Free Republic

Crowns made for the electro-jazz band Dagadana. (Photo: Third Roosters/Треті Півні)Back before the traditions of Eastern Europe were changed by war and Communism, as a young girl grew up in Ukraine, she would be allowed to decorate her hair, simply at first, with flowers, ribbons, and tendrils of green. In the summer, the flowers would be fresh; in the winter, they might be made of paper or cloth. Once the girl wanted to announce that she was ready for courtship, she would put on a much more elaborate headdress of flowers. When she found a man to marry, her friends...

Welcome to the Communist Party, U.S.A. How Hillary’s scary speech revealed her mistake in wearing a white pants suit to her coronation. July 29, 2016 Daniel Greenfield Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam. Wearing a white pantsuit, Hillary Clinton plodded out on stage to accept the nomination that she had schemed, plotted, lied, cheated, rigged and eventually fixed a series of elections to obtain. Then she claimed that she was accepting the nomination of a race she had rigged with “humility”. Humility is not the first word...

We all know that Venezuelan socialism has been a total disaster. People were reportedly eating dogs, cats, and birds for sustenance. Crime was spiking. Inflation is out of control—and there is what could only be described as gladiatorial battles to get the most basic supplies at the supermarkets. Energy shortages have led to rolling blackouts. Toilet paper is now a luxury item. Access to medicine has been a nightmare, with the country’s entire hospital system operating in deplorable conditions. It’s so bad that some places don’t have gloves or soap. Of course, many Venezuelans have resorted to looting to survive.

Latin America’s hard-left -- the left enraptured by Fidel Castro’s 57-year-old Cuban Revolution and Hugo Chavez’s 21st Century Socialism -- has been losing terrain, indeed collapsing, both on efficiency and on moral grounds. Countries ruled by like-minded leaders and parties have generally shown a poorer economic performance than the region at large. This has notably been the case of Argentina under Nestor and Cristina Kirchner; of Brazil under the second mandate of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and his successor, Dilma Rousseff; and, most of all, of Venezuela throughout its 17 years of Chavismo. True, Bolivia’s Evo Morales, as well...

Wearing a white pantsuit, Hillary Clinton plodded out on stage to accept the nomination that she had schemed, plotted, lied, cheated, rigged and eventually fixed a series of elections to obtain. Then she claimed that she was accepting the nomination of a race she had rigged with “humility”.

Subtitle: Critics fear the erosion of civic freedoms is denying space for grievances to be aired In one of his last interviews before he was detained by Chinese police, Meng Han appeared relaxed as he talked about his work as a labour activist. “Our most important work is to help factory workers organise themselves so they can defend their rights,” he told the Financial Times last year. “The government rarely helps the workers. But as long as the workers don’t go to extremes, it will stay neutral.” At the beginning of 2015, Mr Meng could feel reasonably confident that he...

Why so many young people following Bernie?

Roger Bauer, Resides in an apartment in Orem Utah just 30 minutes from Salt Lake City where he works as an arc welder. Roger beings his mornings bright and early before the sun rises where he fashions a quick breakfast in his kitchenette. A recent convert to The Church of Jesus Christ of latter Day Saints, he forgoes coffee and tea that he once would have had and instead enjoy a glass of orange juice or a smoothie if one is available. He goes to work just as dawn is breaking over Provo Peak and the Aspen groove hills. He...

Minnesota Sen. Al Franken (D) had some chilling advice for parents at the 2016 DNC: “Now, many of you have jobs, many of you have families. Ignore them.” He went on to say “Let me tell you something, kids love it when their parents are not home. They love it. And let me tell you something else, an eight-year-old kid knows how to use a microwave oven. And let me tell you something else, an eight-year-old kid can teach a four-year-old kid to use a microwave oven, it’s scientific fact. Don’t worry about your kids, they will be fine. You...

Donald J. Trump, "citizen" candidate, is being viewed as an "outsider" to the political class in Washington D.C. In reality, our founders, including George Washington and Thomas Jefferson among other founders, were affluent plantation owners and capitalists. In this context, Trump has more in common with our founders, also "citizen" politicians, then any political class Republican presidential candidate since our founding.

Globalist elite cooperation can defeat the “chronic violence” that is caused by real jihadism in France and supposed racism in police forces, President Barack Obama told a roomful of foreign ambassadors July 15. “Overnight in Nice [France], we witnessed another tragic and appalling attack on the freedom and the peace that we cherish … [and] it’s been a difficult several weeks in the United States,” Obama told the ambassadors gathered in the White House. After mentioning the Nice attack and hinting at the police engagements, Obama sketched out his demand for globalist fix for the “chronic violence” that he says...

In a far corner of southern Italy, transactions in fake currency are not only accepted by local shopkeepers, they are positively encouraged. The small Calabrian town of Gioiosa Ionica, population 7,000, is currently home to a group of asylum seekers, who are given the imitation bank notes, or "tickets" as they are known, as part of a voucher system. The refugees can spend the cash on whatever they like, but only in the town, so that local businesses benefit. Rather than featuring European architectural gems, they bear the likenesses of a collection of communists and leftist leaders - Che Guevara...

The way we think of left and right is a relic of the Cold War. Reality is catching up I wouldn’t be the first to observe that Donald Trump never uses the words “freedom” or “liberty”. In the United States, a Republican presidential candidate who avoids those terms – someone who doesn’t gloss every speech with talk of shining cities on hills – is like a baker who doesn’t use flour. Trump also rarely talks about “left” and “right” and those movements’ foot soldiers, “liberals” and “conservatives”. Odd, isn’t it? Left and right are the defining concepts of American...

The new Advanced Placement European History framework has received a makeover that eliminates religion’s influence on the development of Western Civilization, ignores Winston Churchill, whitewashes the evils of communism, and lauds the welfare state, according to David Randall with the right-of-center National Association of Scholars. […] Virtually all mention of religion in the 19th century is removed, and several key figures such as Christopher Columbus and Winston Churchill are not mentioned in the College Board’s framework, Randall said. […] The College Board’s new AP European History examination, which debuted last year, “turns Europe’s history into a foreshortened, neo-Marxist, generic narrative...

The Vermont senator ends his campaign -- after pushing Democrats even farther to the Left After extracting major policy concessions from Democrats, Marxist grandstander Bernie Sanders finally ended his primary campaign and endorsed his rival Hillary Clinton for the presidency. The endorsement, which New York Times columnist Andrew Rosenthal promptly labeled “uninspiring,” sounded perfunctory.

Mark Levin and others are pressuring the state legislatures to call for a "Constitutional Convention," or "Convention of States," or "Assembly of States." Doesn't matter which name you use, it's all the same thing. It is an effort not to amend our Constitution, but to change it significantly, or to replace it entirely. Here's how: The authorization for amending or changing the Constitution of the United States is found in Article V of the US Constitution. It is very short. Only one sentence. In fact, only the first two lines of that sentence are important, because in them, the Founding...

Next week the YAF (Young America’s Foundation) kicks off their rollicking Road to Freedom seminars at their headquarters in Virginia. Attendees “will be introduced to works of intellectual leaders such as—Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, Ludwig Von Mises, among others—who influenced President Reagan and the largest peacetime expansion of the economy in American history.”In addition to this invaluable instruction (or reminder) of the historic role of free-markets with human freedom and of socialism with slavery, this year’s event will feature a methodical, merciless (and hilarious) “deconstruction” of the world’s top symbol of socialism: Che Guevara. In keeping with the “deconstructor’s” traditional...

MINNEAPOLIS – In the wake of protests in Ferguson, Missouri, where authorities were criticized for what some called heavy-handed tactics against demonstrators, many departments took a more restrained approach. Now, after the shooting deaths of five officers at a Dallas protest decrying last week's police killings of two more black men, some experts are suggesting it's possible the pendulum could swing from hugs back to flash-bang grenades and mass arrests....

Not long ago, the regime that Hugo Chávez founded was an object of fascination for progressives worldwide, attracting its share of another-world-is-possible solidarity activists. Today, as the country sinks deeper into the Western Hemisphere’s most intractable political and economic crisis, the time has come to ask some hard questions about how this regime — so obviously thuggish in hindsight — could have conned so many international observers for so long.

There are a lot of details on why this was a miscarriage of justice. The best starting place is Andy McCarthy’s column at National Review, FBI Rewrites Federal Law to Let Hillary Off the Hook. But those are mere details. Important details, critical details, details worth writing about — but not the big picture. Noah Rothman at Commentary wrote: No amount of cynicism could have prepared Americans for what they witnessed on Tuesday morning, and 2016 has not been short on cynicism. Getting closer. The best truly big picture view I saw was from Karol Markowicz, a columnist for the...