Free Republic

President Trump concluded his Friday night Mount Rushmore speech by announcing the signing of an executive order creating a “National Garden of American Heroes” in which the statues of those anarchists would consign to the ash heap of history would reside to remind future generations of how we became who and what we are, to remind us of the struggle against tyranny and injustice. Trump righteously stood before the visages of the likes of Thomas Jefferson, the maligned slave-owner who helped create a nation and a process that would end slavery. He stood before the face of Abraham Lincoln, the...

With polls showing a double-digit lead for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden over President Donald Trump, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif) announced that he will move to Canada if Trump wins in November. Schiff's staff were reportedly dismayed by this announcement. In an off-the-record comment, staff member Patrick Boland observed that "as hated as Schiff is among Trump's base of deplorables, the chance that they might get him to leave will undoubtedly energize them. We don't think it will be enough to overcome Biden's big lead, but stranger things have happened. Adam's word doesn't count for much with...

The planters comprising Livingston’s extralegal public safety committee had Albe Dean and Angus L. Donovan lynched on this date in 1835, during the ongoing panic at the prospect of slave rebellion. Dean was a New England itinerant doctor, denounced by the “steam doctors” executed in Livingston on the 6th, in a desperate attempt to preserve their own lives; Donovan was a poor man from Kentucky whose name had been served up by similarly desperate slaves under torture at Beatties Bluff. Both were white, and in both cases the evidence marshaled against them largely resolved to a failure on the part...

Emboldened by Hitler’s rise to power in Germany in 1933, and fueled by the Great Depression, anti-Semitism increased throughout the United States, and over 100 anti-Semitic organizations sprung up across the country. They had names like the Friends of the New Germany (Nazi Bund), the Silver Shirts, Defenders of the Christian Faith, the Christian Front, and the Knights of the White Camellia, among others. Protected by the constitution’s First Amendment, they held public rallies, paraded through the streets in their uniforms carrying Nazi flags, published scurrilous magazines, and openly flaunted their hatred for Jews. American Jews were intimidated and frightened....

Washington Celtics could replace Washington Redskins because the Irish are proud of their heritage and many North Americans are simply ashamed of their heritage. The word "redskins" is a physically descriptive term that doesn't have inherently negative characteristics. The word is one of the English translations of the Ottawa term "Oklahoma". If we consider the characteristics of the people the term "redskins" was first applied to, it's a positive term. I'm attempting to understand why some of the descendants of the people Christopher Columbus called "Indians" say they are ashamed to be called "redskins". The only explanation I can think...

On a sweltering July 7, 1865, a mere 12 weeks after Abraham Lincoln was shot at Ford’s Theater, four of his assassin’s accomplices were hanged in the courtyard of the District of Columbia’s Washington Arsenal — present-day Fort McNair, and specifically its tennis courts. The exact nature of the conspiracy against the man who had seen the North to victory in the Civil War has been debated ever since actor John Wilkes Booth lodged a ball from his one-shot Derringer behind Honest Abe’s ear. But it was a conspiracy — an astoundingly bold one. Simultaneous with Booth’s successful attack upon...

Lest we forget that the left considers the American founding our original sin, a recent string of articles, lawsuits, and so-called “activism” is taking aim at America’s founding fathers. They were too white, too male, not woke enough, some owned slaves. And anyway, the Constitution is silent on gender fluidity. On June 1, James Madison Memorial High School senior Mya Berry launched a petition to shorten the name of their school -- erasing Madison’s name from it entirely. Apparently, the school’s name made Berry feel “more than unsafe.” The proposed name-change would, according to Berry, comprise a remedy for several...

The Epstein underage sex-trafficking and blackmail story may be the most important story of the decade. It is a parable for much that has gone wrong with Western civilization, the story of the corruption of a ruling elite not merely on a human level but on a spiritual one, the explanation of our current condition. The characters in this sordid drama seemed to have accepted their damnation and determined to live out their debauchery without even the possibility of redemption. Despite the prestige and opulence of its setting, Epstein’s was a world of despair where the shadow suicide or guilty...

After leaving China for America two decades ago, my father only returned to his homeland once. I had turned 18, and I think he wanted to show me something of his youth, of which he spoke little. In the dusty village where he grew up, we met an endless stream of old men who wanted to see the village’s prodigal son. Gifts were offered and extravagant greetings were swapped. Then, after each visitor had departed, my father would tell me, matter-of-factly, what they did to him during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. The harmless-looking retired cadre, now an amiable old...

On this date in 1415, Czech theologian Jan Hus was burned at the stake at Konstanz for heresy. Hus might be the most consequential pre-Lutheran Christian religious reformer, and the Hussite faith he founded still persists to this day. In his own time, Hus expounded a reformist theology inspired by John Wycliffe, and putting Holy Writ into the vernacular was essential to his program. His religious movement found common cause with a Bohemian political interest in exploiting western Christendom’s clown carful of rival popes to stake out greater national independence. He eventually met his martyrdom by agreeing to come to...

This date in 1917 was the eve of the Battle of Aqaba, wherein a force of Arabs with famous British officer T.E. Lawrence emerged from the desert to surprise and capture the Ottoman Red Sea port today located in Jordan.* And that makes this, in the cinematic masterpiece Lawrence of Arabia, the date on which the titular character kept the peace within his fragile coalition by personally executing a malefactor to prevent a tribal blood feud. The victim, Gasim, is a real figure described in the real T.E. Lawrence’s memoirs — a gap-toothed, grumbling fellow, skrimshank in all our marches,...

Stan Freberg Presents The United States of America was a comedy album from 1961. It's easy to tell Freberg is a liberal - the Declaration Of Independence skit is a take on the House Unamerican Committee. However, it's still pretty funny - also a funny insight into how liberals think. Stan Freberg Presents The United States of America - Declaration Of Independence

...But let the Revolutionaries speak for themselves. Before the Revolution, Virginia tried to tax the slave trade out of existence, only to have those enactments vetoed by the Privy Council in London. And it was during the Revolution that the rebel colonies began enacting the first emancipation plans, beginning with Pennsylvania in 1780 and Massachusetts in 1783. If the protection of slavery was that central to the Revolution, why did 5,000 African Americans fight against the British? Why is there a monument to the black volunteers of the First Rhode Island — “The Patriots of African Descent” — who shivered...

On this date in 1762, the Korean king Yeongjo had his son and heir Crown Prince Sado immured in a rice chest — where he would die after eight excrutiating days. This bizarre incident, attested by the memoirs of Sado’s widow Lady Hyegyeong, continues to perplex down to the present day. In Lady Hyegyeong’s telling, the tyrannical father warped the sensitive son, sending the latter into a destructive spiral of madness. As the 1750s unfolded, Sado’s behavior grew erratic, violent, and delusional. He was prone to sudden fits of rage, stalked and raped court ladies, and wandered Seoul streets in...

President Trump delivered the speech of his presidency at Mount Rushmore Friday, a magnificent affirmation to Americans on their 244th national birthday that what they have always cherished is still cherished, along with a warning shot to those who hate and despise all the United States stands for. It was non-partisan -- there was no mention of Democrats or Joe Biden. It was inclusive - celebratory of people of all races, and celebratory in particular of the singularity of America being great for such diversity. It was also big-hearted, magnanimous, celebrating all the ranges achievements of the country. Yet it...

We’re surrounded today by evidence that too few of us know our history, and too many have been mis-educated to see only its flaws. When we celebrate the Fourth, we’re not only observing our nation’s birthday. We’re also celebrating the things that came into the world along with it.When we obsess over our faults, we lose perspective and forget that aspect of our past. Never before had a country been built upon the idea that it was not the rule of kings but the dignity of each person that formed the basis of political and social order. We did that.Our...

Leftist citizens of the world are uncomfortable at the sight of unabashed and self-confident patriots celebrating the founding of a nation dedicated to undeniable truths. Tough. Let the micro-aggressions roll as we stand athwart the progressive junking of all that is good and decent. On our nation’s 150th anniversary in 1926, Republican president Calvin Coolidge gave a speech in which he responded to the progressive wave that was muddying the minds of the nation. Only thirteen years after the passage of the destructive 16th and 17th Amendments, Coolidge deftly reminded Americans not to discard principles that had served the nation...

The Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) announced it is retiring the slogan "Work hard. Be Nice." Richard Barth, KIPP Foundation CEO, said "the amazing financial success of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) organization's business plan of 'Break Stuff, Get Paid' has inspired us to rethink our message." "Clearly, the 'work hard and be nice' model only works in a civilized free society." Barth declared. "If we examine the hundred thousand years that homo sapiens have lived we observe that in only a few hundred years and in very few places have we seen free societies. The 'break stuff and get...

<p>Because we’re marking the adoption of the Declaration of Independence by the Continental Congress, it would be instructive to see where we are today by comparing a few passages from our founding document with current events.</p> <p>1776: King George III has “sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.”</p>