Free Republic

There is no one among America's Founding Fathers who provides as articulate and discerning a vision of genuinely conservative thought as John Adams. John Adams: The Most Conservative of Founding Fathers Jack Kerwick, Ph.D. | The New American 04 July 2013 As Russell Kirk suggests in his classic, The Conservative Mind, there is no one among America’s Founding Fathers who provides as articulate and discerning a vision of genuinely conservative thought as John Adams. Adams was a man of great learning and genius. He also is among the most prolific political authors that the United States ever produced. Kirk...

My father, Rush H. Limbaugh, Jr., delivered this oft-requested address locally a number of times, but it had never before appeared in print until it was published in The Limbaugh Letter. My dad was renowned for his oratory skills and for his original mind; this speech is, I think, a superb demonstration of both. I will always be grateful to him for instilling in me a passion for the ideas and lives of America's Founders, as well as a deep appreciation for the inspirational power of words, which you will see evidenced here:

<p>Will you be celebrating Natural Law this July 4th? You should be. Your Founding Fathers did.</p> <p>In declaring their independence and asserting their God-given rights, the Founding Fathers—particularly the pen of Thomas Jefferson—acknowledged the “Laws of Nature and Nature’s God.”</p>

New federal law: The constitutional reset law We need what I would call a “constitutional reset” law passed that would make null and void any existing federal law that has been passed over the past 237 years that they did not have... Follow the link above to read the rest

Recent opinion polls demonstrate a deepening distrust of the federal government. That's not an altogether bad thing. Our nation's founders recognized that most human abuses are the result of government. As Thomas Paine said, "government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil." Because of their fear of abuse, the Constitution's framers sought to keep the federal government limited in its power. Their distrust of Congress is seen in the governing rules and language used throughout our Constitution. The Bill of Rights is explicit in that distrust, using language such as "Congress shall not abridge," "shall not infringe,"...

As we celebrate our nation's 237th birthday, a crucial facet of American life has all but vanished. We have forsaken, in a systematic and deliberate public manner, one of our most fundamental duties: fostering civic virtue in each and every one of our citizens. What does it mean to be an American? Politicians in both parties keep pushing to create a new "path to citizenship" for millions of illegal aliens. But if sovereignty and self-preservation still matter in Washington, citizenship must be guarded ferociously against those who would exploit and devalue it at every electoral whim. The pavers of the...

Last week, I highlighted four little-known facts about the Declaration of Independence. Here are a few more facts to add to those oddities: There are at least 26 surviving paper copies of the Declaration of Independence of the hundreds made in July 1776 for circulation among the Colonies. After Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, the Committee of Five, which was appointed to write it, was also responsible with overseeing its reproduction for proclamation to those living in the Colonies. The reproduction was done at the shop of Philadelphia printer John Dunlap. "On July 5, Dunlap's copies were dispatched across...

Being about a week away from Independence Day, I was doing a little reflecting upon the history surrounding the Declaration of Independence. And I thought it would be of equal interest to many of my readers to look at some often-overlooked aspects of the declaration's production and legacy. Several historical websites hold some fascinating facts about this national treasure -- including the National Archives and Records Administration's site, at http://www.archives.gov. In addition, on History's website, the article "9 Things You May Not Know About the Declaration of Independence," by Elizabeth Harrison, has some intriguing notes. Let me elaborate on some...

An unspecified time ago a bunch of Founding Founders of unknown sexual orientations and sexual identities founded a country on a non-exclusive basis in order to promote free birth control, open borders and cowboy poetry. We are engaged now in a great civil war for transgender bathrooms, gay marines and abortions for all to test whether a nation so conceived can endure all its abortions. The White House has today put up a link to a new government website that collates and offers key documents from the revolution and the founding era. But it appears that the administration couldn’t bring...

The scandals surrounding the Obama administration come down to one common theme -- that the ever-growing size and scope of our federal government gives it enormous power over virtually every aspect of our lives, power that in the wrong hands can be used to reward supporters, exact revenge and punish enemies. In education, health care, transportation, energy, disaster relief, welfare, commerce, work and salary rules, and on and on, the federal government plays an outsized role completely inconsistent with the Founding Fathers' notion of a limited government that allows maximum personal liberty. In 1900, government at all three levels --...

The feast of Pentecost is the celebration of one of the most important moments in church history. It commemorates the day when, after the Resurrection of the Lord, the Holy Spirit gave the Faithful a special ability to speak to crowds of different nationalities in their own languages. Now, we don’t know exactly what happened that day – whether the Apostles instantly learned other languages, or their audiences instantly learned to hear them in their heads as if they had. All we know is that the leaders of the Church were suddenly, miraculously, able to reach people, and this was...

Have you ever wondered what happened to the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence? For the record, here's a portrait of the men who pledged "our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor" for liberty many years ago. Fifty-six men from each of the original 13 colonies signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. Nine of the signers were immigrants, two were brothers and two were cousins. One was an orphan. The average age of a signer was 45. Benjamin Franklin was the oldest delegate at 70. The youngest was Thomas Lynch Jr. of South Carolina...

In the American Declaration of Independence, our Founding Fathers proclaimed that we are endowed by our Creator with the unalienable right to the pursuit of happiness. Unfortunately, we have long forgotten what our Founders meant by that now iconic phrase—“the pursuit of happiness”—and, as a consequence, we are now in jeopardy of losing the very liberty our Founders purchased for us at the risk of their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. Indeed, if we properly understood what our Founding Fathers meant by the phrase “pursuit of happiness,” a photographer in New Mexico, a pastry business owner in Colorado,...

The old adage that one lie leads to another is never more apparent than when modern American public officials deal with issues arising from sexual immorality. President Bill Clinton, for example, started a chain of lies when he decided to have an adulterous relationship with a White House intern. Clinton first lied to his wife, then to a federal court, then to the American people. Nor could Clinton's lies, delivered as president, be his lies alone. His partisans in Congress either had to abandon him or add another link to the chain of lies by declaring that perjury and...

It's Holy Week, but what's not so holy is the assault on religious liberty in the U.S. Religious liberty has been called rightly America's "first freedom," not only because the right is contained in the First Amendment but also because it predates the U.S. and has its origin in God, not government, and the freedoms he endowed within us. But over the past few decades, that basic freedom has come under assault -- particularly, in recent years, regarding Christianity. Last week, I discussed how religious liberty in foreign countries is being suppressed. This week, I will begin to address...

Since the 1950s the Longview, Wash. City Council has opened its public meetings with prayer, as Congress has done for 239 years. But fear of a lawsuit from groups like the ALCU has caused the mayor to tell the local ministerial association that it is “not acceptable” for ministers who volunteer to give a Christian prayer that refers to Jesus. To their credit, the ministers refused to give a generic prayer that violates the convictions of their faith. So, for fear of an ACLU threat, city officials decided to exclude ministers simply because their faith teaches them to pray...

In the past few weeks, I've highlighted ways we can reduce violent crime in the U.S. But I've saved the best and most powerful solutions for last because they work from the inside out.In Part 1, I revealed how rational and rewarding it would be to post armed guards at our schools. In Part 2, I showed how reducing the number of firearms in the U.S. would not curb violent crime. In Part 3, I began to discuss the first of two ways in which our Founding Fathers expected to produce and maintain civility and decency in society. They esteemed...

I am in Paris for one afternoon and overnight because the non-stop service from Oujda, Morocco to Dulles International Airport just outside Washington, DC hasn't yet begun. We flew into Orly Airport which is the Newark Airport of Europe. If you can arrange a trip that doesn't include Orly, I recommend you do that. But, any story that ends with, "and then we had dinner in Paris" is a pretty good story. Washington, DC is awash in activity surrounding the President's State of the Union address tomorrow night at nine Eastern time. As we have discussed before, every association, DC-based...

American society’s schizophrenic attitudes about business could be the subject of a book. (Perhaps multiple volumes.) For example, in the months leading up to the 2012 presidential election, we heard constantly about the need to create jobs and bring down unemployment. And yet, media coverage and Hollywood depictions of business only reinforce the popular fiction that business owners are little more than greedy exploitative bloodsuckers (whose enterprises apparently exist for the sole purpose of being gouged for taxes to be spent by profligate lawmakers with no sense of their own fiscal responsibility). Regrettably, this is typical. But our culture’s conflict...

Who isn't sickened by the moral decay and heinous acts of violence across our country? My heart and prayers continue to go out to victims everywhere. But do gun bans -- such as the one proposed this past week by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., which would outlaw 120 specific firearms -- curb violent crime? Not according to a recent Fox News investigation titled "Assault-weapons ban no guarantee mass shootings would decrease, data shows." The report concluded, "Data published earlier this year showed that while the (Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, which was signed by President Bill Clinton)...