Free Republic

A Department of Defense teaching guide meant to fight extremism advises students that rather than “dressing in sheets” modern-day radicals “will talk of individual liberties, states’ rights, and how to make the world a better place,” and describes 18th-century American patriots seeking freedom from the British as belonging to “extremist ideologies.” The guide comes from documents obtained by Judicial Watch and is authored by the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute, a DoD-funded diversity training center. Under a section titled “extremist ideologies,” the document states, “In U.S. history, there are many examples of extremist ideologies and movements. The colonists who sought...

For the Journal of the American Revolution, Todd Andrlik compiled a list of the ages of the key participants in the Revolutionary War as of July 4, 1776. Many of them were surprisingly young: Marquis de Lafayette, 18 James Monroe, 18 Gilbert Stuart, 20 Aaron Burr, 20 Alexander Hamilton, 21 Betsy Ross, 24 James Madison, 25 This is kind of blowing my mind...because of the compression of history, I'd always assumed all these people were around the same age. But in thinking about it, all startups need young people...Hamilton, Lafayette, and Burr were perhaps the Gates, Jobs, and Zuckerberg of...

Whether it was finding the solid ground in writing the Declaration of Independence that would justify and drive a revolution or defining the core rights that would guide the crafting for our Constitution, our Founding Fathers held firmly to core principles that would help them navigate through unchartered waters. Every improvement is the result of change, but not every change is an improvement. Our Founding Fathers had to find a compass to give them a true north as they sorted through the choices and changes our emerging country faced. After more than two centuries, it is understandable that our citizens...

Americans voted twice for a big-government President, and now we’re beginning to experience the impact of big government. Are you shocked? It’s been nearly five years of the President and Congress spending future generations into the oblivion of debt, the Executive Branch securing control over huge chunks of the private economy (two car companies, multiple banks and the health care industry are only part of it), and a dramatic expansion of both the defined role, and the powers of the IRS. At this point in the Obama presidency, we the people should not be surprised by a government that has...

<p>President Obama is under fire for remarks he made after meeting with Vietnam’s President Truong Tan Sang, one of the world’s few Communist leaders.</p> <p>Obama appeared to compliment Vietnam’s late Communist dictator Ho Chi Minh, pointing out that the Vietnam War-era leader was inspired by none other than our Founding Fathers and documents.</p>

Following a meeting with Vietnamese President Truong Tan Sang today at the White House, President Barack Obama seemed to offer praise for communist revolutionary Ho Chi Minh as someone “inspired” by America’s Founding Fathers, the PJ Tatler reports. During the Oval Office meeting, Obama says he and Sang “discussed the challenges that all of us face when it comes to issues of human rights,” referring to Vietnam’s sordid record on the issue. “And we had a very candid conversation about both the progress that Vietnam is making and the challenges that remain.” When it was time to leave, Sang reportedly...

President Obama hailed hard-core communist revolutionary Ho Chi Minh today as a pretty open guy who was actually inspired by the Founders. Obama took a break from his jobs-pivot speeches to meet Vietnamese President Truong Tan Sang at the White House. The pair held joint remarks in the Oval Office afterward. Obama said their first bilateral meeting “represents the steady progression and strengthening of the relationship between our two countries.” “Obviously, we all recognize the extraordinarily complex history between the United States and Vietnam. Step by step, what we have been able to establish is a degree

Egypt is on everyone’s mind as a democratically-elected government was overthrown by the Egyptian military. It is utterly necessary as the country was moving toward an Islamic state, slowly turning into, at minimum, an oligarchy if not a dictatorship. The question becomes why, after only about a year, did the government fail where ours has endured for 226 years? The answer is right under our noses and we often do not think about it. Our government had the advantage of six giants of history involved from the start. Those men were Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin and Hamilton. Each one...

In the close of HBO's wonderful 2008 series about America's second president, titled "John Adams," the voice of Adams is narrated by actor Paul Giamatti and it closes the seven part mini-series: Posterity! You will never know how much it cost the present Generation to preserve your Freedom! I hope you will make good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in Heaven, that I ever took half the Pains to preserve it. These words were not dramatic flair of a modern day screenwriter but the actual thoughts of John Adams recorded by his hand in a...

Holy war can seem like something that happened long ago or that happens far away — the Crusades of medieval Europe, for example, or jihadists fighting secular forces today. But since their country’s founding, Americans have often thought of their wars as sacred, even when the primary objectives have been political. This began with the American Revolution. When colonists declared their independence on July 4, 1776, religious conviction inspired them. Because they believed that their cause had divine support, many patriots’ ardor was both political and religious. They saw the conflict as a just, secular war, but they fought it...

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 --...