Free Republic

A response to Rod Dreher’s “Benedict Option”An atmosphere of gloom and despair pervades some cultural-conservative circles, and, at first glance, it’s easy to understand why. There’s no question that hysterical public assaults on Christians or others who dissent from leftist sexual orthodoxy are increasing in volume and frequency. It seems as if every day there’s a new story of an attempt to silence, intimidate, or publicly shame social conservatives. It’s not enough to express disagreement with cultural conservatives — they must lose their jobs, lose their businesses, and close their schools, unless they bend the knee to the sexual revolution....

This isn't as damning as the Clinton story from this morning. Or that other story from this morning. Or that one from last week. Or that one from the week before. Or any of those Clinton stories in that book that's coming out. But it does substantiate the argument that Hillary Clinton wasn't completely removed from the Clinton Foundation's accounts receivable department. It turn out that, if you, as a corporation, wanted to get a swanky award from the State Department while Hillary Clinton was in charge, just to commemorate your commitment to global humanitarianism, what you really had to...

Good news for Obamacare supporters: It's quite a bit less unpopular than it was a few months ago. The uptick leads to the question: Will the Affordable Care Act ever actually be popular? Looking at the long run, Republicans may have done the law a favor by naming it Obamacare. Former presidents usually bask in a nostalgic glow after they leave office. While events could still make a difference, Obama is well-positioned to take advantage of that effect: To date, at least, he has no major wars to regret, and the nation hasn't plunged into a new recession. If long-term...

There was a small political earthquake Wednesday on the right side of the political spectrum, as Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R), who has had some nice things said about him by some very rich people, said something on immigration that likely displeased those same people. On Glenn Beck’s radio show, Walker said the following: >>>In terms of legal immigration, how we need to approach that going forward is saying: the next president and the next Congress need to make decisions about a legal immigration system that’s based on, first and foremost, protecting American workers and American wages, because the more...

It's early in the Republican presidential primary process, but at this point former Florida governor Jeb Bush is a slight favorite. However, the latest CNN/ORC poll indicates that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is closing in on Bush. In a large GOP field that features archconservatives and outright crazies, Walker is the most disturbing because his stock-in-trade is mobilizing the resentment of working-class white voters. According to the CNN/ORC poll, the ranking of Republican presidential candidates is Jeb Bush (17 percent), Scott Walker (12 percent), Kentucky Senator Rand Paul (11 percent), Florida Senator Marco Rubio (11 percent), former Arkansas Governor Mike...

Imagine what would happen if we passed a law that required every elected representative in the U.S. to take a phone call from a minimum of 10 constituents a day (and I mean individual constituents, not lobbyists and interest groups). Under this law, representatives would also be evaluated by Likert scale surveys on how well they meet the needs of their constituent callers. Anytime survey scores slip below a certain numerical threshold of acceptability, the elected official is fired from office, regardless of the results of democratic election or the prescriptions of the state or federal constitutions. By such standards...

Immigration has an important place in American life, but it can never become more important than American life. It is not an unlimited good and its implementation must flow from what is best for Americans, not from warping the freedoms that we believe in until they become an abstract ideology that destroys the people who practice them.Scott Walker is not betraying free market principles when he contends that immigration should be based around the needs of Americans, he is practicing and protecting them. Immigration has become the third rail of American politics. At a time when the labor force participation...

[must read set-up SNIP]".........For a candidate trying to show his conservative bona fides to a skeptical base, Perry’s immigration stance was a godsend. Romney could tack to the right of the Texas governor, and other candidates would follow suit in a similar effort to box out a potentially serious opponent. And, with the help of Perry’s feckless campaign, he did just that, all but pushing the governor out of the race (that would take a few more months and a few more failures). Walker isn’t blessed with the same caliber of opponent. Bush might be flabby from a long break...

As an Xer, I’ve worked with and managed many millennials. And as Michael O. Church writes, people are people. Yet, there are times when knowing a little about each generation has helped me understand a colleague. When generalizing about any group, it’s first necessary to recognize that not everybody in any particular group acts like everyone else. There is often just as much variation within each group, as there is between groups.

“I don’t believe that your sexual preferences are a choice for a vast and enormous majority of the people. The bottom line is I believe that sexual preference is something people are born with.” ~ Sen. Marco Rubio, April 19, 2015 Marco Rubio has become the latest GOP presidential candidate to stumble badly over the issue of homosexuality. Sen. Rand Paul hurt himself by saying that gay “marriage” is okay, as long as it’s a matter of private contract, a view which will satisfy no one. Dr. Ben Carson hurt himself by asserting that people do change their sexual orientation...

Since January, when Mitt Romney officially bowed out of the 2016 presidential race, the assumption hanging over the Republican primary has been that Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor, son of a president, and brother of a president, is the runaway favorite to win the party's nomination. Of course, anointing frontrunners eight months before the Iowa Caucuses is a little like naming your child before you've met someone to have it with. But with the Koch Brothers bestowing their papal blessing this week on a candidate that does not share his name with a former White House resident, it might...

Happy Earth Day! Today is a day we can all band together and share our love for this beautiful planet—or at least drown our sorrows about climate change with nerdy themed cocktails. Later today, President Barack Obama will mark the occasion with a climate-focused speech in the Florida Everglades. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination, had a different idea: Fire a big chunk of the state's environmental staff. From the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: Fifty-seven employees of the state Department of Natural Resources began receiving formal notices this week that they might face layoff as part of...

These are fighting words for the Left. The Left has been given a free pass by the mainstream press over the last decade with regard to their immigration agenda’s effect on the ordinary American worker. Huge legal immigration combined with gargantuan illegal immigration has put downward pressure on blue-collar wages and reduced the opportunities for Americans to find good jobs. This is an obvious consequence of millions of legal and illegal immigrants coming into America to compete with regular Americans looking for work. Yesterday, Scott Walker told the mainstream press and the Left that their emperor has no clothes. A...

..."The next president and the next Congress need to make decisions about a legal immigration system that's based on, first and foremost, on protecting American workers and American wages," Walker said. "Because the more I've talked to folks—I've talked to Sen. Sessions and others out there, but it is a fundamentally lost issue by many in elected positions today—is what is this doing for American workers looking for jobs, what is this doing to wages, and we need to have that be at the forefront of our discussion going forward."Christine Neumann-Ortiz, executive director of Voces de la Frontera, responded, “It...

Thousands have run for president, but only one candidate has ever unrun for the office: Hillary Clinton. Ever since she finally announced her entry into the contest a couple of weeks ago, she has been unrunning with ferocity. First she road-tripped a minivan 1,000 miles from New York to Iowa to … listen. Listening tours (or sessions) are supposed to add a little fabric softener to a politician’s starchy image, buffing their scaly reptilian exteriors down to kid-leather smoothness. The technique worked for Clinton in New York, where booking upstate listening stops helped her win a Senate seat in 2000....

I’ve been overwhelmed by the response to my article about Wisconsin prosecutors’ efforts to criminalize conservative activism,complete with terrifying dawn and pre-dawn raids. Without the courage of the raids’ targets who were willing to speak with me–on and off the record–there would have been no story. Ironically enough,on the very weekend that my story hit National Review,the Huffington Post published yet another screed against so-called “dark money” relying on the very existence of the unlawful John Doe investigations to cast a cloud of suspicion on conservative activists. The language is instructive: The Wisconsin Supreme Court is slated to take up...

Left-wingers and progressives in America are becoming insufferable, are they not? It's quite apparent that they have no desire to "live and let live," but want to force their delusions off onto everyone else. You will live, think, and do as the Left tells you, whether you like it or not. Even in the pettiest of way, they can't help themselves. Take, for example, this story coming out of the University of Oregon. To summarize for the reader, a student named Elle Mallon, who was running for office in student government filed a number of grievances against a rival student...

Headless bodies lie in the sand. Above those corpses stand the black-clad minions of ISIS, outlined against the coastline of Libya. This is the second video in three months depicting Islamic terrorists cutting the heads off of Christian captives. Bodies float in the Mediterranean Sea, face down. Twelve Christian bodies, thrown from a rubber boat by 15 Muslims. Their launch point: Libya. Approximately 700 more bodies float face down in the Mediterranean, victims of a smuggling operation gone wrong when their rickety craft sunk as it made its way to Italy. Its source location: Libya. Four American bodies in Benghazi,...

More than a thousand migrants have died attempting to get into Europe over the past week, including 900 who perished horribly, trapped in the hold of a Tunisian ship near the Libyan coast. Many thousands have died before and many thousands will die in the near future attempting the same venture unless we in Europe change our policies. Everybody is agreed that something has to be done.For the liberal left, the answer is to sack Katie Hopkins, a fellow columnist of mine at the Sun. Not just sack her but also prosecute her and prosecute the editor of the Sun....

Former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley is thinking about running for president on the Democratic ticket by appealing to Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren's populist fans. Warren is a very bright former Harvard law professor. So it is interesting that O'Malley thinks the best way to reach out to her fans is to say remarkably stupid things. Steve Inskeep, host of NPR's "Morning Edition," recently interviewed O'Malley, asking him to respond to something GOP presidential contender Sen. Marco Rubio had said. Inskeep: "[Rubio] argues that an active government actually keeps people frozen at their economic status because if you are well off,...