Free Republic

Editor's note: this piece was coauthored by Hagelin's daughter, Kristin Carey. If you could take any aspect from the family you grew up in and bring it into the family you have created, what would it be? A certain holiday tradition? The way your home was always filled with visitors? The friendship and affection your parents had for each other? Or maybe even the tough, but refining love they showed you?What would you obliterate, if you could? The alcoholism? The sting of abandonment? Strict rules and unfair punishment? Short tempers?Your answers to these questions may reveal more than you think. Even...

Or sooner; What has the US done to the music tradition of Western Civilization? There are plenty of Americans who understand and appreciate great composers like Beethoven, Vivaldi, Albinoni, Bach and Mozart, but something must be wrong with a nation that year after year produces crap like the music of 50 Cent, Katy Perry and Lady Gaga. I'm European and I admit we make a lot of worthless music too, but at least we Europeans are fostered in the great tradition of composers like the giants mentioned above.

German infantry at the Vistula River, 1916We are accustomed to thinking that such real-world physical experiences as war, defeat, and economic ruin produce such psychological, cultural, artistic, and social responses as disillusionment, frenzy (including frenzied enjoyments), and despair in the collective mind. The First World War — which, exactly 100 years later, we are now remembering, and whose lessons we are still pondering — seems to confirm and illustrate this belief. It was an event whose magnitude and impact we find hard to grasp even today. Though it began in the Balkans, it spread across the world to all continents...

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Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's sister has been arrested for allegedly threatening to bomb a New York City woman. Police say Ailina Tsarnaeva, 24, made the threat via telephone Monday and turned herself in earlier today. She is charged with aggravated harassment targeting a woman from Harlem. Police say the North Bergen, New Jersey, resident is due in court September 30.

The feminists held a “slut walk” in Chicago over the weekend. Nothing says feminism like women calling each other sluts. Their attempts to destigmitize the term slut by celebrating the sort of behavior that gets a girl labeled a slut says a lot about these folks. There’s nothing worse than “slut shaming,” which appears to be little more than calling a slut what she is. Interestingly one of the signs at the slut walk declared “all cops are bastards.” Apparently it’s acceptable to “slut shame” the mothers of police officers. None of the feminists saw the hypocrisy of such a...

Who says Siri is useless? A Florida man accused of killing his roommate found a novel use for Siri. Police say 20-year-old Pedro Bravo allegedly kidnapped and strangled his friend in 2012, but didn’t know where to dispose of the body — that was, until Siri helped him out. According to his iPhone’s records, Mr. Bravo allegedly asked Siri “I need to hide my roommate.” The personal assistant app kindly responded by asking “What kind of place are you looking for?” and then offered him four ideal places, including metal foundries, dumps, swamps and reservoirs.

Every culture has kids. Some just raise them better than others. If there's one thing Tiger Moms have in common with those bringing up Bébé, it's that they both show us just how varied parenting styles can be.Argentinian parents let their kids stay up until all hours, Japanese parents let 7-year-olds ride the subway by themselves and Danish parents leave their kids sleeping in a stroller on the curb while they go inside to shop or eat.Some global parenting styles might make American parents cringe, but others sure could use a close study. Vietnamese mothers, for instance, get their kids out...

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FoodNetwork marches cynically forward.

When Adam Smith put to paper the principles of market systems that Marx would later dismiss as capitalism, people were still dedicated to their religious faiths. Smith -- who was not in Washington at the time (ba-dum-tssshhh) -- knew this, and, even prior to releasing this monumental work, he laid the foundation of what his market system would be based on: “moral sentiments”. Smith was not a relativist, but he believed that morals were commonly held -- after all, Christendom was still holding on, albeit just barely and for dear life. True, enlightened capitalism, while inferior to distributism, is at...

Earlier this month, the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act was celebrated. During the act’s legislative debate, then-Sen. Hubert Humphrey, responding to predictions, promised, “I’ll eat my hat if this leads to racial quotas.” I don’t know whether Humphrey got around to keeping his promise, but here’s my question: Is it within the capacity of black Americans to make it in this society without the special favors variously called racial preferences, quotas, affirmative action and race-sensitive policies? What might a “yes” answer to that question assume and imply about blacks? Likewise, what would a “no” answer assume and imply?...

“Obama is the worst thing to ever happen to this country,” declares the wealthy, rakish, silver-haired Newport Beach white guy to his small group of perfectly tanned 50-something females sitting just a few feet away from us at a stunning restaurant patio overlooking the sun-kissed California coastline, just off of Highway 1, as he sipped his pinot and adjusted his wraparound Ray Bans, flush from the economy’s spectacular recovery that has benefitted his exact demographic most of all, stroking his purebred dog and taking various selfies with their $500 phones, oblivious to the furious swirls of irony and hypocrisy fluttering...

Enough is enough of the years of abuse from this president. His unsecured border crisis is the last straw that makes the battered wife say, “no mas.” Without borders, there is no nation. Obama knows this. Opening our borders to a flood of illegal immigrants is deliberate. This is his fundamental transformation of America. It’s the only promise he has kept. Discrediting the price paid for America’s exceptionalism over our history, he’s given false hope and taxpayer’s change to millions of foreign nationals who want to sneak into our country illegally. Because of Obama’s purposeful dereliction of duty an untold...

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“The saggin’ started in the prison where inmates couldn’t wear belts, but in jail culture things started to transcend,” said community activist Leonard Jahad, the state’s top New Haven probation supervisor, “The left pant leg rolled up meant you’re in a certain gang and both pant legs rolled up meant something else,“ Jahad said. “When pants are down like the kids wear on the streets, in prison, it means you are available to the next man for sexual activity.” Smith, who’s also entertainment director of the youth development organization Ice the Beef, said he and his peers don’t view the...

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...