Free Republic

“This president is the first president in the modern history of our country who is trying to divide our people up based on the color of their skin, the country they were born in, their sexual orientation, their gender, their religion. And that is an outrage.” That was Bernie Sanders, a Democrat candidate for president in 2020, at a CNN town hall event in late February. And as the Vermont Socialist explained, “our job is to bring our people together, not to divide them up.” This was not a new theme for Democrats. In September of 2018 at the University...

‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ Appendix THE PRINCIPLES OF NEWSPEAK Newspeak was the official language of Oceania and had been devised to meet the ideological needs of Ingsoc, or English Socialism…It was expected that Newspeak would have finally superseded Oldspeak (or Standard English, as we should call it) by about the year 2050. Meanwhile it gained ground steadily, all Party members tending to use Newspeak words and grammatical constructions more and more in their everyday speech. The version in use in 1984, and embodied in the Ninth and Tenth Editions of the Newspeak Dictionary, was a provisional one, and contained many superfluous...

Alexandra Rojas was shocked. So was Waleed Shahid. The two vocal leaders of Justice Democrats, an advocacy group whose uncompromising style has made it a nuisance among Washington traditionalists, had a meeting request from aides to Senator Elizabeth Warren, who was fresh into her presidential campaign. As Ms. Warren sought to push the party to the left by proposing expansive liberal policy ideas, her team was prepared to seek counsel from organizations that did the same. “They want us in their court,” Ms. Rojas said. “They know that if they want to win, they need to have the support from...

European Parliament President Antonio Tajani has come under fire for comments praising Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. Tajani told Radio 24 Wednesday evening that Mussolini did some “positive things,” including improving Italy’s infrastructure, until “he declared war on the entire world, following Hitler, until he promoted the racial laws” that restricted the rights of Jews. …

Meatless Mondays matter: In praise of New York City schools overhauling their menus once a week By Jessica Scott-Reid Mar 12, 2019 | 10:25 AM Building on a major expansion this past fall, Mayor de Blasio just announced that Meatless Mondays will be in public schools across the nation’s largest city starting next academic year. Not surprisingly, immediate online reactions ignited increasingly common debates over the consumption of animal products, from concerns about forcing vegetarianism on children, to calls to remove dairy as well. Ultimately though, eliminating meat from school meals one day a week is a positive and necessary...

“We should no longer allow the Kremlin to use energy as a weapon,” Rick Perry told a news conference in Budapest... The Trump administration worked to open up the European energy market, which Russia has long dominated. America's lobbying efforts have paid off in Poland and Germany. Last Thursday, Poland signed a 24-year deal to buy liquified natural gas (LNG) from the United States during a visit from Perry. It was the second major deal for U.S. LNG that the country has signed in the last few months. Weeks prior, German Chancellor Angela Merkel began making moves to open up...

In last year’s Midterm race for seats in the United States House of Representatives, Anti-GamerGate personality and Revolution 60 developer Brianna Wu ran as a Democratic candidate in the primary election for Massachuset’s 8th Congressional District. Despite her political inexperience, Wu garnered 22.9% of the district’s vote (16,878 votes out of a total of 73,582), but ultimately lost the election to her incumbent opponent, Stephen Lynch. As the 2020 United States House of Representatives elections rapidly approach, Wu has once again announced her candidacy, which will feature a heavy emphasis on government regulation concerning internet relations. On March 6th, Wu...

Backers of the measure want Congress to clarify the constitutional right to bear arms (Photo: Chris Eger/Guns.com)A group of Hawaii state legislators wants Congress to repeal the right to bear arms — or at least specify that it is not an individual right. The resolution filed Tuesday in the Hawaiian Senate, SCR42, is backed by freshman state Sen. Stanley Chang, best known for defeating the chamber’s last Republican in 2016. Chang’s measure, which has four co-sponsors, would request Washington discuss either scrapping the Second Amendment altogether or clarifying that it only applies to organizations such as state militias. Chang, a...

To see populism as the problem is to see the events upside-down. People wanting to take control of their own destinies is a good thing. The problem lies with the fragility or even nonexistence of lawful institutions — or sufficient forces to defend them — and with the oligarchic, incompetent, or authoritarian rule that provoked populist reactions in the first place. The criticism of "populism" and "nationalism" tends to become a criticism of "democracy" or even a corporatist protection of an institutionalised oligarchy. Thus, mainstream media's reporting that populism and nationalism are a threat is misdirecting the people from the...

The George W. Bush Presidential Center is helping to develop a White House immigration policy, as it is urging the government to help CEOs and investors hire an unlimited number of foreigners in place of white-collar and blue-collar Americans. Employers should be allowed to freely hire foreign graduates for middle-class jobs, said the center’s recommendations. “Congress and the Administration should eliminate, or at least increase, the visa cap” for foreign college graduates, says the center’s recommendations on immigration. “Industries like agriculture, construction, landscaping, and hospitality rely on low-skilled foreign workers to fill vacant jobs … A higher cap [on the...

HAVANA - Cubans have overwhelmingly ratified a new constitution that enshrines the one-party socialist system as irrevocable while instituting modest economic and social changes, according to the national electoral commission. Alina Balseiro Gutierrez, president of the commission, said at a Havana press conference on Monday that preliminary results showed 84.4 percent of the 7.8 million potential voters participated in the Sunday referendum. She said of the potential electorate and not actual votes cast, 73.31 percent ratified the charter, 7.6 percent opposed ratification and 4.5 percent spoiled or left ballots blank. By comparison, in 1976 when the current constitution was ratified,...

You’re right, I don’t call him a fascist. He’s certainly anti-democratic, and I say so in the book, but I don’t call him a fascist because he isn’t violent. If he ends up declaring an emergency at the border over immigration, then I might change my position. There’s a long history of fascists using “emergencies” to create fear and conflict, so that’s a potential red line. If Trump does that, then he really is a bully with an army. But I do think his approach to the free press, to democratic institutions, to the independent judiciary, is extremely dangerous and...

Today, environmentalism proffers anti-humanism, population control, ecological totalitarianism, and indigenous multicultural tribal racism that “The New Green Deal” is chock full of ...

Today’s Campaign Update (Because The Campaign Never Ends) This was a really important week, and it is crucial that we all understand why. This was the week when the mask of socialist fascism came complete off the ugly face of the national Democrat Party, and there is no going back, hard though they will try. Simply put, all the Democrats had to do over the next two years to have a real shot a regaining all levers of power in our nation’s capital was not be batsh*t crazy, and they couldn’t do it. The can’t help themselves. This is, after...

This is the best chance a president has to reach [the American people], without his words being twisted beyond recognition by most who call themselves journalists. I have done my best during the last two years to Make America Great Again. But ... it is “my duty to [portray] things as they are ….” Today, our Union is more divided than at any time since before and during the Civil War. While a significant number of Americans enthusiastically support my efforts, a true account of the state of the union must recognize the existence of extremist resistance to American greatness....

Microsoft's search engine Bing could not be accessed in mainland China as of Thursday morning local time. That marks the apparent blocking of the last major non-Chinese search platform that had been operating there. According to a report from the FT, which cited two unnamed sources, that blockage came on the order of the government. "We've confirmed that Bing is currently inaccessible in China and are engaged to determine (our) next steps," a Microsoft spokesperson confirmed in an email to CNBC. (Please see full story at the link)

SAN FRANCISCO — With the growing recognition that prosecutors hold the keys to a fairer criminal justice system, the term “progressive prosecutor” has almost become trendy. This is how Senator Kamala Harris of California, a likely presidential candidate and a former prosecutor, describes herself. But she’s not. Time after time, when progressives urged her to embrace criminal justice reforms as a district attorney and then the state’s attorney general, Ms. Harris opposed them or stayed silent. Most troubling, Ms. Harris fought tooth and nail to uphold wrongful convictions that had been secured through official misconduct that included evidence tampering, false...

Can you imagine how scary it would be to live in a world where your livelihood depended on having the ‘correct’ politics? It’s the sort of thing you might expect of totalitarian regimes – Baathist Iraq under Saddam Hussain; everywhere that has ever tried communism; increasingly, Xi’s panopticon China – but definitely not of any liberal democracy in the 21st century. That dystopian future, though, may be much closer than you think. I only properly appreciated this recently when the podcast I’ve been doing for the last few years was mysteriously dropped by my regular employer, forcing me to seek...

In January of 2017, when the political controversy over Donald Trump’s perplexing win over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 national election was at its peak, my professor began his political psychology course by asking the lecture hall the following: “How many of you wish Hillary had won the election?” The question was voluntary, yet nearly every hand in the room shot up. “Okay, and how many of you supported Trump winning the election?” The room was quiet as not a single hand was raised, followed by a few chuckles. “Next, how many of you feel that liberals are safe walking...

The Left is fond of calling we who hold to the principles of freedom, self-empowerment, equality under the law, law-and-order, strong defense, family values, etc. as fascist. Let us review what fascism is about and who is actually fascist: If you have no problem with big government/high taxes because "we are the government" you are a #Statist. If you think that everything is generated by society, so resources should be allocated by its agent, the State, you are a #Collectivist. If you think private property should only be tolerated if it serves the public interest as determined by the...