Free Republic

Kim Jong Un is now playing the role of wedding spoiler. The North Korean dictator banned all weddings – and funerals – for the coming week as the reclusive country gears up to anoint him as their official leader at the first Workers' Party of Korea Congress in 36 years, Britain’s Sunday Times reports.

Someone showed up at a Ted Cruz event in Elkhart, Indiana today with a copy of the Communist Manifesto. According to a reporter for the Texas Tribune, the kid, who looked like he could be a college student, asked Cruz to sign his “economic textbook.” A young man asks Ted Cruz to sign his "economic textbook." "That… would be the Communist Manifesto," Cruz says, realizing the prank.— Patrick Svitek (@PatrickSvitek) April 28, 2016 Video of the encounter published by WSBT22 shows Cruz paused and said, “You know what, I’ll sign it as well.” The college kid replied, “Ah, you...

[...] Sanders is wrong about the New Deal "putting people to work" since their government-funded activity did nothing to create wealth or end the depression. The Depression lasted until 1945. And the New Deal certainly isn't "the foundation of the middle class" which grew and thrived in the second half of the 19th century. However, when he classifies the New Deal programs that dominate US policy today as "socialist," Sanders is absolutely correct. In fact, if a democratic socialist of the 19th century were to get into a time machine and travel to the modern United States, he'd be forced...

It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonored by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice; ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money. Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess? Ye have no more religion than my...

Chinese President Xi Jinping says that China must be on guard against nefarious religious influences from abroad. His comments over the weekend follow a tightening of religious space that has seen bans on the wearing of veils and beards in the predominantly Muslim region of Xinjiang and the removal of church crosses in eastern China. “We must resolutely guard against overseas infiltrations via religious means and prevent ideological infringement by extremists,” Xi said at a Beijing conference on religions attended by top leaders, according to the official Xinhua News Agency. …

Bernie Sanders is not going to be president. But in defeat he has accomplished something extraordinary, probably something more important than anything he could have achieved in four or eight frustrating years in the White House. For the first time since the end of the Cold War — and perhaps since the beginning of the Cold War — large numbers of Americans have begun to ask questions about capitalism.

I wonder who in Downing Street briefed Barack Obama’s team on the wording of his friendly warning to the British. Somebody obviously pointed out that the population of this country retained a quaint obsession with the Second World War, and would therefore treat any reference to the glorious dead as irreproachable. So the President invoked the European graves of those American servicemen who died to protect – well, what exactly? I thought it was the democratic values and reverence for national independence that Britain shared with the US. Did Mr Obama have any sense at all that what he was...

Suppose you are a liberal-minded person and sincerely want to help people — specifically, poor people and minorities. What kind of educational strategies do you use? The two main options are: A: Young children quickly learn how to read and write; they master basic skills and knowledge. The emphasis is on becoming an educated person. B: Children are directed toward social and psychological goals. The emphasis is on behavior and indoctrination. Is any decision more basic, more profound? But stop and think: have you ever heard this issue debated? Or even mentioned? In fact, this issue has been played out...

“The People, Mystical Category.” The Political Vision of the South American Pope An essay by Professor Zanatta has come out in Argentina and Italy, on the “populism” of Francis. The thread that ties together his visit to Lesbos and his affinity for the anti-capitalist and anti-globalization “popular movements” by Sandro Magister ROME, April 20, 2016 – When he crosses the territories of politics, Pope Francis blazes new trails. He seeks direct contact, solidarity, with those he sees as victims of the world powers and at the same time the protagonists of the redemption to come. He does not enunciate programs,...

Barack Obama exhibits a pattern of behavior Americans should recognize by now. Whenever this president starts talking about “loosening the grip” of corporations, increasing competition, and opening markets to ensure lower prices it’s a sure sign that the noose of government is about to become tighter around America’s neck. For nearly eight years, under the guise of shielding the American people from harm, Obama has methodically shifted power away from the private sector toward the most powerful and corrupt conglomerate on the face of the planet –- the U.S. federal government. Let’s not beat around the bush; the prospect of...

Did you watch CNN’s Democratic debate Thursday night? I actually did, and get this. I was entertained. Thoroughly entertained. I had a feeling it would be a bit more exciting, especially since Bernie Sanders has been out there questioning Hillionaire’s qualifications. At one point, Dana Bash grilled Hillary on releasing the transcripts of her Wall Street speeches, and it was glorious. “Secretary Clinton, if I may, Senator Sanders keeping bringing up the speeches that you gave to Goldman Sachs. So I’d like to ask you, so you’ve said that you don’t want to release the transcripts, until everybody does it,...

The People’s Republic of China is run by people who like to celebrate anniversaries. The marking of the centenary of the foundation of the Communist Party in 2021–despite not happening for another five years–in some senses has already started, enshrined in the centennial goals that Xi Jinping and his colleagues have been heralding for the last year or so. Anniversaries for the start of reform (40 years in 2018), the 40th anniversary of the death of Mao Zedong (September this year), and a dozen other large and small things litter the calendar of leaders, taking up a surprising amount of...

Janna Sundeyeva still remembers life in the Soviet Union, where stores in remote regions would lack meat for months at a time and toilet paper had to be snatched up quickly on the rare occasions it appeared. But the minor indignities paled in comparison to what happened to her grandfather: He had the chance to come to America in 1929, but he opted to stay, sensing an economic thaw. Seven years later, Sundeyeva says, he was arrested and never heard from again. Sundeyeva immigrated to San Francisco from Moldova in 1994, and now she and her husband run a Russian-language...

Chinese authorities ‘arrest’ Ronald McDonald statue Chinese authorities weren’t lovin’ Ronald McDonald this week, hauling away a statue of the clown that was blocking sidewalk foot traffic. Uniformed code enforcement officers in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou ripped the Ronald McDonald figure off its base, leaving only his big red shoes behind, as shoppers in the Huadu District of commerce hub Guangzhou looked on in amazement Sunday. The city had been warning operators of this McDonald’s that its statue was hindering pedestrian traffic, according to state organ the People’s Daily. “We’ve asked them to remove the Ronald McDonald statue...

Calling GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump "an appalling choice," President Barack Obama promised a frightened nation that "I will do whatever I can to prevent this man from succeeding me as president." The President didn't rule out "any extraordinary, extra-legal actions that might be needed. Hopefully, it won't come to that. I trust that American voters will opt to continue the progress I've made by electing Secretary Clinton in November. But rest assured, I will not shy away from doing what it takes to keep Mr. Trump out of the Oval Office." Meanwhile, Obama's preferred successor sought to differentiate herself...

My student debt surrounds me like the construction on the University of Massachusetts campus; no matter how hard I try to avoid it, it shows up everywhere. It keeps me from getting to class on time, it ripped a hole in my backpack and it just puts me in a terrible mood. Like the construction, my student debt affects my every decision: what books I buy for classes versus which ones I can access for free, the amount of hours I work to pay my rent and if I can even continue my education at UMass. You can get rid...

CHRISTIAN communities in China have been left horrified after the government started tearing down thousands of crucifixes in a crude bid to eradicate the faith in the country. More than two thousand crosses have now been forcefully removed from churches as part of a government campaign to regulate "excessive religious sites". ... Several members of the public have since been arrested for attempting to halt the government's crude attempt to suppress the Christian faith. Among the arrested was prominent human rights lawyer Zhang Kai, who was detained after he mounted a legal campaign to challenge the removal of the crosses....

Last night, in a parking lot in South Carolina, a car drove by with the following message on a bumper sticker, or should it be bummer sticker: Socialism: Because People Matter More Than Profits

The America we live in, our nation, our people, our society, is not the America most of us were born in at all. The uniquely American forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the football games, the local bars, the movies, the concerts, and the holidays. But the spirit, which most of us never noticed because we made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, has been fundamentally transformed. The transformation has occurred through the slowly creeping separation of not only the government from the people, but the people themselves from their country. It has taken place...

Bernie Sanders and his young supporters say, “No worries, we’re democratic socialists.” Outsiders say, “No problem, they barely know what socialism is.” Others see Sanders’s movement as a passing response to an economic downturn. All of this is largely mistaken. Modern American socialism is decidedly undemocratic; its young acolytes are far less ignorant of socialism than they appear; and contemporary socialism is more of a religious than an economic phenomenon. Distracted by the disturbing rise of Donald Trump, liberals and conservatives alike are responding far too complacently to a recrudescent socialist movement that is destined to harm our democracy. *********snip***********...