Free Republic

According to the latest census data, African Americans make up just over 13% of the US population. That means out of the 317 million people living in the USA, there are about 41 million blacks -- just over the total population of California. However, looking at the popular culture you'd never know that. Black music dominates popular music. Black culture is how most people define "cool." And most of all, what might offend blacks dominates popular culture, media, education, and entertainment. Fred Reed writes:

DRESDEN, Germany -- Long before the terror attacks in Paris, anti-Muslim prejudice was on the rise in Europe. It was underscored Thursday during an anti-Islamic rally in Dresden, Germany. "We are the people," they chant. But this isn't a chant about a society being united. This is a chant of exclusion. An anti-Muslim rally in Dresden, Germany CBS NEWS They're part of a movement protesting what they see as the threat to German culture from rising numbers of Muslim immigrants to their country. Chancellor Angela Merkel may have said Islam is part of Germany now, but not to these people....

Talk about being way ahead of the curve: 2014 has officially been named “The Year of the Butt.”Way, waaaay ahead of the curveAnd suddenly everybody is covering this phenom: there’s the PG-rated Yahoo version: From Instagram sensation Jen Selter and her “belfies” (butt + selfie), to Kim Kardashian’s bare-it-all photoshoot in Paper magazine, it’s clear backsides are taking a front seat. Not to mention Jennifer Lopez and Iggy Azalea’s “Booty,” Nicki Minaj’s “Anaconda,” and Meghan Trainor’s “All About That Bass” bringing up the rear. And the R-rated Vogue report: Recently, Nicki Minaj remixed the original butt song by Sir Mix-A-Lot,...

Every now and then you come across an article that folks just need to read. This one written by Michael Smith entitled, “Confessions of a Public Defender” and originally posted at American Renaissance on May 9, 2014 is one of those articles. It is a profound and deeply disturbing piece, which, as we end 2014, we all need to comprehend as we move towards the 50th anniversary of the Great Society initiatives of President Lyndon Baines Johnson. Smith articulates that which ails the black community — the real discussion we should be having on race, not that of victimhood and...

President Obama says his recent executive actions granting millions of illegal immigrants temporary amnesty could spur Republicans to work together with Democrats on the issue, but if they solidify what he called a “nativist trend” in parts of the Republican Party, there probably won’t be much progress. “If your view is that immigrants are either fundamentally bad to the country or that we actually have the option of deporting 11 million immigrants, regardless of the disruptions, regardless of the cost, and that that is who we are as Americans, I reject that,” Mr. Obama told NPR. On the other hand,...

Attorney General Holder announced today that the Department of Justice will take the position in litigation that the protection of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 extends to claims of discrimination based on an individual’s gender identity, including transgender status. “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.” 1 Corinthians 6:9,10 WARNING! Protecting Pedophiles Will Be Next: NYT writer:...

Senator Rand Paul introduced the Preventing Executive Overreach on Immigration Act on December 12. The bill (which has not yet been assigned a bill number, but has been placed on the Senate’s legislative calendar) is a companion legislation to Rep. Ted Yoho’s bill of the same name (H.R. 5759) that passed the House of Representatives on December 4, 2014 on a 219-197 vote. In a release place on his Senate webpage, Paul explained: This legislation would end President Obama’s executive action on immigration and restore the Congress’ constitutional role as the body to craft legislation. Article I of the Constitution...

A nation, a workplace, an ethnicity, a passion, an outsized personality. The people who comprise these things, who fawn or rail against them, are behind Merriam-Webster's 2014 word of the year: culture. The word joins Oxford Dictionaries' "vape," a darling of the e-cigarette movement, and "exposure," declared the year's winner at Dictionary.com during a time of tragedy and fear due to Ebola. Merriam-Webster based its pick and nine runners-up on significant increases in lookups this year over last on Merriam-Webster.com, along with notable, often culture-driven ? if you will ? spikes of concentrated interest.

Editor’s note: This column was originally published Dec.. 5. On Dec. 12, the Senate passed the National Defense Authorization Act. Page 1,163 of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) states: “The land conveyed under this subsection shall be used only as a motocross, bicycle, off-highway vehicle, or stock car racing area, or for any other public purpose consistent with uses allowed under the Act of June 14, 1926 (commonly known as the ‘Recreation and Public Purposes Act’)…” You may ask yourself: What in the world does this have to do with defending America against the numerous threats we face? The...

On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, that state laws establishing separate public schools for Black and white students were unconstitutional, violating the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The 9-0 decision was hailed as a major victory for the civil rights of African-Americans, paving the way for the integration of the nation’s schools. But in retrospect, while there was reason to celebrate the court decision, there were also many things the Black community lost after the Brown decision.

In the responses to my “When Whites Just Don’t Get It” series, I’ve been struck by the lack of empathy some whites show for members of minority groups. So imagine if the world were reversed. Then “the talk” might go like this: “Don’t curse. It is wrong, but it’s the way the world works. And that’s why Mom and I are scared for you. With us whites in the minority, some cops are just going to see you as a threat no matter what. You’re going to get stopped by black cops, and I want you to promise you’ll never...

Feminists have been lying to women about sex for the better part of a century. It was just a couple generations ago that feminists argued that all sex between men and women constituted rape. The feminists have done a complete reversal in the last few decades. These days sex is declared a right that is both physically and emotionally meaningless. Further still, feminists argue sex is empowering for women. Because feminism relies almost exclusively on stereotypes, their argument these days is that because men get away with engaging in casual sex without consequences so should women. Instead of elevating women,...

(... Now in order for there to be a vast and vibrant market for any good and service a higher purpose has got to be served. Let’s look at the important things that we get from having all those false rape accusations out there dominating the media sphere. (1) Careers can be made! Look at the return on investment that Al Sharpton has gotten out of his profitable collaboration with Tawana Brawley. (Crystal Mangum and Mike NiFong met with less success. Read the prospectus carefully before investing!) (2) Evil men are made to live in fear! The Breitbart story has...

A history professor, writing in VEER (an arts and culture magazine published in Norfolk, Virginia), tells a startling anecdote: “A couple of years back, a student came to me for a conference, late in the semester, and asked, ‘Which came first, the Civil War or the Revolutionary War?’ Never mind that we had spent a week on both, and that he had been in attendance (physically, at any rate), for all of those sessions.” Note that the professor and the student seem equally unashamed. This is not a homeless man with a drug problem. This is an adult student taking...

The election of 2012 and now 2014 are over. The most liberal, progressive candidate in the history of American politics, with the worst record on the economy in his first term, Barack Hussein Obama, won re-election in 2012 to a second term by just under 2% of the vote. And in 2014 the vote overwhelmingly repudiated his agenda and plans. The over-riding segments of the population that enabled Obama's victory in 2012 were the Black vote (who voted for him by over 90%) and the Latino vote (who voted for him by over 70%). And they did so, absolutely against...

With business confidence at post-crisis lows (in the US and around the world), it is hardly surprising that consumer confidence would fade and at 88.7 (vs 96.0 expectations), this is the biggest miss since June 2010. It appears last month's exuberant surge/beat was anomalous as we tumble from 94.5 in October, in spite of tumbling gas prices and record high stocks... The drop was largely driven by a slide in 'hope' as expectations fell to the lowest since June. Labor, employment, and business conditions all dropped.

For the first seventy or so years of Christianity's existence, the Greco-Roman world paid it relatively little attention. There were persecutions here and there (like the one that claimed the lives of Peter and Paul). But, for the most part, it wasn’t until the second century that their pagan neighbors began to focus their attention on just how different Christians were. As Michael J. Kruger of Reformed Theological Seminary wrote at The Gospel Coalition, one major difference was that “Christians would not pay homage to the other ‘gods’ ” of the Roman world. Since paying homage to these “gods” was...

According to a survey by tech giant Cisco Systems, about a fourth of professionals ages 18 to 50 would leap at the chance to get a surgical brain implant that allowed them to instantly link their thoughts to the Internet. The study was conducted on 3,700 adults working in white-collar jobs in 15 countries. Read more at http://www.prophecynewswatch.com/2014/November17/171.html#CRwG8spidOWI60L4.99

Ditch Brooklyn, millennials. The real place to be is Des Moines, a city with a blossoming culture scene, thriving start-ups, and urban beauty.(VIDEO-AT-LINK) DES MOINES, Iowa—This is too nice a place to spawn a war cry. But if the city had one, it would be the sentiment heard across a downtown populated by baristas, tech start-up founders, musicians, and nonprofit professionals alike: "It's Des Moines against the world." Young people here know what you think of this city. It doesn't need repeating. But ambitious minds are in the process of building a new Des Moines, a tech hub in Silicon...