Free Republic

By the end of 1819, so many banks, persons, and businesses had declared bankruptcy that each defaulted to ownership by the notorious Second Bank of the United States (SUSB), thus making the SUSB one of the largest and most important property owners in the early republic. Many elites benefitted from its seemingly endless largess, but most Americans despised it as a “monster.” Not only did it seem to own everything in sight (and beyond!), but it also had been responsible for the inflation and sudden deflation that had caused the Panic/Depression of 1819. Its first president, William Jones, had been...

For sociopaths, their end always justifies the means, and it turns out that the most powerful people in America have no brakes. Anyone with a brain knows that there was epic cheating behind Biden’s “win” in 2020, ranging from official cheating (e.g., mail-in ballots, drop boxes, and ballot harvesting) to unofficial cheating (e.g., delayed vote counts, faked ballots, and illegal registrations). Pollster Scott Rasmussen has discovered something very disturbing about all that cheating: While ordinary Americans want fair elections, the “elite”—that is, the rich, powerful, and connected—don’t. They want only to win. According to the Issues and Insights editorial board:...

When veteran pollster Scott Rasmussen surveyed a group of Americans he calls the elite 1% earlier this year, he discovered a startling number who say it’s OK to win an election by cheating. The elite 1%—individuals who make over $150,000 a year, live in densely populated areas, and have postgraduate degrees—are overwhelmingly liberal. They give President Joe Biden an 82% approval rating, compared to his 40% average from the rest of Americans. Rasmussen asked these liberal voters: “Suppose that your favorite candidate loses a close election. However, people on the campaign know that they can win by cheating without being...

I’ve always been a fan of the prosperity created by Western civilization in general and the United States in particular. Indeed, I even created a website called Gratitude for America, where I write about American entrepreneurs who invented things like barbed wire and standardized shipping containers. But maybe there’s a downside to this prosperity because we’ve created a class of people (especially in government) completely disconnected from how the world actually works. Cyrus McCormick, who invented the mechanical reaper, is the most important entrepreneur in human history. He basically untethered mankind from farming, one of the most dangerous occupations on...

Senate Republicans eager to ram Ukraine funding through the upper chamber are just as eager to dismiss their voters as dimwitted and “shortsighted.” “Our base cannot possibly know what’s at stake at the level that any well-briefed U.S. senator should know about what’s at stake if Putin wins,” said North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis, according to Punchbowl News Monday. Senate lawmakers spent the weekend advancing another $61 billion to Kyiv following last week’s embarrassing rejection of a bipartisan compromise bill that threatened to codify the invasion on the southern border. The more than $95 billion foreign spending package headed for...

Elites are individuals who occupy the upper strata in society through either wealth, politics, sports, religion, and/or social status (such as entertainment), and they have been a part of society for millennia. Because of human nature, elites have usually — though not always — considered themselves to be better than those below them or have simply been indifferent to them. By the same token, those below the elites have either envied them, worshipped them, been hostile towards them, or have just simply been indifferent to them, occupying different worlds of which they were not privy to, though they might have...

According to a new poll, nearly 90 percent of ivy league grads support the “strict” rationing of gas, meat and electricity to fight climate change. That's 90%! “Strict rationing!” The poll, conducted by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, is titled “Them vs. U.S.: The two Americas and how the nation’s elite is out of touch with average Americans.” It was intended to assess the beliefs of “elites.” According to the College Fix, the poll was comprised of two surveys of 1,000 folks each conducted in late 2023, and the "Elites" were defined as “people having at least one post-graduate degree,...

The profound disconnect between the attitudes shared by the ‘top’ 1% elites in American society and the rest of the population is laid bare by the results of an illuminating new poll. Nearly six in 10 elite members believe there is too much individual freedom in America, more than two-thirds favor rationing of food and energy to combat climate change, somewhere between a half and two-thirds favor banning things like SUVs, gas stoves, air conditioning and non-essential air travel, while two-thirds believe teachers should decide what children are taught. Meanwhile, 70% of those polled trust Government to “do the right...

The people who run America, or at least think they do, live in a bubble of their own construction. They’ve isolated themselves from everyday America’s realities to such a degree their views about what is and what should be happening in this country differ widely from the average American’s. An analysis of their thinking, conducted for the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, finds that on a variety of economic, social, and political issues, there exists a wide gap between how the top 1% – the Elites – think things should be and how the rest of America looks at them. Elite...

The United States has a wealthy, partisan elite class that’s not only immune from and numb to the problems of their countrymen, but enormously confident in and willing to impose unpopular policies on them. This is a recipe for disaster. The problem is starkly illustrated in a new survey Scott Rasmussen conducted on behalf of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, which divided respondents between elites (people with at least one postgraduate degree, earning more than $150,000, living in ZIP codes where the population density exceeds 10,000 per square mile) and the general public. Rasmussen also recorded the responses of a...

Elite thinking, as it’s termed, is under attack – and rightly so – for being out of step with the rest of the country. Below, we highlight some of the profound attitudinal differences between elites and average Americans: • In a time when most Americans have suffered a loss of real take-home pay, 74% of elites say they are financially better off today than in the past versus 20% of all Americans. • Nearly six in ten say there is too much individual freedom in America – double the rate of all Americans. • More than two-thirds (67%) favor rationing...

What has so often struck me, and irked me, about the embrace of “diversity” dogma is how profoundly unintellectual it is. A wiseguy might say it’s really a simple IQ test, though a wise guy understands it’s a soul and sagacity test. To wit: To the extent that a person accepts as imperative diversity, DEI, CRT, wokeness in general — or whatever the latest shiny anti-Truth thing is — he is a vacuous know-nothing, not just unqualified, but dangerously ignorant.

t’s hard to understand what Israel is going through without taking measure of the yawning chasm between Israel’s patriotic citizenry and its progressive elites. For most Israelis, a powerful instinct of self-preservation kicked in on Oct. 7, and they responded with the rage and determination one would expect from a healthy society. Israel’s progressive elites also responded as one would expect: Regaining their balance after the initial shock, they fell back on their usual wariness of patriotism. For them, the instinct of self-preservation itself is part of the problem, not part of the solution. This chasm has vast political implications,...

pecter is haunting American politics—the specter of #MAGACommunism. In recent weeks, the hashtag has trended on Twitter, leaving most observers baffled: What in God’s name could Donald Trump’s movement ever have in common with communism? Is this a sarcastic take on America’s surreal politics? Much of its appeal comes from its irreverent combination of seeming opposites. The memes that have proliferated under the hashtag—such as one showing Trump holding Mao’s Little Red Book—have a ludic quality recalling the spirit of the Trump 2016 campaign. But MAGA communism isn’t a mere joke. Indeed, some powerful actors in American society are taking...

The Club is and always will be looking for greater control and the concentration of wealth. Communism/Socialism is really just serfdom, i.e. the way the world was during most of history. The common person is not supposed to be free or prosperous. We are property of the Elite, to feed and defend them, so they are free to produce wealth without work. After serfdom was jettisoned by the American experiment, it was re-branded by the Elite into a form that could be sold to the working class, that the playing field could be leveled to where everyone is the same....

But the American people don’t see the economy the same way the White House does; about 16% of Americans believe the economy is getting better while 56% of U.S. adults say the economy is getting worse, according to the YouGov Poll. While the White House boosts its economic record and ability to create more jobs, more Americans have been taking part-time work and even second jobs as high inflation and increased prices have affected American wallets. Inflation rose to 3.7% in August, according to the New York Post. Additionally, Americans’ incomes have fallen for the third straight year in the...

I will mostly let Christine Anderson speak for herself other than to confirm that what she says is correct, if not understated.We are all imminently facing the most dangerous, ruthless totalitarian movement in all of human history. Covid was just the first trial. Much, much more is to come.Anderson knows what she is talking about. The Great Reset agenda, of which LifeSiteNews has written a great deal, is moving rapidly toward implementation.There is still hope, but that hope depends upon a great awakening of the masses and non-compliance becoming the norm.Far too many are amazingly still too trusting and asleep...

Socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her eight-comrade “squad” of anti-cop lawmakers have shelled out more than $1.2 million in campaign funds on private security since taking office, records show. Leading the way is Cori Bush (D-Missouri), who has reported spending more than $730,000 on private security – including $75,000 she funneled to her own husband – and Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), whose $272,000-plus tab includes security upgrades at her district offices.Bush’s campaign spending on security predates her 2021 arrival in the House of Representatives. Since she first ran for Congress in 2019, she’s paid $736,748 for security services. Among the benefactors of...

While just 7% of Americans are LGBTQ+, students at Ivy League universities are identifying as non-straight at rates as much as five times the general public. Brown University made headlines after a student poll revealed a whopping 38% of their student body is not straight. “Honestly I’m not surprised by that statistic,” an anonymous senior at Brown University told The Post. “At Brown, there’s no social pressure to fit into a box or hide your identity.” Other Ivies aren’t far behind. In fact, more than a third of students at Princeton and more than a quarter at Yale and Harvard...

Neil Oliver does a great monologue this week, generally following the arc of our current situation as constructed by a network of political elites. Oliver takes the continuum to its logical conclusion and then asks, what then? The political people and corporate institutions, those protecting themselves inside compounds and behind walls, cannot self-sustain. What happens when they need the proles they have diminished?