Free Republic

Why did Rome and Byzantium fall apart after centuries of success? What causes civilizations to collapse, from a dysfunctional fourth-century-B.C. Athens to contemporary bankrupt Greece? The answer is usually not enemies at the gates, but the pathologies inside them. What ruins societies is well known: too much consumption and not enough production, a debased currency, and endemic corruption. Americans currently deal with all those symptoms. But two more fundamental causes for decline are even more frightening: an unwillingness to pay taxes and the end of the rule of law. Al Sharpton is again prominently in the news, blaming various groups...

A new study shows Christianity on the decline in the wealthy West, with Islam surging. What Would Jesus Say? It’s not what you think. A study released by the Pew Forum last week demonstrates that the future of the religious world is rapidly and dramatically changing. Differences in fertility rates and the high incidence of conversion make Islam the world’s fastest-growing religion. And, if current rates continue, by 2070 Islam could be the world’s largest. Between now and 2050 the number of Muslims is projected to rise to 2.8 billion, a 35 percent increase. While India will continue to be...

(Reuters) - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said on Thursday it was unlikely to approve new or expanded uses of certain pesticides while it evaluates the risks they may pose to honey bees. The so-called neonicotinoid pesticides are routinely used in agriculture and applied to plants and trees in gardens and parks. But their widespread use has come under scrutiny in recent years after a drop in the number of honey bees and other pollinating insects, which play key roles in food production. The decline is attributed to factors including pesticide and herbicide use, habitat loss and disease, according...

Following the start of Abenomics in 2012, Japan moved back to the center of attention of global financial markets. After two and a half decades of economic stagnation, hopes were high that Japan would escape its long stagnation and deflation. Plenty of economists around the globe hoped that, in so doing, Japan would show the western world, mainly the Eurozone, the way to do the same and avoid a similar long period of low growth and stagnating incomes. Conversely, the failure of AbeÂ’s plan for JapanÂ’s recovery would not only be a disaster for the country of the rising sun....

How do feel about America's decline under Obama? I'm glad Obama brought the U.S. down a notch. I don't know. The U.S. will be great again again once the grown-ups are in charge.

Much has been said about the long-term demographic challenges facing the Republican Party. Given how dismally Republicans fare with African-American voters—Mitt Romney and congressional Republicans garnered only 6 percent and 8 percent, respectively, in 2012, and this year congressional Republicans got 10 percent—it matters how the GOP does with other minority voters. In 2012, Romney picked up 27 percent and congressional Republicans received 30 percent of the Latino vote. This year, House Republicans got 36 percent. This doesn't matter that much in the House, because of natural residential patterns and, to a lesser extent, gerrymandering. But it is a big...

Rome — I am sitting on the steps of the Capitoline Hill, as close as I can approximate the spot where, exactly 250 years ago today, on October 15, 1764, the 27-year old Edward Gibbon was struck by the muses, leading to perhaps the greatest work of historical scholarship in the English language. Though the anecdote in his biography recalling the moment has been called into question, it is both sufficiently famous and sufficiently inspiring to anyone with a historical bent to warrant retelling. Gibbon’s recollects the moment: It was at Rome, on the fifteenth of October, 1764, as...

General Motors says its U.S. sales fell 1.2 percent last month as rising truck and SUV sales couldn’t offset falling car sales. Three of GM’s four brands reported declines for the month. GMC, which sells only trucks and SUVs, reported a 10 percent increase. …

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...

One of my readers sadly remarked that this is no longer America that she grew up in. And the change that occurred at a dizzying pace happened relatively overnight. It was not a gradual transformation born by normal change over time; it was a fundamental forced transformation from a constitutional republic to a rule by a corporatist and international banking oligarchy that pulls the strings of the former branches of government, executive, legislative, and judicial. A soft coup has occurred that had been planned for years, unbeknownst to most Americans who are still busy thinking that, if they just elect...

Standing on his presidential limousine, Lyndon Johnson, campaigning in Providence, R.I., in September 1964, bellowed through a bullhorn: “We’re in favor of a lot of things and we’re against mighty few.” This was a synopsis of what he had said four months earlier. Fifty years ago this Thursday, at the University of Michigan, Johnson had proposed legislating into existence a Great Society. It would end poverty and racial injustice, “but that is just the beginning.” It would “rebuild the entire urban United States” while fending off “boredom and restlessness,” slaking “the hunger for community” and enhancing “the meaning of our...

Finally, after being headquartered in Torrance, Calif., for half a century, Toyota has had enough of CaliforniaÂ’s anti-business, anti-growth policies and is packing its bags and moving to Plano, Texas, where the contrast couldnÂ’t be greater. And Toyota is not alone in fleeing California. You can tell a lot about the hot spots in America by tracking where Americans are moving to and where they are running from. Every year, about 3 million Americans move from one state to another; the combined adjusted gross incomes (AGI) of these movers and shakers is over $140 billion. Last week, the IRS...

WASHINGTON - America remains adrift under Barack Obama's presidency, without any sustained or effective focus on the sea of troubles that afflict our nation. Obama goes through the ceremonial motions of being president, while ignoring the consequences or making excuses about the most serious, long term challenges we face here at home. Instead, he is devoting more and more of his time delivering political speeches attacking his adversaries and raising money for besieged Democrats who face severe election losses in the fall. Meantime, the U.S. economy all but stopped growing in the first three months of this year; the nation's...

We recently learned that China is poised to replace the United States as the No. 1 economic power in the world sometime later this year. Our anemic quarterly growth rate of 0.1 percent certainly lends credibility to this speculation. We must seriously question those who say our nation is not in decline. They are adopting the ostrich strategy, sticking their heads in the sand. There is no question that America is the pinnacle nation of the world and is likely to remain in that position for years, given our military strength and the depth and stability of our financial infrastructure....

The U.S. population rose by just 0.72% in 2013, the lowest growth rate in more than 70 years. Not only has the country become less-attractive to immigrants than in years past, with net immigration down from nearly 1.2 million as of 2001 to 843,145 last year, but also the U.S.’s domestic birth rate has dropped to a multi-decade low. While the population of most of the country’s metro areas grew at a low pace in recent years, in a small number of metro areas the population actually shrank. Looking at the most recent years, the U.S. population rose by just...

When I hear the phrase “structural problems” coming out of the mouths of elected officials, candidates or political pundits, I immediately assume that I’m about to get another lecture on America’s crumbling infrastructure. (And make no mistake, there are more than a few bridges and roadways that need some work. Pennsylvanians don’t say that their state bird is the traffic cone for nothing.) But this weekend, our colleague John Hawkins has knocked together one of his big five lists on a similar sounding topic with, The 5 Structural Problems That Are Destroying America.We’re not talking about interstates in need of...

Ireland’s economy suffered a shock decline in the final months of 2013, posting negative growth for the year and casting a pall over the country’s full return to the financial markets. Data from the country’s Central Statistics Office (CSO) on Thursday (13 March) indicated that its gross domestic product (GDP) contracted by 2.3 percent in the fourth quarter, turning a year that had been expected to yield modest growth into a 0.3 percent recession for the year as a whole. […] Analysts attributed the decline to the so-called pharmaceutical patent cliff, with a sharp drop-off in revenue from pharmaceutical sales...

As reports are coming in that Russia has placed 2,000 troops in Crimea, within the borders of Ukraine, President Obama said that “the United States will stand with the international community in affirming that there will be costs for any military intervention in Ukraine.” Charles Krauthammer responded on Special Report tonight saying, “The Ukrainians, and I think everybody, is shocked by the weakness of Obama’s statement. I find it rather staggering.” Krauthammer thinks Obama’s statement is about “three levels removed” from actual action. He explained: Obama said “we will stand with the international community — meaning we are going to...

Show captionReligiosity index shows the changes in religious activity in the United States. Religion News Service This image is available for Web publication. For questions, contact Sally Morrow. Religiosity in the United States is in the midst of what might be called ‘The Great Decline.’ Previous declines in religion pale in comparison. Over the past fifteen years, the drop in religiosity has been twice as great as the decline of the 1960s and 1970s.How do we track this massive change in American religion? We start with information from rigorous, scientific surveys on worship service attendance, membership in congregations, prayer,...

"the actual unemployment rate is 37.2% and the misery index is the worst in 40 years, since the Ford Administration."