Free Republic

Students at hundreds of colleges and universities are being systematically indoctrinated into the “New Civics” of social justice activism, according to a report released this past week by the National Association of Scholars. The report’s findings suggest that the suppression of free speech on college campuses that is making headlines is only the tip of a very large iceberg. What lies beneath the surface is a massive, publicly funded program of indoctrination through a remaking of the curriculum as a vehicle for advancing the political agenda of progressivism. The full NAS report, MAKING CITIZENS: HOW AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES TEACH CIVICS, can...

Next week, a group of patriots, who happen to be Hispanic, will gather to celebrate the inauguration of President-elect Donald J. Trump. It will be the kind of moment that runs counter to the narratives of the political and the media elite, but to those of us in the room, our celebration makes perfect sense. If news of our inauguration party surprises you, recall that 29 percent of the Hispanic vote went to Trump. Remember, too, that Latinos are feeling the sharp pain of economic adversity that Trump has convincingly promised to change. Remember also that one of the great...

Rep. Andre Carson wants to change the subject. I don’t blame him. On April 13, 2010 he told AP reporter Jesse Washington, “I think we need to move toward a dialogue that explores why this kind of divisive and reprehensible language is still making it into our political debate.” The “divisive and reprehensible language” that Rep. Carson is referring to is his claim that while he left the Cannon office building on March 20 with Rep. John Lewis, they were verbally assaulted by health care protesters hurling the “N-word” at them. He said the scene was so hostile he “expected...

In case you thought that everything Vladimir Putin’s boys attempt turns to solid gold these days, we’ve found at least one exception to the rule. This story popped up in one of those “weird news of the week” summaries last year and I didn’t pay too much attention to it. The Telegraph in the UK picked it up, however. The Russians were looking to upgrade their ability to sniff out terrorism (literally) and were receiving a gift of three very special police dogs who were trained to detect drugs and bombs. The reason they were so special is that they...

This week our country gets a new president, our 45th, Donald J. Trump. Many people spark to Mr. Trump's blunt "If you hit me I hit back twice as hard" style. They find him refreshing. I don't find Donald Trump refreshing. I think he's the most ill-prepared and ill-suited person ever elevated to the office. With that said, I hope he turns out to be as "amazing", "fantastic", "terrific", "awesome", and "really, really, really good" as he claims he will be. I don't root for presidents to fail. I didn't root for George W. Bush to fail or Barack Obama....

Seen from above, the 2016 electoral map of New York City is blue with dots of red. Trump’s home district is blue, but across the water a red wedge slices into Brooklyn. Around that red wedge are districts where Hillary won 90 percent of the vote and Trump was lucky to get 5 percent. Inside it, he beat her in district after district. The voters who handed him that victory are the Chassidic Jews of Williamsburg who dress in fur hats and black caftans. Their districts, crammed in by hipsters and minorities, are a world away from the progressive activist...

During his Senate confirmation hearing, Dr. Ben Carson, secretary of Housing and Urban Development-designate, told a story. He said his mother was a domestic who cleaned beautiful homes. One day she asked him if he would rather live in those nice houses or the house in which he and his brother lived in Detroit. She told him that only he could decide the type of home he would eventually live in by how much he studied in school and the choices he made for his life. Thus motivated, Carson said he went from last in his class to first,...

The brutal Palestinian-Arab truck attack on a group of largely female Israeli officer cadets earlier this week raises a number of interesting questions. These may impact the way Americans approach gender issues and rules of engagement in the military and also how we respond as a society to this increasingly common form of Islamist terror. Video of the attack shows the truck plowing into a group of cadets at high speed, then backing up and attempting to run over some of the stricken soldiers again. It also shows most of the cadets fleeing the scene, both from the group that...

They are the two men who changed the course of the history of the United States and the world in the new millennium: one by his capacity for evil, the other by his incapacity to comprehend it. The saga of Osama and Obama begins at the dawn of the 21st century. In September of 2001, Osama bin Laden slaughtered thousands of Americans in New York, Washington, and in the skies, undermining the nation's sense of security. The Twin Towers were a symbol of the soaring power of the unchallenged United States following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Osama didn't...

In the epic film Titanic, actress Kathy Bates plays the role of Margaret Molly Brown. Of Irish descent, Molly is depicted as a straight-shooting, no-nonsense, wealthy Texan with a penchant for social climbing. However, the smug, condescending aura, exuded by the elites, never washes over her. After escaping the sinking Titanic in a one-third empty lifeboat, surrounded mostly by married women and a few male staff, Molly is appalled by her fellow survivors’ callousness. Molly wants to rescue nearby male passengers, fighting for their lives in the frigid sea. Her lifeboat is less than 200 feet from the men screaming...

There is inequality and inequality. The first is the inequality people tolerate, such as one’s understanding compared to that of people deemed heroes, say Einstein, Michelangelo, or the recluse mathematician Grisha Perelman, in comparison to whom one has no difficulty acknowledging a large surplus. This applies to entrepreneurs, artists, soldiers, heroes, the singer Bob Dylan, Socrates, the current local celebrity chef, some Roman Emperor of good repute, say Marcus Aurelius; in short those for whom one can naturally be a “fan”. You may like to imitate them, you may aspire to be like them; but you don’t resent them. The...

I am not a citizen of the world. I am not going to be part of your collective. I don’t respect the United Nations, international law or think any other culture compares favorably to our own. Don’t get me wrong: I respect the Brits, the Israelis, the Aussies and a few other nations that have built great legacies their children can be proud of, but they’re not America. We’re better than the rest of the world…or we used to be. It doesn’t matter how many Americans are out of work or how many immigrants end up on welfare; we keep...

RUSH: Now, the audio sound bites. The Hillary campaign is in utter denial. You know, folks, I keep hearkening back to things (not to be redundant, not to drive you crazy, but to drill home things I think are important), and one of the relatively new profundities that I have developed and provided you is one of the key elements to understanding liberalism. And it is this: They don’t believe in reality. Liberals are so manufactured and so phony and so artificial, they don’t believe in reality. They think reality is something that majorities create to exclude them, like marriage>...

RUSH: The inauguration’s one day from today, and we’re gonna be doing something special on Inauguration Day. We’ll have details coming up later, but basically we’re gonna start the program early on Inauguration Day, and we — (interruption) what did I say? I said it’s a day away? Well, everybody knows I meant that it’s a week. Everybody knows the inauguration’s not tomorrow. Well, I take it back, there might be some low-information people out there that I shocked. Sorry. Verbal dyslexia. The inauguration is a week from today. I’m trying to save time by eliminating syllables, and, instead of...

RUSH: Hey, hey, calm down out there, folks. Everything’s cool, everything’s fine, no need to panic. The Drive-Bys are in panic. You gotta look at ’em as Wile E. Coyote. Gotta look at Trump and his team as the Road Runner. Wile E. Coyote still has no idea what’s happening. They’re trying to continue to destroy Trump in the age-old ways they’ve succeeded. It’s all backfiring on ’em. I’m gonna explain this as the program unfolds. Be cool. JOHNNY DONOVAN: And now, from sunny south Florida, it’s Open Line Friday! RUSH: Don’t worry about it, Rachel, don’t worry about any...

The YouTube channel of influential conservative politics and law website Legal Insurrection has been removed by the video sharing service, citing copyright infringement claims. “This account has been terminated because we received multiple third-party claims of copyright infringement regarding material the user posted,” explains YouTube, in a notice posted to channel’s page. Legal Insurrection founder and publisher and Cornell University Law Professor William Jacobson voiced his anger and astonishment at the channel’s removal. “It’s very frustrating, it’s very scary, to have 8 years of content removed without a chance to defend yourself,” he told FoxNews.com.

With only days until Donald Trump takes office, the Obama administration on Thursday announced new rules that will let the NSA share vast amounts of private data gathered without warrant, court orders or congressional authorization with 16 other agencies, including the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Agency, and the Department of Homeland Security. The new rules allow employees doing intelligence work for those agencies to sift through raw data collected under a broad, Reagan-era executive order that gives the NSA virtually unlimited authority to intercept communications abroad. Previously, NSA analysts would filter out information they deemed irrelevant and mask the names...

After driving up the cost of soda and other sugary drinks with a new tax, the mayor of Philadelphia is now trying to blame businesses for charging higher prices (and for the outrage those prices have generated). Mayor Jim Kenney, who proposed the soda tax and championed its passage through city council last year, told reporters on Tuesday it's not the new 1.5-cents-per-ounce tax that's making it more expensive to buy a can of Coke in Philly. No, according to the mayor, those higher prices are caused by city businesses price gouging their customers in order to stir up opposition...

Obamacare, the left’s grand attempt to create a national government-run health care system, has failed. They promised lower health insurance premiums, but delivered higher ones. They promised more choice and competition, but delivered less. They promised continuity and better access to care, but delivered disruption and dislocation. Despite promises that people could keep their plans and doctors, thousands of Americans were forced into more expensive insurance with higher deductibles and plans that didn’t include their doctors. After spending billions in tax dollars, Obamacare managed to increase the number of people with health insurance by much less than predicted—with over 80...

Donald Trump is taking office amidst a barrage of disparagement and hostility. So-called “Trump Derangement Syndrome” actually underestimates the nature of this hostility by putting a somewhat tongue-in-cheek psychiatric label on the rage and irrational break with reality that said “syndrome” actually is. This syndrome is demented and demonic as it rages in Hollywood, various press venues, and on the streets. One cannot help but recall the reaction of the Southern states when Abraham Lincoln was elected president in 1860. Within a month after Lincoln was sworn in, the Southern states began seceding and early in his first term, Fort...