Free Republic

Wrong victims. Wrong perpetrators. Wrong skin color. Wrong ideological facilitators. Karl Marx is the superstar lead in the blockbuster movie of anti-Western productions. Marxists focus their critique on economics. They insist that capitalism is both cruel and doomed by ineluctable historical forces. Marx has many supporting players, many totally unaware that they are extras in the anti-Western project. Many of these supporting players wear gauzy fabrics in pastel hues, shop at stores lulled by piped-in windchime music, and smell like patchouli. They believe themselves to be apolitical, peace-and-love flower children. They insist that their ideology, unlike that of the big,...

The west is the best. Video at link. (language warning)

In an age in which "cultural relativism" seems an unchallenged standard in academia, Larry Siedentop's Inventing the Individual -- The Origins of Western Liberalism is a pleasant deviation from that norm. A political philosopher who served as a Fellow of Keble College, Oxford, Siedentop wrote Inventing the Individual as an apologia for the West as a civilization which is caught up in a "competition of beliefs, whether we like it or not." Siedentop identifies "Islamic fundamentalism" as a primary competitor for Western civilization, but it is impossible to avoid the obvious point that the most vigorous opponents of his...

It annoys me to no end when someone says that Christianity was just as bad as Islam in the past by some "supposedly" well meaning but totally ignorant Atheist Liberal. What these fools all ignore was the Major differences in HOW the religions spread and WHEN they became misbehaving. So let's look at this and stare and compare as they say: Christianity: Started very peaceful, spread mainly by word of mouth and voluntary conversions, took several hundred years to spread across the world and then never did it by the sword. Many early Christians were heavily persecuted. Most all powerful...

n a SPIEGEL interview, Dutch Islam-opponent Geert Wilders discusses his fight for a Koran ban, why German Chancellor Angela Merkel is running scared on the immigration issue and his belief that the Netherlands' debate over Muslims has now crossed the border into Germany. SPIEGEL: Mr. Wilders, you are said to be the strong man behind the new Dutch government because the minority cabinet depends on your support in parliament. Why is your party, 65 years after the Holocaust, relying on outdated approaches -- on religious and racial exclusion? Wilders: We do not support religious exclusion -- and certainly not racial...

Hundreds of Bay Area Muslims cheered San Francisco Police Chief George Gascón as he publicly apologized Friday for comments he made a week earlier referring to the susceptibility of the Hall of Justice to a terrorist attack by local Middle Eastern residents.

Ladies and Gentlemen, still Islam is not our No. 1 problem, our No. 1 problem is called 'Cultural Relativism', the Elites that rule our countries have converted us to this sick philosophy a long time ago. Government leaders, Judges, even Churches, Trade Unions, Universitities, the Media, all of them are blinded by political correctness and have chosen the side of Islam. They feel sorry for Muslims and pity them. 'Cultural Relativism' is weakening the West day by day. As a result of this 'Cultural Relativism' a little bit of the Free West dies everyday. Many Politicians, seem to believe, unfortunately,...

Postmodernism is a worldview characterized by a belief in the lack of an objective truth, and wehich asserts that assertions of objective knowledge are essentially impossible. A strong part of postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from traditional approaches that had previously been dominant... Some postmodernist idea are: Truth is a "social construct," rather than objectively provable. There is no superior culture; Western culture is no better than any other (see cultural relativism)...

Unveiled women who get raped deserve it. That’s the pedagogy preached by the Mufti of Australia, Sheikh Taj al-Din al-Hilali, who recently sparked an international stir by pronouncing that women who do not veil themselves, and allow themselves to be “uncovered meat”, are at fault if they are raped. This is nothing new, of course, and it is somewhat mysterious why the Sheikh’s comments have caused any shock at all, since his view is legitimized by various Islamic texts and numerous social and legal Islamic structures. And that is why back in September 2004 in Denmark, al-Hilali’s Australian counterpart, the...

<p>What would you do for your mother? You'd do anything, of course. That's part of the trade-off: You get to be born, she gets to be driven to the flower show or the church or the methadone clinic for as long as she wants. But would you sacrifice history if it would make mom happy? Freedom? Your own country?</p>

The standard by which both Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein stand condemned. Susan Sontag, in her classic exchange with Andrew Sullivan on 9/11, repeated that oft-quoted line that "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter." And if you had asked her for the source of this supposed truth, it is quite probable that she would have alluded to the principle of cultural relativism. And the same argument may be seen behind those anti-war protestors who argue that we should respect the autonomy of Saddam Hussein's Iraq, however abhorrent the conduct of this regime may appear to our own parochial...

Sometimes history is shaped by the most unexpected of people. Take the case of Fa'apua'a Fa'amu. Fa'amu mounted the world stage, and from a very remote location, only twice in her long life: once, by telling a lie, in 1926; next, by telling the truth, in 1987. The lie, told to a 24-year-old graduate student in anthropology from Columbia University, concerned nothing less than Fa'amu's sex life. The truth-telling concerned the same. "We just fibbed and fibbed to her," an abashed Fa'amu confessed to Australian anthropologist Derek Freeman when he interviewed her in her old age. "Samoan girls are terrific...

<p>Education, my father the grateful immigrant would say, was the glorious prize for growing up in America. He quit school in the eighth grade and always regretted it. He believed education was the passport to understanding the values of this country.</p>

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