Free Republic

You can be right, or you can be married; take your pick. I can’t remember who told me that, but I do remember that they were only half-joking. The other half, the serious half, is exceedingly important. This is why. Many therapists aren’t crazy about doing marital therapy. It’s complicated and messy, and it often feels out of control. In the worst case scenario, the therapist has front row seats to a regularly-scheduled prize fight. But I love to do marital therapy. Why? Maybe I enjoy the work because I keep one simple principle in mind: if marriage is going...

Culture Challenge of the Week:  Finding A Good Man Call it the lament of the young, single woman: there are no good men left. Or if there are, where are they? And how can a young woman pursue a healthy, marriage-minded relationship in a singles culture of casual sex and perpetual adolescence? In her new book, The Jane Austen Guide to Happily Ever After (Regnery Publishing, 2012), Elizabeth Kantor provides some answers. She writes, “Of course it’s no secret that modern mating rituals have gone badly wrong.” And indeed they have: the number of cohabitating couples has doubled in the...

The world needs a new economic model based around “gross global happiness” rather than simply making money, according to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Ban, speaking at a meeting organized by the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan called “Happiness and Well-being: Defining a New Economic Paradigm”, said social and environmental factors should be considered, a statement posted on a United Nations website said. “Gross National Product has long been the yardstick by which economies and politicians have been measured. Yet it fails to take into account the social and environmental costs of so-called progress,” Ban told at the meeting at U.N....

Part Two: Happiness: The first three Beatitudes PETER KREEFTChrist proposes a vision of happiness which is the exact opposite of what everyone in the post-Christian West assumes to be the sources of the greatest happiness in life. Blessed are the Poor in Spirit We say how blessed we are as individuals or as a nation when we have wealth. He says no, you are blessed when you are poor. Poor not only in your bank account, but even more than that, not less, poor down to the depths of your heart, poor in spirit, detached from riches, whether you are physically...

This is my first youtube about a very effective,simple and perfect way to overcome the negative stresses of living in an almost totally socialist nation. It is being used widely by our troopers now and can be heard for free! Please listen.

If you've ever wanted to be as good a person as your dog thinks you are but feared you'd never reach your dog's standards, Think Again. Recently, when speaking before the Rotary Club of Aspen, one of more than 33,000 Rotary clubs worldwide, I discovered a treasure trove of virtue — they're called Rotarians. As if powdered slopes beckon, dozens of Aspen's most respected and engaged residents rise early on Thursdays to enjoy breakfast, social networking and a guest speaker. Most important, they uphold an important American ethic — they ask not what their country can do for them but...

Hello and happy Holy Days to all! I hope it is okay to post this today, as I am sitting here in my room in Rowland Heights, a good looking never been married man of 49, by myself on Christmas day. Although I am perfectly happy by myself, it would be so nice to share this and many other days with a bright and cute woman of the same conservative ideals that I have! Maybe this thread can be a beginning point for other FR sinlges to someday meet and get to know each other?

Parker Brothers made millions of dollars marketing the table game Monopoly. It takes two to three hours to play a round of the game. Its history can be traced back to 1904 where it was developed as a teaching tool to explain the single tax theory. Poker is a game where betting begins with some form of forced bet by one of the players. Each player is betting that the hand he has will be the highest ranked. Each of the other players must either match the maximum previous bet or fold. Both games include one striking similarity . ....

I have been thinking and reading about happiness ever since I came across the work of Michael Argyle on the subject in the 1970s. And, despite many complexities in the research findings, I think in the end the facts about it are surprisingly simple: It seems that happiness is to a quite extraordinary degree a trait rather than a state. In other words, we are born happy, unhappy or somewhere in-between. There are a lot of people who are always miserable (most Leftists, for instance) and some who are always sunny in mood no matter what. Even when we find...

Conservatives have been talking about this particular choice for decades, and the future is now. This isn't hypotheticals wrapped in high-minded rhetoric. California is now forcing online businesses that have any physical presence in the state to collect sales tax from business it does there. Here's why... The legislation was intended to eliminate a perceived business impediment for brick-and-mortar retailers in the state, according to California Democratic Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner, who helped develop the bill. State and local sales taxes can total 10 percent in some California cities, and big-box retailers like Wal-Mart complained that tax-free sales on Amazon were...

I mean, yes, they feel that way, but you're just not supposed to say it. While I love the ClimateWire headline -- "U.S. vows continuing effort toward a 17% emission cut" (subscription required), sort of like I vow to continue my effort toward hitting fewer pedestrians when I drive...not to hit fewer pedestrians when I drive...ah, J-school -- the following excerpt from the piece is simply beyond belief. Speaking to a U.N ‘Kyoto II' negotiating group in Bangkok, U.S. Deputy Special Envoy for Climate Change Jonathan Pershing "noted in a series of slides that U.S. emissions have declined about 8.7...

Something to think about... On a cold January morning in 2007, this man with a violin played six Bach pieces in the corridor of a DC Metro station.  In that period of time over 1100 people whisked past, most of them on their way to work... After about 3 minutes, one middle-aged man in the throng noticed that there was a musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds, but then hurried on to meet his schedule... @ :04 the violinist received his first dollar: the woman threw money in the hat and without stopping and continued to...

What sort of life do you want to live? Many people would respond to this question by saying something in the fashion of: “I want to live a good, fulfilling life that has meaning and purpose!” This would be a life that offered its share of challenges, no doubt, but would reward the person with a maximum of self-satisfaction, peace, love, and joy and a minimum of self-doubt, guilt, and despair. But where can you find this kind of life? Some in the world say that it can be found through the acquisition of much secular learning and study of...

Premature babies feel pain more acutely than healthy newborns largely due to the invasive hospital treatments they receive, experts believe. The researchers say better pain relief should be given to premature babies in intensive care. Their study is published in the journal NeuroImage. Being born prematurely and undergoing intensive care affects pain processing in the infant brain. This suggests that the premature group is more sensitive to pain. This, say the researchers, implies that premature babies can benefit from a mother's touch - being held or cuddled - in the same way as normal infants. Andy Cole, chief executive of...

Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night.And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.The ungodly are not so: but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away.Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the...

..."But earnestly desire the higher gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way." (1Cor. 12:31) I woke up in church this morning. Not on a cold dark floor or surrounded by votive candles and stained glass, but next to my partner in faith, my best friend, my beloved wife of 34 years, Laurine. We are staying overnight this Christmas at the home of our oldest daughter. She wanted to host Christmas this year for the first time. She is the first of our five grown children. Her home is filled to overflowing with love, and the floors...

According to polls — Pew Research Center, the National Science Foundation — and studies such as Arthur Brooks’s Gross National Happiness, conservative Americans are happier than liberal Americans. Liberals respond this way: “If we’re unhappier, it’s because we are more upset than conservatives over the plight of those less fortunate than ourselves.” But common sense and data suggest other explanations. For one thing, conservatives on the same socioeconomic level as liberals give more charity and volunteer more time than do liberals. And as regards the suffering of non-Americans, for at least half a century conservatives have been far more willing...

"According to polls . . . and studies . . ., conservative Americans are happier than liberal Americans. ". . . conservatives on the same socioeconomic level as liberals give more charity and volunteer more time than do liberals. And . . . for at least a half-century, conservatives have been far more willing to sacrifice American treasure and American blood (often their own) for other nations' liberty. "The upshot of all this? There is an amazingly simple way to defeat the left: Raise children who are grateful to be American, who don't complain, who can handle losing and who...

Despite a thriving pharmaceutical industry promising to change your brain chemistry and make you happy, depression continues to hit all-time highs in western culture.

Why Isn't Spain Happy? By Arthur C. Brooks Friday, September 10, 2010 /snip By all rights, Spain should be getting happier, too. After all, Spain has "progressed" tremendously over the past three decades, from increasing the size of government, to liberalizing social policy, to loosening the grip of the Catholic Church. Consider the following examples. Government social spending in Spain has increased from 15.5 percent of gross domestic product in 1980 to 21.2 percent today, well above the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development average. Where once abortion was illegal, today Spain has the most liberal abortion laws in Europe,...