Free Republic

Bari Weiss’s recent essay in Tablet, “Stop Being Shocked,” is a must-read for anyone hot on the trail of the metaphysical shift going on in American culture. She exposes the threat leftism poses to Jewish self-identity, but at a deeper level, she adds to the growing body of evidence proving the hopeless incompatibility of leftism and liberalism.Weiss begins with a useful definition of liberalism: [T]he belief that everyone is equal because everyone is created in the image of God. The belief in the sacredness of the individual over the group or the tribe. The belief that the rule of...

There is talk of a new American civil war. Indeed, the vitriol of opposing parties is reaching levels heretofore unseen. It is especially vicious now over the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy. There is nothing civil about this coming war. For now, it is still a culture battle, but it might be better labeled as an uncivil war. This new uncivil war is different from America’s last fratricidal conflict. At least back then there were social units involved that united against other social units. Everything was defined leaving no room for doubt one way or the other. It was territorial....

Jerry Taylor believes he can change the minds of conservative climate skeptics. After all, he helped plant the doubts for many in the first place. He’s president of the Niskanen Center, a libertarian-leaning Washington, DC, think tank he founded in 2014. He and his colleagues there are trying to build support for the passage of an aggressive federal carbon tax, through discussions with Washington insiders, with a particular focus on Republican legislators and their staff. Lesson one: Pick the right targets Political scientists consistently find that mass opinion doesn’t drive the policy debate, so much as the other way around....

A few hundred years ago, humanity went through a remarkable period of transformation, the Enlightenment. A number of different developments enabled this transformation to take place, and the impact of the Enlightenment has been tremendous. One area where the Enlightenment had particularly strong influence was in political theory. Before the Enlightenment, it was common knowledge that all men were natural slaves. We were slaves to our parents and slaves to our rulers in the same way that we were naturally slaves to God. This ancient doctrine justified the despotic political systems that had existed in one form or another throughout...

This is a question to all freepers, but first I want to give a little background to my interest in this: I studied Government/politics and policy and received a B.S. from Liberty University's Helms School of Government in 2006. I have been a political junkie as well as one concerned for our nation for a VERY long time! Over the last couple of years I have started looking at the politics of our international neighbors and allies, especially in the Anglo countries (UK, AU, CA) and various European and allied countries (such as Israel, SK, JP, etc..).

The 1950s were dark days for classical liberals. Big Government was an idea tolerated across the political spectrum in Western nations. In those years my colleague Warren Nutter often used to say that “saving the books” was the minimal objective of classical liberals. At the very least we had to keep liberal ideas in print. Friedrich von Hayek, the free market’s great advocate, broadened Nutter’s notion to “saving the ideas.” Both of these objectives have been achieved. Today liberal, free-market books are still read, and the ideas they advance are more widely understood than at mid-century. Today, for example, most...

David Nolan, who helped found the Libertarian Party in his Denver home and watched it grow into a force with national influence, died unexpectedly Sunday. The Tucson resident was 66. Nolan, whose friends described him as a "guiding light" of the Libertarian Party, opposed expansive government and had pledged to abolish personal income taxes if elected to office. In 2006, Nolan unsuccessfully ran against Gabrielle Giffords for a seat in Arizona's 8th Congressional District. This year, he challenged John McCain for his Senate seat and racked up 63,000 votes - in a state with only 24,000 registered Libertarians. "Dave was...

Not once in the history of man has the government ever successfully "stimulated" the economy. Not once has the state ever "rescued" the economy or "made it grow." If the government could genuinely perform such financial magic -- successfully printing money, or conjuring wealth from the clear blue sky, etc. -- wouldn't it do it all of the time, and at a much higher level? In the history of the world, all that government intervention in production and trade has ever done is make various economic actors -- both labor and management -- behave in ways that they don't want...

Free markets depend on truth telling. Prices must reflect the valuations of consumers; interest rates must be reliable guides to entrepreneurs allocating capital across time; and a firm's accounts must reflect the true value of the business. Rather than truth telling, we are becoming an economy of liars. The cause is straightforward: crony capitalism. Thomas Carlyle, the 19th century Victorian essayist, unflatteringly described classical liberalism as "anarchy plus a constable." As a romanticist, Carlyle hated the system—but described it accurately. Classical liberals, whose modern counterparts are libertarians and small-government conservatives, believed that the state's duties should be limited (1) to...

Today's G-20 economic summit conference in London is virtually guarenteed to be a ghastly pro-Big Government orgy -- a veritable Lolapalooza for Leviathan. Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan -- not to mention John Locke and Adam Smith -- are going to be spinning in their graves. Nothing is more certain than that this tour de force of politico-economic stupidity and depravity is going to come out four-square against true free enterprize, capitalism, and laissez-faire. Sadly and almost incomprehensibly, the great conclusion of today's deepest thinkers (sic) is that the "Anglo-Saxon" version of political and economic liberty has proven to be...

The Fall of Athens The Greek government loses the battle of ideas, and then it loses control. When Greece's conservative New Democracy party came to power in March 2004 it promised three things: to "reinvent" the state, to eliminate corruption and to initiate much-needed educational reform. Four years later, the situation remains unchanged: The state is still a tool for bestowing benefits and favors, corruption in the public sector is still rampant, and all attempts at educational reform have quickly fizzled out.

Proposition 8 was an unsung victory for defenders of individual liberty. Wait, I know what many people will say to this. How can a measure that prevents gay couples from getting a marriage license be beneficial to the defense of individual liberty? It's because that vote represented a line drawn in the sand, even if a thin one, preventing the government from furthering its control over the institution. As it currently stands, there is nothing short of the problem of finding a pastor, priest or rabbi who is willing to perform the marriage rite that is stopping most gay couples...

In a desolate public park in Columbus, Ohio, a man responded to the advances of a topless woman. She asked him to "show me yours." When he did, police officers arrested him. Columbus law says her being topless is OK; exposing his genitalia is not. Why did cops hide in the shadows to arrest a man no one but they could see? On last week's "20/20", Dr. Marty Klein pointed out that the police weren't protecting children. "There were no children anywhere in sight. In fact, there were no adults anywhere in sight." Klein says it's part of "America's War...

Well, when you've got a headache, you take an aspirin. When you've got the flu, you take something a little stronger. When you've got cancer, you need chemotherapy, which kills cancer cells but can come perilously close to killing the patient. It's a sad truth, but the Republican Party has the political equivalent of cancer. The party is immune from internal reform. Only the nastiest medicine imaginable can save it, and four (but probably eight) years of Clinton, backed by a Democratic congressional majority, is pretty tough medicine. Columnist Joe Dumas, writing for the Chattanoogan.com, captured the party's problem succinctly:...

As we all look forward to more sputtering news conference antics from Sen. Larry Craig, here's hoping that the Idaho politician will eventually draw on traditional Republican principles and stand up for his right to engage in consensual sex in toilet stalls with men. Craig, a critic of the Patriot Act who weakened some of its worst provisions during last year's renewal vote, clearly understands the need to keep the government from snooping willy-nilly on its citizens. At first flush, the news that the 62-year-old senior senator from the Gem State pleaded guilty Aug. 8 to misdemeanor charges of disorderly...

In 1985 a prominent liberal legal figure argued that Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that established a constitutional right to an abortion, was a “heavy-handed judicial intervention” that “was difficult to justify and appears to have provoked, not resolved, conflict.” The writer was Ruth Bader Ginsburg, now an associate justice on the U.S. Supreme Court—and also now a strong supporter of Roe. Ginsburg isn’t the only backer of abortion rights to have taken issue with the 1973 decision. In 1995, for example, the University of Chicago’s Cass Sunstein, a superstar among liberal law professors, wrote in the Harvard...

A wealthy libertarian is bankrolling a challenge to D.C.’s gun regulations—the most restrictive in the country. What drives him—and his take on whether the case will go to the Supreme Court. The District of Columbia has the most restrictive gun laws in the country. But that’s a distinction the nation’s capital will soon lose—if Robert Levy prevails. Levy was born in Washington, but left years ago; a resident of Naples, Fla., who made a fortune as an investment analyst, he is now a senior fellow in constitutional studies at the libertarian Cato Institute. A critic of what he sees as...

Cities need to keep fees and taxes low. City staff should be helpful to customers. Hey, why not schedule office hours at times that suit those customers, not that suit city workers? Yet cities are increasingly closing their offices Fridays so that workers have another day off. Cities need to look at privatization and at shedding unnecessary departments – Sandy Springs, Ga., privatized the entire city (with the exception of public safety services) and is far better run and more efficient than neighboring cities. This new urban agenda also would end subsidies and special privileges for politically well-connected businesses, with...

I interviewed Michael Moore recently for an upcoming "20/20" special on health care. It's refreshing to interview a leftist who proudly admits he's a leftist. He told me that government should provide "food care" as well as health care and that big government would work if only the right people were in charge. Moore added, "I watch your show and I know where you are coming from. ... " He knows I defend limited government, so he tried to explain why I was wrong. He began in a revealing way: "I gotta believe that, even though I know you're very...

f I refuse to pay the full amount, I will become a ward of one of the biggest growth industries in the country: the government-run prison system. I am free to pay about half of all my earnings to the government, which will use those taxes to erect a multitude of offices and pay its workers salaries and benefits that are far more than most of us will ever earn. The government's "child protective services" workers are free to take anyone's children away from them based on their discretion. Parents are then forced into a totally secret court system, in...