Free Republic

South Sudan Implements Major Diplomatic Reforms Planned by FM Barnaba BenjaminBy Joe Odaby South Sudan NewsJuba, South Sudan — October 14, 2013 (SSN) … South Sudan’s Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation Minister Dr. Barnaba Marial Benjamin has announced that a major diplomatic reform is underway in the South Sudan Foreign Ministry. The move comes after national legislative assembly lawmakers from the south-governing Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) expressed concerns over the manner in which its embassies handle the country’s foreign affairs matters. “There remains a lot of work to be done and it is imperative that the ministry devise policies...

In my piece yesterday, I wrote about critics of the American system of government, among them Wonkblog’s Dylan Matthews. In the course of my essay, I explained that opponents of the Constitution tend toward the Wilsonian view of things: Hostility toward America’s rigid separation of powers has a rich, if unappealing, history on the Left. Woodrow Wilson — a man whose animus to the constitutional order that he had sworn to uphold approached almost treasonable levels — was savvy enough to recognize that the expansive long-term ambitions of the Progressive movement were simply incompatible with the country’s founding documents. In...

What is to be in Russia? I.A. Ilyin Translated from Russian by Annalex. Having weighed all that we had to say about the basics of popular sovereignty , every sober-minded and responsible democrat must sorrowfully admit that the Russian people after three decades of destruction, violence, poverty and corruption of every kind - will be unable to implement a democratic system, as long as it does not restore in itself honor, conscience, and the sense of national state. Now, all the basic and necessary foundations of popular sovereignty are undermined in its soul, desecrated, distorted – if not directly abolished...

At the core of America’s founding was a simple, yet literally revolutionary, idea: that all people deserve to be free because they are created by God in His image, and that our rights come from God, not government. This was articulated in the most important sentence in America’s founding, the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Those 36 words are sometimes called the best-known...

South Sudan Breaks Oil Embargo Imposed By Moslem NorthBy Joe OdabyJuba — September 5, 2013 (SSN)... The visit by South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir to Sudan’s capitol Khartoum on September 3-4, 2013, might prove a turning point in both bilateral and regional terms. In the climax of the Summit, Presidents Kiir and Omar al-Bashir signed oil export agreement guaranteeing the South Sudanese oil exports will continue “without any impediments” across “flexible but secure borders” between the two countries. The agreement removes the immediate threat of economic strangulation and uncertainty by repeated Sudanese threats to close down the oil exports of...

Juba, South Sudan — August 24, 2013 (SSN) … More than 18,000 people with over 1,000 households in South Sudan have been directly affected and others displaced from their homes by devastating floods that ravaged the Maiwut County in South Sudan’s Upper Nile State. Over 48 people have been killed with severe damage to public buildings, including schools, clinics, offices, shops, markets and water and sanitation facilities. Roads in South Sudan have been inundated, disrupting transport. According to County authorities people are deeply suffering and lacking basic essentials. Women and children have mostly been displaced due to flooded homes. Médecins...

Excerpt (source - email) OBITUARY? In 1887 Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh, had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years prior: A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy...

Today is Gun Appreciation Day at Starbucks! No it doesn't mean we're getting a Free coffee if we brandish our guns. Starbucks is only announcing this because in the past they did not support the rights of those to bear arms. Read more here westernshootingjournal.com/editors-blog/today-is-gun-appreciation-day-at-starbucks/

The West Has Failed South SudanBy Joe Odaby South Sudan NewsJuba — July 23, 2013 (SSN) … The Fashoda Institute, South Sudan’s leading think-tank, asserts in its latest analysis that the West has betrayed this young democracy. Two years ago, on July 9, 2011, the Republic of South Sudan became the world’s youngest nation. Independence came in the aftermath of more than two decades of genocidal liberation struggle and five years of failed stifling autonomy. The Fashoda Institute states that South Sudan has huge potential. The land is exceptionally rich. The Fashoda Institute points to the CIA’s World Factbook, South...

In every democratic country in the world, law-abiding citizens have the right to defend themselves, when they are being subjected to violent attack. When the shooting was initially reported to the police, the cops took one look at Zimmerman's injuries, and they realized that they did not have evidence to take the case to trial. The outcome of the trial was predictable. But, now, the Justice Department wants to put Zimmerman on trial afresh, for civil rights violations. Sen. Harry Reid is supporting calls for Zimmerman's prosecution: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/07/14/naacp-asking-obama-administration-to-pursue-zimmerman-civil-case/ Is America still a free and democratic country?

Egypt is on everyone’s mind as a democratically-elected government was overthrown by the Egyptian military. It is utterly necessary as the country was moving toward an Islamic state, slowly turning into, at minimum, an oligarchy if not a dictatorship. The question becomes why, after only about a year, did the government fail where ours has endured for 226 years? The answer is right under our noses and we often do not think about it. Our government had the advantage of six giants of history involved from the start. Those men were Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin and Hamilton. Each one...

Our courts have too often become expressions of the popular will. In ancient Athens, popular courts of paid jurors helped institutionalize fairness. If a troublemaker like Socrates was thought to be a danger to the popular will, then he was put on trial for inane charges like “corrupting the youth” or “introducing new gods.” Convicting gadflies would remind all Athenians of the dangers of questioning democratic majority sentiment. If Athenian families were angry that their sons had supposedly died unnecessarily in battle, then they might charge the generals with capital negligence — a warning to all commanders to watch their...

The military coup that ousted Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi marks another failure in U.S. foreign policy over several administrations, which have erroneously promoted the notion that American-style democracy in Islamic lands will produce a nation more like ours. The Founders wrote a Constitution. When properly read and obeyed, it guards against pure democracy and makes "we the people" subject to laws that cannot be abolished by popular vote. Benjamin Franklin properly called what the Founders wrought a "Republic." Representative government would guard against the passions of a majority. No such safeguards apply in Egypt, or for that matter throughout most...

Just hours after the Egyptian army deposed Mohammed Morsi on July 3, President Obama expressed "deep concern" at the ouster of Egypt's first democratically elected leader and reiterated U.S. support for "the democratic process and respect for the rule of law." He instructed the State Department to re-evaluate more than 1 billion dollars in aid earmarked to Egypt. Now is not the time to punish Egypt, however. If democracy is the goal, then the United States should celebrate Egypt's coup. Morsi may have won an election, but he despised the democracy which propelled him to power. Rather than consult and...

Russian police in St. Petersburg on Saturday arrested dozens of LGBT protesters and a handful of the more than 100 nationalist counter-protesters who'd gathered to pelt the heavily outnumbered gay pride rally with rocks, eggs, and homophobic taunts. Such ugly public violence is not uncommon in Russia, where social lines are tightly drawn between a conservative majority that regards homosexuality as a disease and a small, but active LGBT community that wants to live in the open and enjoy the same minority rights and protections that LGBT people in the West do. Scenes like the one in St. Petersburg have...

By A.D. 200, the Roman Republic was a distant memory. Few citizens of the global Roman Empire even knew of their illustrious ancestors like Scipio or Cicero. Millions no longer spoke Latin. Italian emperors were a rarity. There were no national elections. Yet Rome endured as a global power for three more centuries. What held it together? A stubborn common popular culture and the prosperity of Mediterranean-wide standardization kept things going. The Egyptian, the Numidian, the Iberian, and the Greek assumed that everything from Roman clay lamps and glass to good roads and plentiful grain was available to millions throughout...

The ruling in the same sex marriage issue before the Supreme Court will indicate whether the United States is still a democracy or has become a judicial oligarchy. In a democracy, elected officials decide major social issues like how government will treat the ancient mating practice of marriage. In a oligarchy, non elected officials dictate policy to elected officials based on their personal views. One of my favorite movie quotes is from "The Teahouse of the August Moon". Glenn Ford plays an American officer attempting to explain democracy to the Japanese after World War II. He says, "democracy is where...

<p>Truth is the lifeblood of democracy. Without honesty, the foundations of consensual government crumble.</p> <p>If the Internal Revenue Service acts unlawfully, our voluntary system of citizens computing their own taxes implodes.</p> <p>Yet Lois Lerner, one of the IRS's top officials, would not answer simple questions about her agency's conduct during congressional testimony, instead pleading the Fifth Amendment. Any taxpayer who tried that with an IRS auditor would end up fined and in court.</p>

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...