Free Republic

There's a Democrat Party modus operandi I've seen play out multiple times throughout my years of writing about politics: Democrat politicians and their lapdog media staunchly support and defend one another — until they don't. Once they smell blood in the water, it's under the bus for the previously defended. Such is the situation facing embattled Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis in the aftermath of Judge Scott McAfee’s 23-page ruling in which he sharply criticized both Willis and her former lover Nathan Wade, whom she hired as the special prosecutor in the RICO case against former President Donald...

Eric Hoffer was a longshoreman-turned-philosopher. In 1941, he wrote “My writing is done in railroad yards while waiting for a freight, in the fields while waiting for a truck, and at noon after lunch. Towns are too distracting.” Ten years later, Hoffer’s masterpiece The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements was published when he was in his late forties. Its unexpected success led him to later be appointed an adjunct professor at University of California, Berkeley. A slim volume, The True Believer was a favorite of President Dwight Eisenhower, who regularly gifted copies to friends. The British...

Elon Musk @elonmusk This is a battle for the future of civilization. If free speech is lost even in America, tyranny is all that lies ahead. Elon Musk just moments ago. Today Apple Inc. threatened to remove Twitter from it's app. store. Apple also canceled advertising on Twitter.

Allan Penn Daniel C. Dennett. Q: How could you, as a longtime professor of philosophy at Tufts University, write a book that promotes the idea that religious devotion is a function of biology? Why would you hold a scientist's microscope to something as intangible as belief? I don't know about you, but I find St. Paul's and St. Peter's pretty physical. But your new book, "Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon," is not about cathedrals. It's about religious belief, which cannot be dissected in a lab as if it were a disease. That itself is a scientific...

You would think that a belief system where the most lauded members are those who blow themselves up would have some serious marketing problems.  I mean how exactly do you get rational post-secular westerners to buy into an idea like that?  But Islam is the world’s fastest growing religion none the less.  And much of it's growth is owed to its rapid conversion of certain segments of western society.   At a glance it defies all logic, but it's true.  It's a commonly held view that when a person stops believing in organized religion they don't then believe in nothing,...

Here's a quiz that may appear some day on history tests: Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who killed 13 people at Fort Hood in November 2009, was: a) Part of a terror network that had planned attacks on the United States since the 1990s; b) A deranged psychotic who snapped under the pressure of treating soldiers returning from Iraq and who happened to be a Muslim; c) A prime example of "The True Believer," the lonely, frustrated individual who attaches himself to an overarching cause as a way of compensating for personal disappointments. The answer, of course, is "c," the true...

Although published in 1951, The True Believer is a very relevant book on the psychological underpinnings of fanaticism and mass movements. I suspect that Ayn Rand heavily raided this book for Atlas Shrugged, but please do not hold that against it. I think the book is still available thru freedom foundation. I was going to type in exceprts, but found this on netweb and it gives a pretty good survey of the book. There is a very good chapter on the role of intellectual cynics who undermine the "target" society. I'll try to type that in in detail. Excerpts from ...

Heads up to Freepers: The psychology of terrorists was described by Eric Hoffer in his book True Believer. Below is from a web site that has a few quotes:Page 4 In modern times, the mass movements involved in the realization of vast and rapid change are revolutionary and nationalist—singly or in combination. Peter the Great was probably the equal, in dedication, power and ruthlessness, of many of the most successful revolutionary or nationalist leaders. Yet he failed in his chief purpose, which was to turn Russia into a Western nation. And the reason he failed was that he did not ...

One of many virtues of Mark Levin’s superb new book, American Marxists, is his use of the observations of Eric Hoffer’s landmark book, The True Believer. I don't need to be convinced of the obvious, that the Marxists are staging a counter-revolution in our Republic. I say "counter-revolution" because the Marxist goal is to overthrow the successful revolution staged by our founders almost two and a half centuries ago. And the enemy is not just "at the gate"; they are, in fact, on the cusp of winning the ultimate prize: total domination of the United States of America. Most AT...

It is important to keep in mind that any mass-formation on one side is likely to increase anger and stress on the other, in a destructive feedback loop. The buzz-phrase of the moment is “mass formation psychosis.” You’ve likely heard of it by now. If not, good for you! That probably means you have normal, healthy interests and activities to fill your time, and you aren’t jacked-in 24/7 to the buzzing chaos of social and other media. The term rocketed to everyone’s attention when the vaccinologist and disease-outbreak expert Dr. Robert Malone discussed it on a now-viral interview with podcast...

When Equality Becomes Evil Equality before the law is an indisputably good thing. Using force to make people equal is an entirely different story. Memorize the following line, teach it to your children, and shout it from the rooftops every chance you get. It’s one of the most important truths you’ll ever learn or teach: Free people are not equal, and equal people are not free.Your first reaction might be, “I thought equality was supposed to be a wonderful thing, something we should all strive for, but this sounds like a rejection of it.”As the old saying goes, the devil...

The huge protests engulfing China right now against lockdowns have left a lot of people wondering if these are just protests. The size, and scope, and vehemence, and fearlessness of the Chinese public against their very oppressive communist masters has made them appear to be a mass movement. In Shanghai, they are calling for the ouster of the entire Communist Party of China. When a billion-strong nation rises up on a cause that has unified them such as this, there's clearly the scent of revolution in the air. The New York Times did a huge spread on the matter this...

Pet Valu, the specialty retailer of pet food and supplies in the U.S., announced it was closing all of its 358 stores by year’s end. Like many retailers, they cite the COVID-19 panic as the reason for their failure, even though other retail pet-supply companies have actually seen a boom in business. People are home with their pets more now, so they are indulging their dogs and cats more than usual. One reason Pet Valu suffered, while others boomed, is they embraced the cultural aspects of the panic. Rather than begrudgingly going along with the nutty rules cooked up by...

The anti-Trump movement can be divided into two primary categories: (1) the leaders who sell the daily narrative and (2) the "useful idiots" who form the army of haters. The leaders include the Deep State criminals and media who protected Hillary and continue to collaborate on anti-Trump propaganda. The leaders understand Eric Hoffer's statement that "hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all the unifying agents. Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a god, but never without a belief in a devil." I am not arguing that the useful idiot sheep do not hate. There is...

Our country deserves a President who thinks his country is the best country in the world. Obama does not fit this bill. He is not an "American exceptionalist". Our country is a big, beautiful country with a varied population. It's probably the only couintry that could elect a minority such as Barak Obama. He patently does not appreciate this, and is ingrateful. He does not deserve to be President; we do not deserve him.

Fort Hood Texas Shootings Free Republic Archives This thread is for everyone, be sure to bookmark it. If you create a new thread, feel free to post a link to it here as well. Our prayers Continue...... *Update:13 Soldiers Killed 31 Wounded Fort Hood Shooting [Muslim terrorist Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan] *MAJ. GEN. ROBERT SCALES (RET.) "This was a deliberate act of execution." (FOX NEWS) *Barack Obama Gives "Shout-Out" Before He Comments on Shooting -- FOX News (here's the video) *Transcript: President Obama delivers remarks on Ft. Hood shooting (after shoutout) *NBC CHICAGO: Obama's Frightening Insensitivity Following Shooting *Obama...

"Live" with TAE Thomas Sowell A senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, economist Thomas Sowell has written extensively on race, culture, and economics. While most economists focus on rational man, Sowell has shown a particular interest in irrational man--man in the grip of visions he refuses to test because he has an emotional investment in them. Among his 34 books on topics ranging from immigration to Marxism to childhood education, it is hard to know where Sowell has had the most impact. He considers his most important work to be A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles,...

At the request of members, I am restarting those "Tales from the Dark UnderBelly Of the Beast"-- the stories and issues that the press and media either ignore, won't even talk about, or will mention once and forevermore claim "it's old news..."Naturally, some will be stories which interest me, or things I think we all need to be aware of.I am experimenting with a minor change in presentation- when I can, I will cut to -GoogleNewsBeta-- with a keyword or two and see what kind of links to "mainstream" stories I can find in contrast to what we see here...

How did this happen? How did the nation go in an instant from disbelieving every utterance of Donald Trump to robotically repeating — and acting on — every claim that falls out of Joe Biden’s mouth, no matter how disconnected from the truth? The most glaring example involves Biden’s fact-challenged tirade against Georgia’s new voting law. At his first and only press conference, Biden declared the state’s efforts to protect against voter fraud were worse than Jim Crow, “un-American,” “sick,” and “despicable.” (This was the same press conference where moments later Biden bragged about how much time he’s spent with...

The Resenters By Mark Gauvreau Judge February 21, 2003 Moralism without Morality In recent weeks the media has treated the antiwar protesters as one of two things: either as a harmless group of mainstream folks angry about American bellicosity, or as the second coming of the communists. In fact, it’s both simpler and more complex than that: The protesters are not anarchists or soccer moms—at least, they are not merely anarchists or soccer moms. First and foremost, they are Resenters. Resentment as a source of human action and thought has been around as long as the human race, of course, but...