Free Republic

A Time of LawlessnessVery soon the kinetic aspect of WWIII will kick off and the international entanglements of the Biden Administration will become obviously treasonous. It might not even take the actual entry of the war to mark it. As soon as the Israeli ground attack starts, the United States will come apart from within by the recently demonstrated Palestinian forces already here, brought in over the past two years of open borders. If not them, some other hostile forces. The U.S. is weak in every way one wants to measure it, except in its domestic fighting forces that are...

Alexis de Tocqueville came to America in 1831 to study its prisons, but ended up documenting nearly every facet of American life. With journalistic curiosity, the French aristocrat scrutinized America’s religion and government, its society and industry. He wanted to know what allowed the United States to surpass Europe as the world’s political and economic superpower. His conclusion? Women. The women Tocqueville saw were not CEOs or celebrities, politicians or professional athletes. They were largely confined to the home: cleaning, cooking, taking care of children. But to the young political historian, no position seemed more important. “There have never been...

This past week was Alexis de Tocqueville’s 210th birthday. This brilliant Frenchman’s insight into our national character still rings true nearly two centuries after he wrote his famous book “Democracy in America.” Ever insightful and prophetic, Tocqueville understood the dangers of big government. He feared that over time big government would strangle the free will of citizens, diminishing our capacity to think and act for ourselves and reducing us to “a herd of timid and industrious animals of which the government is the shepherd.” But he offered solutions! "He hoped that those having read his prescient book would come to...

To put equality ahead of liberty is to war against human nature. “There is, in fact, a manly and lawful passion for equality which excites men to wish all to be powerful and honored. This passion tends to elevate the humble to the rank of the great; but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level, and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom.” —Alexis de TocquevilleIn his famous admonition about the tyranny of the majority, Tocqueville went...

Alexis de Tocqueville was a gentleman-scholar who emerged as one of the world’s great prophets. More than a century and a half ago, when most people were ruled by kings, he declared that the future belonged to democracy. He explained what was needed for democracy to work and how it could help protect human liberty. At the same time, he warned that a welfare state could seduce people into servitude. He saw why socialism must lead to slavery. Tocqueville staked his life on liberty. “I have a passionate love for liberty, law, and respect for rights,” he wrote. “I am...

On November 6, the citizens of the United States re-elected perhaps the most anti-Catholic president in its history to a second term.Even sadder, according to exit polls a majority of Catholics voted in his favor, even after they theoretically had imbibed the bishops’ message, conveyed from the pulpit and in various other media, that no Catholic should vote for a candidate who favors abortion rights and single sex marriage and does not support religious liberty.What is going on here? Clearly, to borrow a line from the film “Cool Hand Luke,” “What we have here is a failure to communicate.”Simply put,...

.13 "Upon my arrival in the United States, the religious aspect of the country was the first thing that struck my attention; and the longer I stayed there, the more did I perceive the great political consequences resulting from this state of things, to which I was unaccustomed. In France I had almost always seen the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom pursuing courses diametrically opposed to each other; but in America I found that they were intimately united, and that they reigned in common over the same country."...Moreover, almost all the sects of the United States are...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Michael Barone had a piece in National Review Online that I saw posted late last night. It's entitled, "Reversing Obama's Soft Despotism." What intrigued me or what caught my attention about this piece was its references to Alexis de Tocqueville as it relates to our democracy and the Republicans. And let me just paraphrase a little bit here about what Barone says. "They want to turn back the Obama Democrats' advance into what Alexis de Tocqueville ... characterized as soft despotism. Tocqueville, after describing in 'Democracy in America' how Americans avoided the perils of equality..." That right...

Conservatives and liberals clash frequently on a wide array of issues, from taxes to trade, from deficits to defense. But their greatest conflict may lie in their contrasting attitudes toward civil society. Conservatives regard the institutions of civil society -- families, churches and communities -- as sources of hope and renewal. Self-styled "progressives" see these institutions as seedbeds of prejudice and ignorance. Conservatives believe that poverty stems largely from a lack of spiritual resources, resources that are typically transmitted through private, voluntary groups. Progressives view poverty as a simple lack of resources. Conservatives believe that social justice is best pursued...

There has been a considerable amount of attention paid recently to the plight of California. Despite its reputation as utterly the coolest place to live on the planet, and its seemingly innumerable stregths -- fabulous weather, access to the ocean AND mountains in easy driving distance, Silicon Valley, a large diverse population -- California is on the brink of disaster. You may recall that people thought the state was in dire financial straits under Gray Davis, and held a recall, replacing him with the Governator, Arnold Schwarzenegger. But the people of California have discovered that even a cybernetic killing machine...

If Democrats insist on passing unpopular laws, they won't control Congress for long. Alexis de Tocqueville never met Harry Reid. Had he encountered the Senate Democratic leader—or President Barack Obama or House Speaker Nancy Pelosi—de Tocqueville might have learned about a new twist on his concept of the "tyranny of the majority." The Frenchman toured America in the 1830s and published his conclusions in the classic "Democracy in America." He noted the powerful impact of public opinion. "That is what forms the majority," he wrote. Congress merely "represents the majority and obeys it blindly" and so does the president. They...

Well they did it. Though I, for one, am not surprised. Abuse of power is addicting and Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi (to name but a few) don't care one whit for the Constitution or the wishes of the people they serve. They care about consolidation of power. And they are determined to have it. One way or another. So, Harry Reid finally succeeded in buying his sixty Democrat votes for the Health Care bill that a majority of Americans do not support. According to Rasmussen: "Fifty-six percent (56%) of voters are now against the health care plan working its way...

If the Constitution and the Federalist Papers are our secular scriptures, surely it is Tocqueville who provided our talmud: a compilation of commentary, insight, analysis, anecdote and even prophecy. If he wrote and thought in the early 19th Century, he could see the America of the 20th and 21st coming. Tocqueville's immediate observations were those of an observant Frenchman touring Jacksonian America in all its uproarious variety. He recorded what he saw with the rare perspective that only distance can lend, and the dispassionate eloquence only a sympathetic foreigner might bring to a still new country. ...What Sort of Despotism...

Chapter VI WHAT SORT OF DESPOTISM DEMOCRATIC NATIONS HAVE TO FEAR I HAD remarked during my stay in the United States that a democratic state of society, similar to that of the Americans, might offer singular facilities for the establishment of despotism; and I perceived, upon my return to Europe, how much use had already been made, by most of our rulers, of the notions, the sentiments, and the wants created by this same social condition, for the purpose of extending the circle of their power. This led me to think that the nations of Christendom would perhaps eventually...

This is great prep for an argument with a liberal. Feel free to highlight your favorite sections: Chapter XV: Unlimited Power Of Majority, And Its Consequences—Part II Tyranny Of The Majority How the principle of the sovereignty of the people is to be understood—Impossibility of conceiving a mixed government—The sovereign power must centre somewhere—Precautions to be taken to control its action—These precautions have not been taken in the United States—Consequences. I hold it to be an impious and an execrable [execrable: extremely bad or unpleasant] maxim that, politically speaking, a people has a right to do whatsoever it pleases, and...

Prior to the past 40 years, success did hinge on ability. Then the country discovered multiculturalism, diversity, and affirmative action, and it has been a down hill slide ever since. Ability presupposes learned things, and learned things presupposes intelligence. But "intelligence", in the bibles of the new liberal theologians, is a culturally derived bias, and need not be considered. If people have been randomly "lucky" (i.e. smart) in the sweepstakes of life, Government can correct all that through the re-distribution of money with the ability to tax and regulate, by taking money earned by the lucky (the smart) and giving...

Most Americans no longer read Alexis de Tocqueville’s masterpiece, Democracy in America, about which I wrote a book (Tocqueville on American Character; from which most of the following is taken) a few years ago. What a pity! No one understood us so well, no one described our current crisis with such brutal accuracy, as Tocqueville. The economics of the current expansion of state power in America are, as I said, “fascist,” but the politics are not. We are not witnessing “American Fascism on the march.” Fascism was a war ideology and grew out of the terrible slaughter of the First...

Religion in America takes no direct part in the government of society, but it must be regarded as the first of their political institutions; for if it does not impart a taste for freedom, it facilitates the use of it. Indeed, it is in this same point of view that the inhabitants of the United States themselves look upon religious belief. I do not know whether all Americans have a sincere faith in their religion – for who can search the human heart? – but I am certain that they hold it to be indispensable to the maintenance of republican...

Upon Joseph Ratzinger’s election to the papacy in April 2005, many commentators correctly noted that Benedict XVI’s self-described theological “master” was St. Augustine. The fifth-century African bishop is widely acknowledged as a giant of the early Church whose life and writings are counted, even by his detractors, among the most decisive in shaping Western civilization. Pope Benedict’s first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, is full of citations and themes drawn from Augustine’s texts. The encyclical’s publication appears, however, to confirm that another, more contemporary thinker has influenced the way that Benedict XVI views religion in free societies and the nature...

NEW YORK - In the glory days of the French-American cultural love affair, visiting Gallic thinkers brandished Gauloise cigarettes when uneasily fielding questions from reporters here. Sartre, Beauvoir and others swirled their miniature teachers' pointers to signal passion about ideas. They held them skyward to evince disdain. They snuffed them out forcefully to shut down a subject. Welcome to 2005. Now peace-loving Jacques Chirac raises cigarette taxes 20 percent a year as he wages a "war on tobacco" against the third of French adults who still smoke. And here in a Manhattan conference room, Random House also lives by no-smoking...