Free Republic

Christina SterbenzJuly 3, 2014Cultures are complicated, and anyone attempting to explain or group them will struggle to avoid giving offense. Political scientists Ronald Inglehart of the University of Michigan and Christian Welzel of Luephana University in Germany put forth their best effort by analyzing data and plotting countries on a "culture map." Their system stems from the World Values Survey (WVS), the largest"non-commercial, cross-national, time series investigation of human beliefs and values ever executed," which dates back to 1981 and includes nearly 400,000 respondents from 100 countries. The latest chart, published several years ago, includes data from surveys conducted from...

LAREDO, Texas--A glimpse into the reality of the thousands of illegal immigrants being released into the U.S. by the Obama Administration was captured on video in a Greyhound Bus station in Laredo, Texas this weekend. The illegal immigrants who cross as incomplete family units simply enter the U.S. illegally, turn themselves in to U.S. Border Patrol agents, are processed, and then released with a notice to appear at a future date for court proceedings. U.S. taxpayers then fund bus tickets for the illegal immigrants to go to the U.S. city of their choosing. Approximately 95 percent of the illegal immigrants...

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — When Rachel Martinez-Regan graduated from Corvallis High School this month, her diploma had a little something extra — an embossed seal certifying that she is bilingual. Dual-language programs have gained in popularity across the country as employers seek bilingual, bicultural workers, and more parents view bilingualism as necessary for their children's success in a globalized world. Such programs are offered in Spanish, Mandarin, Vietnamese and Russian, among other languages, and many have waiting lists.

Of all the purposes for which you might put U.S. taxpayer dollars at risk, helping wealthy petro-states borrow millions to buy Boeing jets would not rank among the most urgent. Yet that is what the Export-Import Bank does: In fiscal 2013, Ex-Im backed $8.3 billion in aircraft and related sales, including a $117.5 million loan guarantee to support Boeing 737 purchases by Dubai — a typical transaction for an agency that has, over the years, earned the sobriquet “Bank of Boeing,” though it does also support Caterpillar and General Electric, among others. Now Ex-Im suddenly faces extinction: Its charter expires...

The counter counterculture uprising social conservatives promised us after the Supreme Court's neutering of the Defense of Marriage Act never quite manifested.... But in the days before the high court delivered its rulings on DOMA and California's Proposition 8, Tony Perkins, the president of the Christian conservative Family Research Council, was desperately admonitory that the country's top jurists not invite ruin on America by accurately interpreting the Constitution. "If the Supreme Court steps in and says, 'We're redefining marriage, same-sex marriage will be the law across the land,' it will create a firestorm of opposition," Perkins' Magic 8-Ball warned. "This...

The uber-hawks and neocons like Richard Cheney who led America into the disastrous invasion of Iraq are campaigning for a repeat. If only the U.S. will go to war along the Euphrates a second time, they promise, everything will turn out well. Americans should ignore these Sirens of Death. Attempting to forcibly transform Iraq never was Washington’s responsibility. Having botched the job once, U.S. policymakers should not try again. There certainly is no public support for new military adventures in Mesopotamia. There was much to despise about Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. He was a murderous thug with outsize ambitions, but he...

Last week, during the official celebration of the Los Angeles Kings’ Stanley Cup victory, the mayor of Los Angeles, Eric Garcetti, told a jammed Staples Center that “there are two long-standing rules for politicians”: “They say never, ever be pictured with a drink in your hand, and never swear. But this is a big f***ing day,” he said, holding up a bottle of Bud Light. You read that right. In front of 18,000 people at Staples and hundreds of thousands of others watching on television — many of them, of course, children — the mayor of the second-largest city...

It's not just that there's a lack of a Christian way of thinking -- a "Christian mind" -- but there is hardly a mind at all. Some years ago I read an article in Newsweek about a husband and wife team of scientists who studied ducks. In order to observe their habits, they built a blind by a pond, then settled in to watch. During their investigations, they observed among the ducks incidences of what they called gang rape. While it was not written in so many words, the bottom line of the article was this: If gang rape takes...

The unsparing and harshly critical report from attorney Anton Valukas' investigation into General Motors, which held its annual shareholders meeting Tuesday morning, finds an array of culprits behind the company's ignition switch crisis. It cites a lack of urgency in the culture and, as GM CEO Mary Barra described it, "a pattern of incompetence." It blames an unwillingness of those in the know to reconsider their conclusions, and a dizzying number of committees with little clear accountability. The report also makes several references to the role corporate speak played in the wrongdoing. Typically, we think of corporate speak as trivialities...

When I was working on my book, “7 Men: And the Secret of Their Greatness,” I thought about the way that our culture has depicted men, specifically fathers, over the past half-century or so. It’s hard to believe today, but one of the iconic television shows of the 1950s was actually called “Father Knows Best.” And believe it or not, the title was not ironic! Jim Anderson, played by Robert Young, really did know best. He was kind, patient, generous and firm when he needed to be. As the saying goes, that was then and this is, well, not then....

A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History, by Nicholas Wade (Penguin Press, 288 pp., $27.95) In 2001, the New England Journal of Medicine published an editorial provocatively titled “Racial Profiling in Medical Research.” The author, Robert Schwartz, reiterated the commonly held view that no biological basis exists for race, and then argued that physicians should not consider race in their research or medical practice. This prompted a sharp response from geneticist Neil Risch, who pointed out that numerous studies had demonstrated significant genetic differences among humans based on continental ancestry, suggesting evidence of five distinct races. Among the reasons...

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Five people were killed and at least 15 others have been wounded in separate shootings across the city since Friday evening, including eight shot within the first 30 minutes of June. The most recent fatal shooting happened early Sunday in the Austin neighborhood, when a teenage boy was killed and five others were wounded. The six were standing in a group at the intersection of West Ferdinand Street and North Lavergne Avenue about 12:30 a.m. when several shooters emerged from a nearby alley and opened fire, police said.

Evil murderer Elliot Rodger tried to target women who allegedly wouldn’t engage in sexual relations with him. He managed to murder three men and three women in the process. In order to score cheap political points on Twitter, feminists have created #YesAllWomen. It’s little more than grievance peddling and a vain attempt to turn all men into the next Elliot Rodger. The media of course loves this sort of meaningless Twitter narcissism. They’ve declared it “powerful” and thought provoking. Everything progressives do is “powerful” according to the media. There is little powerful about women whining on Twitter. In fact, if...

Senator Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer have taken it upon themselves to single out Rep. Steve King on the floor of the Senate for having the courage to stand for We the People against open borders. As we noted yesterday, the party has refused to defend him, and top NRSC aides are involved in an ad campaign against him. Well, when nobody in the party defends you, a man’s got to do it himself. King took to the House floor to respond to them. You can watch the full clip here.

Nigeria's homegrown, al-Qaeda-linked militant group, Boko Haram, brags openly that it recently kidnapped about 300 young Nigerian girls. It boasts that it will sell them into sexual slavery. Those terrorists have a long and unapologetic history of murdering kids who dare to enroll in school, and Christians in general. For years, Western aid groups have pleaded with the State Department to at least put Boko Haram on the official list of terrorist groups. But former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's team was reluctant to come down so harshly, in apparent worry that some might interpret such condemnation as potentially offensive...

Since the 1960's era of peace, drugs and "free love," Christians, conservatives and patriots have largely departed the critical heart shaping, storytelling, teaching and communication roles that are essential to preserving America's culture. Rather than "standing in the gap" with courage, the majority of media conservatives and Christians have chosen to take the path of least resistance, sprinting away from the "public square" when demonstrably false, vicious lies and personal attacks are directed our way. We have largely shown the opposite of courage under fire. Turning the other cheek is one thing. Running and hiding like cowards is something quite...

...Why does the Economist magazine put a tethered eagle on its cover, with the plaintive question, "What would America fight for?" Why do Washington Post columnists sympathetic to the administration write pieces like one last week headlined, "Obama tends to create his own foreign policy headaches"? Clues may be found in the president's selfie with the attractive Danish prime minister at the memorial service for Nelson Mandela in December; in State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki in March cheerily holding up a sign with the Twitter TWTR +0.44% hashtag #UnitedForUkraine while giving a thumbs up; or Michelle Obama looking glum last...

‘Two, four, six, eight. Stop the violence. Stop the rape.” So chanted a group of Ohio University students calling themselves “f***rapeculture” at a protest a couple of years ago. Rape-culture activists have become a fixture on campuses throughout the country, and now, 55 colleges — including Harvard, Princeton, and Berkeley — are under federal investigation for mishandling sexual-assault complaints. Some of my conservative/libertarian sisters have pointed out that the statistics on sexual assault are wildly inflated. Christina Hoff Sommers notes that the “one in five women are victims of rape” statistic that the Centers for Disease Control popularized (and that...

There are many ways to slice and dice America's power/wealth hierarchy. The conventional class structure is divided along the lines of income, i.e. the wealthy, upper middle class, middle class, lower middle class and the poor. I've suggested that a more useful scheme is to view America through the lens not just of income but of political power and state dependency, as a Three-and-a-Half Class Society (October 22, 2012):