Free Republic

Almost everyone has heard the phrase, "a gift that keeps on giving"; a reference to a charitable undertaking that encourages beneficiaries in the direction of self-reliance & personal responsibility. Such a gift is likely to involve recognition of important aspects of human nature--a concept or concepts that encourage individuals to identify & employ actual talents--that inspire beneficiaries to solve real problems, rather than look to others to solve those problems for them.

The undertold story of how the Pilgrims tried hard to live under what we could call communism and nearly starved to death. In 1623 they abruptly switched to private property and free markets and never went hungry again.

In what some project to be the opening gambit of a potential 2016 presidential campaign, Maryland’s Governor Martin O’Malley (D) declared that access to WiFi is a human right. “I’m not saying that people should merely be free to purchase and use WiFi at their own expense,” O’Malley clarified. “Doing what you please and paying for it out of your own pocket is an archaic conception of basic human rights. It may have been fine for our nation’s Founding Fathers because they didn’t know any better. Fortunately, we’ve made significant advances in our thinking since then.” A key phrase that...

I have long posited that the most important political/social theorist and tactician of the past century was the Italian communist Antonio Gramsci, who singlehandedly formulated the path to the malevolent political culture that has defeated liberty and under whose heel we suffer. The lineage is clear: Marx inspired Gramsci, Gramsci inspired Alinsky, and Alinsky inspired Hillary and Soetero. It is by Gramsci's design that collectivist central planners have captured every single social institution. If you do not understand Gamsci you cannot fully understand Alinsky and the appeal of fascism to the American Ruling Class. Broadcaster Steve Deace recently presented an...

‘My great fear,” Neil deGrasse Tyson told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes in early June, “is that we’ve in fact been visited by intelligent aliens but they chose not to make contact, on the conclusion that there’s no sign of intelligent life on Earth.” In response to this rather standard little saw, Hayes laughed as if he had been trying marijuana for the first time. All told, one suspects that Tyson was not including either himself or a fellow traveler such as Hayes as inhabitants of Earth, but was instead referring to everybody who is not in their coterie. That, alas, is...

We are fast becoming a nation of Pavlik Morozovs. Little Pavlik, you may recall, was the 13-year-old subject of a dubious Soviet story about how a young boy’s loyalty to the state trumped his love for his parents. Pavlik was supposedly witness to his father, the chair of his local Soviet, giving aid to enemies of the people. The boy turned his own father in to Stalinist authorities, the story went. Enraged by the betrayal, Pavlik was killed by his own family and was posthumously dubbed a martyr for socialist values. Though the tale was later proven to have been...

It used to be that what transpires between a doctor and patient was considered confidential. Under the Affordable Care Act the Government has now been added as a participant in observing communications between doctor and patient. Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell justified the expansion of those in the know as "only prudent. The Affordable Care Act has made the federal government responsible for the health of everyone in America. We can't adequately do that job if information on anyone's condition is withheld from us." "Unenlightened individuals may think that their health is their own concern," Burwell said. "They...

In the history of politics, there is only one fundamental, abiding issue: It is individualism vs. collectivism. Do individuals have the right to pursue their own happiness, as Thomas Jefferson thought and as the Declaration of Independence deemed self-evident? Or do we have an obligation to live our lives for the community or the state, as most societies have claimed throughout most of history?Yet if this is the paramount political issue, why is it not forthrightly debated in presidential elections and in other contests for public office? The reason is that American political debates tend to be dominated by...

Speaking at a commencement ceremony at Worcester Technical High School in Worcester, Massachusetts, President Obama urged graduates to “vote Republicans out of office before they chain you to a life of sweat, toil, and unwanted personal responsibility.” “Our country is at a crossroad,” Obama declared. “Will we continue to go forward toward a future of government-funded leisure for all? Or will the reactionaries of the GOP be permitted to drag us backward toward a lifestyle where everyone is dependent upon his or her own efforts?” “Rugged individualism may have served our country well in the past when there was a...

Concerned that the City is an inhomogeneous hodgepodge with pockets of great wealth in some neighborhoods and squalor in others, newly appointed Housing Preservation and Development Commissar Vicki Been announced a plan to move 80,000 to 120,000 poorer families into middle class neighborhoods. “This way instead of having blight and filth in every direction they might look poorer families will be within easy walking distance of a better kept neighborhood,” Been boasted. “The crimes that plague poorer sections of our City would be more evenly dispersed throughout the whole City. Victims will come from a more broadly representative subset of...

Bill Gates, the multi billionaire who does not have an earned college degree or teaching certificate, never taught a day in the classroom, never worked in an educational system or one room school house is comparing the education of children to electrical outlets.

Vice-President and potential contender for the 2016 Democratic nomination for President, Joe Biden rejected contentions that individual freedom is crucial to economic growth. “I know a lot of people keep insisting that it is America's free market and individual rights that account for this country's phenomenal economic growth, but is that really the case?” Biden asked. “Look at the rapid economic growth achieved by the Soviet Union during the 1930s and 40s. By mobilizing armies of human labor to build canals and mine metals they were able to transform perishable human resources into the durable infrastructure that vaulted the country...

"The children belong to all of us," Paul Reville, an education professor at Harvard and former Massachusetts secretary of Education, said Friday in explaining why states should adopt the Common Core State Standards Initiative. "What we're doing at the national level ... is what a lot of our states thought made sense individually. Why should some towns in cities or states have no standards or low standards and others have extremely high standards when the children belong to all of us and would move. And the same logic applies to the nation," he said, making the case for national standards....

Beginning his address, the Holy Father reiterated his imagery of Baptism as an unbroken chain in the transmission of faith. Each baptized Christian, he said, is a link in that chain. “Such is the grace of God and so is our faith, that we should transmit to our children, because they, as adults, can transmit it to their children,” the Pope said. “Baptism makes us enter into this People of God that transmits the faith. This is very important. A People of God that walks and transmits faith.” Continuing his catechesis on the Sacrament of Baptism, Pope Francis reminded the...

The fact that a state legislature would decree population density mandates to cities in the state is an intolerable tyranny. Naturally, the California legislature is doing it. But it has officially decided to worry about the environment of a fantasy world, not the real one.

What are we to make of the 20th Century? Like any period it is marked with its glories and its horrors. In his now classic work Modern Times, historian Paul Johnson gives a sober assessment of the 20th century and estimates, many think conservatively, that 100 million died in war and for ideological reasons in that violent century. Perhaps no century can be said to have been bloodier.It was a century of the imposition of every sort of collectivism from communism, fascism, tribalism, and socialism , all with catastrophic results. Whole populations were the subject of social experiments; and here...

Polls indicating that Obamacare may be costing Democrats the youth vote sparked outrage from several sources. Representative Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (Fla), Chair of the Democratic National Committee, characterized concerns over the price as “selfish and misguided.” “Those reacting negatively to insurance plans that double or triple their out-of-pocket costs for medical care are placing their own welfare ahead of society's,” she declared. “Maybe they think they're strong and healthy and don't need medication or therapy, but what about those who do?” The Congresswoman urged young people to “not try to substitute their thinking for that of the government's experts. These experts...

House Republican efforts to push the American Health Care Reform Act (HR-3121) were denounced by leading Democrats as “unfair” and “unpatriotic.” The bill would fully repeal Obamacare, allow consumers to purchase insurance across state lines, permit small businesses to pool resources so they can bargain for better deals, modify malpractice rules, expand access to health savings accounts, give individuals the same tax break on insurance that corporations enjoy, and provide funding to help insure those with pre-existing conditions. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius called the GOP bill “a stab in the back. These opportunists are using the failures...

In the eyes of some, the great hope for mankind has always been a sort of communal society. The thought behind this idea is that everyone could work towards a common end and share the fruits of their labor. As a matter of fact, Liberalism and social progressives teach this today. So, “in order to form a more perfect Union”, at all costs they foist their communal ideals upon society. In a perfect world, this type of social order would be heavenly. Unfortunately, we don’t live in paradise. That being the case, there are two things that war against this...

Pete Ferron at The Shrugging Out Podcast performed a brilliant satire on The Ruling Class of Washington, District of Criminals. The premise of the one-man-show is a conference call between the Federal Director of Communications and all Federal employees. Great satire depends on a kernel of truth, and Pete gives the whole cob. https://app.box.com/shared/static/v6m8xo51u8i9mx73vu8o.mp3 Pete has reached the same conclusion I have, namely that my point of view will not carry the day. We are optimists and true-believers, probably radicals, but that does not preclude us from seeing reality for what it is. You can listen to it at the...