Free Republic

On Wednesday night, October 26th, college students across the nation participated in various anti-war protests or, as many of them referred to it, vigils commemorating the 2,000 military deaths in Iraq. These so called “vigils” included much more than candles and Kumbaya.

Dear Friend, Devidas Sabane was a diligent farmer, working the land of a former member of the Indian parliament. When his son fell ill, the impoverished Sabane went to the landowner's brother to request money for his treatment. The brother wasn't in a giving mood. He beat Sabane viciously and forced poison down his throat. The farmer died later that day. When his bereaved wife reported the murder to the police and the State Human Rights Commission, they brushed her off. She later committed suicide. This is India today. The account -- one among many -- comes from the testimony...

Misquoting Our Founding Fathers    TO THE SOURCE How many times have your heard that "Our founding fathers were not Christians! They were deists!"? It is an absurd assertion. It conjures up images of clandestine gatherings in Philadelphia's Independence Hall where one by one Washington and Jefferson and Adams et al swear allegiance to some obscure deist creed and pledge to set America on the course of eradicating Biblical belief from all corners of the land. Sure some of our nation's founders were deists. Consider the grumpy pamphleteer Thomas Paine in The Age of Reason: "I do not believe in...

The cry, “That violates the separation of church and state!� has been the centerpiece of the secularist drive to marginalize Christianity in the public sphere since the 1940s. The real—and often neglected—question is what precisely that separation means and how it should be interpreted and applied. The secularists’ interpretation of the establishment clause—the line of the First Amendment that reads, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof�—ultimately rests upon anti-Christian prejudice and involves cherry picking from certain founders’ writings. In recent years, we have seen groups such as the ACLU, the...

Abortion policy must be completely secular. In 1797, America made a treaty with Tripoli, declaring that "the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion." This reassurance to Islam was written under Washington's presidency and approved by the Senate under John Adams. The U.S. statutes against abortion have a nonsectarian history. They were put on the books when Catholics were a politically insignificant minority. Even the Protestant clergy were not a major factor in these laws. Rather, the laws were the achievement of the American Medical Association. From early in the 19th century,...

American Forces Press ServiceGHAZNI, Afghanistan, April 5, 2005 – The Army is rich in history and tradition, and the soldiers of the unit known as the “Bedford Boys” know they have much to live up to. Army 1st Lt. Jonathan Toland, a member of Company C, 3rd Battalion, 116th Infantry Regiment, pulls forward security during a stop on a patrol in Ghazni province, Afghanistan. Photo by Sgt. Jennifer S. Emmons, USA (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. Company C, 3rd Battalion, 116th Infantry Regiment, is made up mostly of soldiers from Bedford, Va. During the invasion of Europe...

There’s a reason that our forefathers were wise enough to declare that this Republic’s future and fortune be decided by the majority of Americans rather than any of the individual groups of minorities. This was a new nation then, filled with the rejects, the hopeful, the wounded, the ambitious from many lands, and it was important that we come together and start thinking like a united and unique country. For anything to be accomplished in this great experiment called America, people were going to have to be capable of coming to a consensus, regardless of their roots, and voting accordingly....

'Your forefathers were not Neanderthals' January 26 2004 at 02:30PM By Maggie Fox Washington - You may think your grandparents act like Neanderthals, but United States researchers said on Monday they had strong evidence that modern humans are not descended from them. A computer analysis of the skulls of modern humans, Neanderthals, monkeys and apes shows that we are substantially different, physically, from those early humans. New York University paleoanthropologist Katerina Harvati said Neanderthals should be considered a separate species from Homo sapiens, and not just a sub-species. "We interpret the evidence presented here as supporting the view that Neanderthals...

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people to peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." That is the First Amendment. It forbids the Government from establishing a religion of its own, as England did with the Church of England...and it prohibits governmental interference with the free exercise of practicing the religion of your choosing...or not, if that is what you want. What has happened in the last 40 years...

Tolerating Evil Is No Longer Tolerable Exclusive commentary by Patrick Rooney July 7, 2003 I went to see a fireworks show on July fourth. No patriotic music or words, just twenty minutes of moderately interesting visual pyrotechnics. No one seemed to mind. Masses of people thought nothing of building their day around the fireworks, bringing barbeque, drink, and children, and enduring major traffic, crowds, and weary legs. For what, exactly? I pondered fireworks, gutted of their symbolic meaning, as I went to bed. Course I didn’t get to sleep right away. There’s something about the periodic boom of nearby M-80s...