Free Republic

Like Gaius Julius Caesar in ancient Rome, President Trump is surrounded by enemies; foreign and domestic, governmental and corporate; big and small, young and old. Whether they are Silicon Valley CEO’s catering to cheap foreign labor or shrieking college snowflakes, the enemies of Trump all have the same goal; the destruction of the Trump Presidency, the savaging of the President and the continuation of the globalist corruption that benefits the elite and bludgeons the average American, while masquerading behind the idiocy of political correctness and the tyranny of tolerance. The liberal elements of the mainstream media attack the President and...

In 449 B.C., the Roman government passed the Law of the Twelve Tables, regulating much of commercial, social, and family life. Some of these laws were reasonable and consistent with an economy of contract and commerce; others prescribed gruesome punishments and assigned cruel powers and privileges given to some. Other regulations fixed a maximum rate of interest on loans of approximately 8 percent. The Roman government also had the habit of periodically forgiving all interest owed in the society; that is, it legally freed private debtors from having to pay back interest due to private creditors. The Roman government also...

Iowahawk Special Guest CommentaryGaius Julius CaesarYo mortal, how you livin'? It's your old pal JC, a/k/a Juicy Julius, a/k/a Flavius Flav. What's it been -- two, three millenniums? Yeah, longtimes. Continued

Beware the Ides of March. That's today. Today is The Ides of March. Some are saying today is a day that could change the future of the nation.

Anti-religious (typically, anti-Christian) attitudes as are now spreading like wildfire through social media. Similar sentiments played out horrifically in the French Revolution, the Marxist purges in Eastern Europe and China, the Cristero War in Mexico, the killing fields of Cambodia, and the ongoing slaughter of Christians in the Middle East and Africa. Is it unreasonable to wonder if and how the virulent, anti-Christian attitudes of today will be unleashed in America? The question hit home for me yesterday at the annual Minnesota Prayer Breakfast when Governor Dayton opened his remarks by stating: “You know the theme of today’s prayer breakfast:...

Caesar's death was more than the end of an extraordinary life; it was the end of an era. Karl Theodor von Piloty, The Murder of Caesar (1865), oil on canvas “No country was ever saved by good men,” Horace Walpole once observed, “because good men will not go to the length that may be necessary.” I thought often of Walpole’s remark while reading Barry Strauss’s thrilling account of the assassination of Julius Caesar, which is full of robust men going to incarnadine lengths. [snip] I have always been slightly puzzled about what exactly Caesar did to rouse the murderous fury...

God and God Alone: A Homily for the 29th Sunday of the Year By: Msgr. Charles PopeThe Gospel today contains lots of interesting juxtapositions: hatred for Jesus but grudging respect for him,  real questions versus rhetorical ones, politics and faith, duties to Caesar and duties to God. The word  “juxtaposition” is from the Latin juxta (meaning “near”) and positio (meaning “place or position”). Hence juxtaposition is the placing of two things near to each other in order to see how they are similar and yet different.  In English, usually a juxtaposition emphasizes differences more than similarities.Let’s look at these one...

This is what most of us know about the death of Julius Caesar, half-remembered from movies and plays: Some soothsayer said, "Beware the Ides of March." A few idealistic Romans decided to win back Rome for the people.Caesar got stabbed by Brutus with a big sword, said "Et tu, Brute?" and died nobly. All of that is wrong.

In a recent article (7 Things Christians Should Know About Torture), I wrote that the recent Senate Report on the C.I.A.’s interrogation techniques should be the beginning, rather than the end, of the discussion on the morality and legality of torture. Since then I’ve been encouraged by the attempts to examine the issue (though I’ve been mostly disheartened by the outcomes supported). For example, in a recent article in The Federalist, D.C. McAllister argues that “Yes, Christians Can Support Torture.” One of her primary claims is that, If government officials have a known terrorist in custody, and it is certain...

Those who know history, know that tyrants constantly ‘cleanse’ or ‘purge’ their ranks of those they perceive as disloyal to the powers that be. They rule with an iron fist and with total control, because not to is to expose their political jugular to their enemies. It truly is dog eat fascist dog. This is very true in the Obama sphere of influence and within the ranks of his court. So, in the true tradition of dumping earth shaking news before a holiday or on a Friday, the day before Thanksgiving, Obama published a memo laying out guidelines for executive...

Spot Where Julius Caesar Was Stabbed Discovered Archaeologists believe they have found the first physical evidence of the spot where Julius Caesar died, according to a new Spanish National Research Council report. Caesar, the head of the Roman Republic, was stabbed to death by a group of rival Roman senators on March 14, 44 B.C, the Ides of March. The assassination is well-covered in classical texts, but until now, researchers had no archaeological evidence of the place where it happened. Now, archaeologists have unearthed a concrete structure nearly 10 feet wide and 6.5 feet tall (3 meters by 2 meters)...

The world has to stop because the magic Negro is putting the hustle on the upper east side again.we ate trapped on a stopped bus, not allowed to get off. FUBO.

Rome, Sweet Rome: Could a Single Marine Unit Destroy the Roman Empire? It was a hypothetical question that became a long online discussion and now a movie in development: Could a small group of heavily armed modern-day Marines take down the Roman Empire at its height? We talked about the debate with James Erwin, the man who scored a movie writing contract based on his online response, and ran the ideas by Roman history expert Adrian Goldsworthy. James Erwin was browsing reddit.com on his lunch break when a thread piqued his interest. A user called The_Quiet_Earth had posed the question:...

But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.(Micah 5:2)The story of the birth of Jesus, is perhaps the most familiar and loved portions of the Bible. But the problem with familiar passages of scripture is that people think they know what needs to be known about them and often aren’t open to a fresh look at the same text from another angle. It is called the Christmas story,...

Compare Romans 13:1-7 with Matthew 22:17-22. Obedience to this passage will require the Bible-believing student to examine the governmental system alongside which he strives to serve the Lord in the country where he lives. Romans 13 is used most often by preachers trying to convince church members to: 1. Pay income taxes; 2. Don't rock the boat. Get any license the civil authorities say they require; 3. Subject even the operation of God's churches to the scrutinies of unregenerate civil bureaucrats. None of these are included in the purposes for the writing of Romans chapter 13!! The Roman Empire during...

The chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, Rocco Landesman, provoked ridicule when he said last week that “Barack Obama is the most powerful writer since Julius Caesar.” He didn’t mean that Barack Obama is a literary titan who doth bestride the narrow world like a colossus while petty men like Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Tolstoy walk under his huge legs and peep about to find ourselves dishonourable graves. But what he did mean, while no less fatuous, is also disquieting in its implications: for the first time, the United States of America has a president whose supporters talk about...

Much has already been made of Landesman’s comparisons of Obama to Julius Caesar. As a teacher and lifelong student of history, I find that comparison amusing on various levels. Caesar was an accomplished military leader whose campaign through Gaul was the subject of his major literary work, still available in your local Barnes and Noble. Barack Obama is an indecisive teleprompter reader whose book will certainly be long forgotten 2,000 years from now. Julius Caesar’s actions as leader of Rome turned the Republic into a dictatorial empire that later spawned such rulers as Nero and Caligula. Might the Messiah, who,...

Rocco Landesman, the NEA (National Endowment for the Arts) chairman, said, in part: "This is the first president that actually writes his own books since Teddy Roosevelt and arguably the first to write them really well since Lincoln. If you accept the premise, and I do, that the United States is the most powerful country in the world, then Barack Obama is the most powerful writer since Julius Caesar. That has to be good for American artists."...

...Which brings me to President Obama, our Optimist in Chief. He is a writer, an artist but we’ll come to that later. His second book had a title that would resonate with Lionel Tiger: “The Audacity of Hope”. This is much more than a felicitous phrase that he found in a sermon: it is the manifesto of this presidency and will lay the groundwork for the most arts-supportive administration since Roosevelt. Again, optimism presumes positive outcomes, the exigencies of the real world notwithstanding. The Obama campaign, and now the Obama presidency, has always been about aspiration: the idea that our...

Julius Caesar was a skilled orator ( without a teleprompter ) and a clever politician. He ruled Rome within a triumvirate (literally, a government of three). Pompey and Crassus his co rulers were back from the victory over Spartacus and the gladiator / slave revolt and Julius was engaged in the massive killing of Celts in Gaul, his personal province. Caesar was marching with his army to Rome, when a messenger intercepted them from the Senate in Ravena a small border town on the Rubicon River. Pompey and Crassus were worried that Caesar with his army would usurp power in...