Free Republic

A hallmark of democratic self-government is that the people should discuss, debate, and vote on important policy matters. And in America their votes should count, except when they clearly violate the people’s more settled will as expressed in the U.S. Constitution. Where the Constitution is silent, the task of a conscientious judge is to respect the constitutional authority of citizens and their elected officials. That’s what’s at stake in the two marriage cases on which the Supreme Court is expected to rule within the next week or so.

In order for you to claim the right to be a sovereign citizen who can rebuke unwarranted intrusions into your life, you also need to take on the burden of self-government and accept the risk inherent in living in a society where every citizen is free and sovereign as well. But is seems we don’t want that, it seems we want to be coddled and protected from harm, especially from those “others”, those liberals or conservatives who scare us with their crazy notions. We want to make sure those brown skinned foreigners don’t infect us with their weird customs, that...

A Cairo court has convicted 43 men and women of using foreign funds to foment unrest inside Egypt in connection with the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak. Sixteen of those convicted were Americans. All but one, Robert Becker of the National Democratic Institute, had already departed. Becker fled this week rather than serve two years in an Egyptian prison. And U.S. interventionists are in an uproar. "Appalling and offensive," said Sen. Pat Leahy of the verdicts. "The 2011 revolution was supposed to end the repressive climate under Mubarak," said The Wall Street Journal of our ally of 30 years whom...

http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/3842.htm

Video Link

Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted tried to reassure voters that the 135 possible voter fraud cases his office is pursuing do not constitute “an epidemic.” “We feel confident that the majority of elections are probably decided in an honest fashion,” Husted said. “To believe otherwise would lead to truly frightening conclusions. We’d rather not go there. I mean, if people lose faith in elections how will we choose who will govern? Living with a little corruption is surely better than undermining the whole premise of democracy, isn’t it?” if you missed any of this week's other semi-news/semi-satire posts you...

President Barack Obama says supporting transitions to democracy in unstable regions like the Middle East will remain a key part of his strategy for fighting terrorism. … He cited as an example the need to support those in Syria who are fighting to overthrow the government. He cautioned, however, that ending tyranny in Syria must not give way to “the tyranny of terrorism.” …

I know. Foreign policy has been largely an afterthought in the presidential campaign. Iraq, for all intents and purposes, is off the radar screen entirely -- except as a Democratic talking point, Bush's misbegotten war that Obama allegedly "ended." So a post on the plight of a rather obscure Iraqi politician -- and the merits of the Kurdish region he now calls home -- amounts to so much spitting in the wind, right? Probably. On the other hand this week's news - rampaging anti-American mobs across the Arab world, skyrocketing U.S.-Israeli tensions - has brought into sharp relief one of...

With the midterm elections fast approaching, the panic over Iraq seems more intense than ever. That country, the thinking goes, is a hopeless mess, and there could be a precipitous American withdrawal, especially if the Democrats win. But doing so would leave the silent majority of Iraqis hostage to the most vicious extremists, abandoning those Iraqi leaders who have championed liberal democratic values. One of them is Mithal al-Alusi, a 53-year-old Sunni Arab who won a seat in parliament last December after having served as director general of the National Commission on de-Baathification. Mr. al-Alusi ran on a platform of...

Coiffed, groomed and impeccably suited, Mithal al-Alusi cuts an imposing figure at this trendy hotel. In the empty bar lounge, he makes himself at home to a breakfast of fresh fruit, strong coffee and a constant flow of cigarettes. The leader of the Democratic Party of the Iraqi Nation is in town to promote his vision for a new Iraq and accept an accolade from an unlikely sponsor – the American Jewish Committee – who honored him with a Moral Courage award at their annual dinner last week. His act of courage was an attempt to break Iraq's long-standing taboo...

America, weÂ’re told from a young age, is all about democracy, and democracy is all about choosing whom you want to be your representatives and holding them accountable. This seems like an entirely uncontroversial idea, but a surprising number of Republican politicians would like to do away with this right, and return the country to an older era when Americans didnÂ’t directly elect their representatives in Washington.Until 1913 and the ratification of the 17th Amendment, Americans didnÂ’t actually elect senators, state legislators did. The change seems unquestionably positive, but Rep. Jeff Flake, the front-runner for the Republican nomination for a...

How often have you heard people refer to America as a Democracy? When was the last time that you heard America referred to as a Republic? There is a very good reason that our Pledge of Allegiance refers to our country as a Republic and there is a very good reason that our Declaration of Independence and our constitution do not even mentioned the word "democracy". Many people are under the false impression our form of government is a democracy, or representative democracy. This is of course completely untrue. The Founders were extremely knowledgeable about the issue of democracy and...

The Obama administration treated the creation of "democracy" in the Middle East as a Good Thing. Ironically, those who created the United States of America viewed democracy with fear— and created a Constitutional republic instead. Everything depends on how you define democracy. In its most basic sense, democracy means majority rule. But there can be majority rule in a free country or in a country with an authoritarian or even a dictatorial government. In this age of sloppy uses of words, many people include freedom in their conception of democracy. But whether democracy leads to freedom is an open question,...

To understand how we got to the point that spending hundreds of millions of dollars to support a government run by people who have been at war with us for almost a century is a policy that most foreign policy experts endorse, it helps to take a brief trip back in time. In the last century, our big three wars, the two we fought and the one we didn’t, were against enemies who were seen as being distinguished by a lack of democracy, with the Kaiser, the Fuhrer and the Commissar embodying the antithesis of the American system.The Democratic Party,...

The finger pointing and the blame game of Washington gets old, but a messy representative democracy is better than an efficient dictatorship. This past weekend, I toured Washington with my 5th-grade son, Robert, his classmates and their mothers. I've been to Washington more times than I can remember, but each visit fills me with hope and inspiration. It's not just the city, which in the summer is hot, humid and buggy and in the winter can be bone-chilling (as it was this weekend), but it's what the city stands for: a city created to house the federal government of...

... “we have always understood that when times change, so must we; ...fidelity to our founding principles requires new responses to new challenges: ...preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action.” ...New Labour trick of claiming that something can only be safeguarded by embracing its opposite: individual freedom requires submitting to the collective will. ...we can afford to support both the old and the young...our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it. ...Warning to America: it didn’t work out. Obama made no attempt to explain how support at both these...

I was searching random things the other day and I ran across this little gem. I mentioned it on my radio show, WHWDRadio this Wednesday and I’ll share it with you today. Helpless plug, I know. LOL These eight steps were written in 1787 by Professor Alexander Tyler. The United States was in the planning process of a young and fragile Democracy. So, this Professor took a look at the past and tried to map out the evolution of a Democracy. He determined a time line for these eight steps and an estimate of how long the process would take,...

Executive Summary:On March 21, 2012, a group of Army mutineers appeared on Mali's national television station to declare that they had ended President Amadou Toumani Toure's regime and put in place the “National Committee for the Return of Democracy and the Restoration of State” (CNRDR). In the days following the coup, the leader of the CNRDR – Captain Amadou Sanago, a virtually unknown junior officer, has shown an inability to command discipline from his troops – who have looted the capital. The disappearance of President Toure and the factional infighting of the Army have made the country defenseless against AQIM’s...

Egyptian democracy activist Michael Meunier says President Barack Obama needs to stand up to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Meunier, a Coptic Christian, is head of the Al Haya Party in Egypt and leader of the U.S. Copts Association. After spending many years studying and working in the United States, Meunier returned to Egypt in 2007 and ultimately participated in the Tahrir Square protests that brought down the regime of Hosni Mubarak in 2011. On Dec. 19, in between round one and two of voting on Egypt’s recently passed constitution, Meunier visited The Daily Caller to discuss what he sees...

HANOI, Vietnam -- It has been 50 years since President John F. Kennedy ordered U.S. "advisers" to South Vietnam to help battle the communist North and 37 years since the end of that divisive war and the country's unification under Communism. Today, Vietnam is fighting a war with itself. A local TV program reminds a visitor of Chinese propaganda "operas" circa 1970. Performers, some wearing military garb with a backdrop of missiles and an American B-52 bomber going down in flames, commemorate the 1972 Christmas bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong ordered by President Richard Nixon. Banners and posters in the...