayn Rand” might be more successful if he had bothered to give examples. Instead, he mentions Milton Friedman, Alan Greenspan, the skeptic-comedians Penn and Teller, and atheist Michael Shermer. All of these gentlemen are libertarians, but none is a Christian. Writing for The Washington Post, Jay W. Richards, Ph.D, concludes: The Bible isn’t an economics textbook, but I and many other Christians believe its underlying principles are most consistent with the free economy. There are reasonable critiques of that opinion, but Gregory Paul’s is not...

(Photo Exhibits Above) Remember Whoopi Goldberg at the Academy Awards, 1999. Great stuff! She was dressed up as Elizabeth I -face painted white, naturally. But when, in 2011, “two white men declare a black man their hero and are denounced as racists,” what message are elites sending out? QANTAS has overreacted.

The liberal-Left has many vices. But surely the most noisome one of all (in a crowded field) is its rank hypocrisy. If you’re going to take the moral high ground – as Lefties will insist on doing at every opportunity – the very least you owe the world in return if you have a shred of compunction, decency or intellectual consistency is to demonstrate more integrity than those you are impugning. And if you can’t do that, then bloody well shut up. In the last few months, you can’t have helped noticing, the liberal-Left media, led by the BBC and...

For years, leftwing media outlets have uncritically praised the almighty “pink dollar.” Also known as the “Dorothy dollar,” it is said to be worth billions, thanks to the so-called US LGBT market. But has it been oversold? Obviously, if there’s a pink dollar, there must be a Mormon dollar, an Evangelical dollar, and a Catholic dollar, offsetting any alleged financial and political advantages, reason skeptics. What’s more, some gay critics argue that the “pink dollar” promotes unhelpful stereotypes, and reduces all minorities to potential dollar signs. As well, money arguments can backfire when considering life expectancy and health issues facing...

Billionaire Peter Thiel shocks again. Details magazine, reports he’s supporting what could be described as “Fantasy Island” or “Lord of the Flies” – revolutionary manmade floating nation-states, only 200 miles off the coast of San Francisco. It’s a story now receiving both national and international interest. From The Washington Post: The micro-countries Thiel proposes are diesel-powered, moveable, 2,000-ton structures built on oil rig-like platforms, with space for 270 residents to live. Thiel believes these islands may be important in “experimenting with new ideas for government,” such as no welfare, no minimum wage, fewer weapons restrictions, and looser building codes. The...

This issue seems to confuse journalists. But it’s not that complex. Powerful men are attracted to witty women, and author Ann Coulter wields a certain naughty magic. Bob Metcalfe, informed the New York Times (11 Aug, 2002), he loved reading the pot-stirring author because having “been a pundit for 10 years, media bias is one of my pet peeves. Ann Coulter is my idol — her sarcasm is bottomless, and I shook her thin hand once. Now I’m reading more of her continuing testimony about left-wing bias in the mainstream media, which troubles me greatly.” The besotted Harvard graduate and...

It’s tough times for the solar power “industry” in the United States and Down Under. How tough? The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reports, “The only Australian company which manufactures solar cells is closing the operation. Ilex Solar has announced it will stop making the cells at its western Sydney facility, with 30 jobs to be lost. The company will continue to make solar panels, using imported components.” “In other words, solar isn’t viable unless solar-equipped households get lots of money from other taxpayers,” responds writer and blogger, Tim Blair of The Daily Telegraph, Sydney. More bad news from The Australian: “Industry...

Extra, extra read all about it (hat tip Andrew Bolt): Aliens may destroy humanity to protect other civilisations, say scientists Rising greenhouse emissions may tip off aliens that we are a rapidly expanding threat, warns a report for Nasa Is it April Fools’ Day, or is someone playing the alien card? The scare report was brought to us by the Guardian’s science correspondent, Ian Sample. One threat – preemptive strikes: The authors warn that extraterrestrials may be wary of civilisations that expand very rapidly, as these may be prone to destroy other life as they grow, just as humans have...

The 1980s, according to leftwing columnists and reporters, was sooooo greedy. I mean, didn’t you watch the Hollywood movie, Wall Street? But how greedy was the so-called Decade of Greed? Or in other words, was Republican Ronald Reagan really an evil pro-capitalist monster? One problem with this “Decade of Greed” talk is that it’s based on unsubstantiated views of history. As Robert P. Murphy points out in The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism, during the “Decade of Greed” (p.122): >Total giving grew by 56 percent in real dollars. >Charitable giving grew at a rate 55 percent higher than in the...

“Solon Corp will stop manufacturing solar panels in Tucson by mid-October, ending the facility’s three-year run,” reports the Phoenix Business Journal. “The company will lay off about 60 employees when it shuts down that part of the Tucson operation. It was the state’s first solar panel production line.” In another blow to the so-called solar power industry, the Boston Herald also reports, “Evergreen Solar Inc., the Massachusetts clean-energy company that received millions in state subsidies from the Patrick administration for an ill-fated Bay State factory, has filed for bankruptcy, listing $485.6 million in debt.” The so-called green scheme was criticized...

Does New Jersey really support redefining marriage? Or are some gay marriage-centric Democrats massaging figures and emailing them to their media cousins? They’re legitimate questions. Patrick Murray explains: “Well, the polling firm — a Democratic leaning outfit — put out a press release under the banner headline ‘New Jersey supports legal same-sex marriage.’ Go figure. But, “if you combine the 40 percent who prefer civil unions with the 17 percent who say that no status should be recognized, you arrive at a majority of 57 percent who oppose gay marriage when civil unions are available. Based on this question, a...

The politically-incorrect British writer Melanie Phillips was recently defamed for opposing leftwing groupthink (my guess) on the 2011 Norway massacre. But some welcome news arrives: A column by Heather Mallick on July 28 contained a number of inaccurate statements about the well-known British journalist and author Melanie Phillips. Ms. Phillips has expressed her horror at the slaughter at Utoya, Norway in a clear and unambiguous way, writing “there can be no excuse, justification or rationale whatsoever for the atrocity perpetrated by Anders Behring Breivik.” The column made reference to Ms. Phillips’ writings in an entirely misleading and inappropriate manner. The...

I often hear well-meaning people say, “Political correctness has gone mad.” I beg to differ. Political correctness is mad, period. Past, present, or future, it’s absolutely bonkers mad. Take child sexual abuse now defined as “intergenerational sex” or “complex” when the alleged perpetuator belongs to a media-endorsed tribe. Even the “dwarf card” is used by the abuse minimization crowd. Some history, from the Irish Times first though (“Man admits 26 sex abuse charges,” 03/16/2005): A Donegal man, who is a dwarf, has been given four years in jail having pleaded guilty to 26 charges of indecent assault and attempted sexual...

While popular in revolutionary leftwing Europe, the romantic myth of the “Noble Savage” couldn’t be sustained in real-life Australia. In the 1890s, a Queensland missionary wrote: ‘The Noble Savage’ may exist as a romantic ideal within the covers of a book, but that secluded within the covers of the tropical scrub, and roaming wild his native forests, unfettered by the form and fashion of civilszation, he is a being very different in reality from the fallacious painting of his picture by a poet’s imagination. [i] Decades earlier, Captain Watkin Tench expressed his unfashionable displeasure of le bon sauvage: A thousand...

While popular in revolutionary leftwing Europe, the romantic myth of the “Noble Savage” couldn’t be sustained in real-life Australia. In the 1890s, a Queensland missionary wrote: ‘The Noble Savage’ may exist as a romantic ideal within the covers of a book, but that secluded within the covers of the tropical scrub, and roaming wild his native forests, unfettered by the form and fashion of civilszation, he is a being very different in reality from the fallacious painting of his picture by a poet’s imagination. [i] Decades earlier, Captain Watkin Tench expressed his unfashionable displeasure of le bon sauvage: A thousand...

Tim Blair recently posted this list of things that the media have trumpeted as being the “first casualties of climate change”. I thought it would be an interesting exercise to check the veracity of each story – but what I was not expecting is that every story up until 2010 (after which some of the claims are too recent to verify one way or another) has either been completely debunked, or has since had some serious doubts placed on it. So the following examples have not been cherry picked – it’s a quick analysis of every claim made about “the...

Dutch police arrested 10 people after discovering a large marijuana nursery in the country's western tulip-growing region, a statement said Saturday. "Police have arrested 10 people, seven women and three men of Bulgarian and Turkish nationality after raiding a large marijuana nursery around 10:30 am (0830 GMT)," police said in an online statement. During the raid, in the small town of Roelofarendsveen, between 10,000 to 15,000 marijuana plants and 150,000 plant cuttings were retrieved, it added. It said the nursery was discovered at the back of some greenhouses in the town, situated in South Holland province's prime tulip-producing area, about...

There are many problems with parroting socialist-first studies, as Wilson does, especially from Scandinavia, where Orwellian speech codes prevent free-thinking academics from reaching the “wrong” conclusions. But I digress. You see, scientific truths always find ways of getting out, eventually, so one can detect a pattern. Take gay marriage and marriage-like unions and think about where children are more at risk. From The Ruth Institute: What types of unions have the highest rates of divorce? •Opposite sex married couples: men and women are so different, it is a wonder they ever stay married. •Male unions: men are naturally less committed,...

I guess they can’t help it, but some bestselling rightwing authors have surprising tastes. Ann Coulter: Louis Vuitton | Coulter (above) likes making fun of those pro-appeasement Frenchmen, but she’s also been caught on camera strolling around the Hamptons with her Louis Vuitton bag, and can’t resist French restaurants, where she orders “Freedom Fries” – just to stir the pot, our guess. Jonah Goldberg: Whole Foods | But thankfully he doesn’t have a man bag, or drive a pious Prius, to the best of our knowledge. Whole Foods “where I shop frequently, by the way” admits Goldberg in Liberal Fascism...

Perhaps it was no coincidence that Hollywood Democrats rushed to defend the child rapist, Roman Polanski. In Tinseltown, there’s a culture of redefining time-honored norms while “tolerantly” censoring critics. Furthermore, there’s a tolerance for drug-using children, as Hollywood is viewed as a politically-correct “free love” capital But now the lid on “integer-generational sex” (read: pedophilia) is being reopened. The former child star, Corey Feldman, 40, told Nightline, “The No. 1 problem in Hollywood was and is and always will be pedophilia.” Chillingly, chardonnay socialists and adults-first libertarians are often reluctant to speak out. “It’s all done under the radar… But...