Free Republic

For some time, I’ve had a squib in mind which connected the Declaration and Constitution. Professor William B. Allen of Michigan State University beat me to it some years ago with a paper that did just that. I encourage the reader to examine the entire work. To the small extent that our Declaration is discussed in the public square and taught to our young anymore at all, discourse is typically limited to the clauses surrounding our unalienable rights and equality before God. Addressed far less often are the specific charges directed at King George III and how our Constitution dealt...

Let us never forget those who gave their life for our freedoms. Remembering the brave men and women who gave their “last full measure of devotion” for our freedoms, requires us to take a moment on this Memorial Day to focus on the individuals behind the numbers and remember they are not just names on a wall. One of those individuals who gave everything he had for us was Marine Captain John J. McKenna IV who was killed on August 16, 2006 during an operation in Fallujah, Iraq. The story of John McKenna’s life and death is the story of...

This is a totally personal thread meant to honor those who served. If there's already something like this out there, please have Jim Rob delete it.

American Flag and the Flag of Serbia image courtesy of the Studenica Foundation. REMEMBERING SERBIA'S GREAT GENERAL DRAZA MIHAILOVICH ON AMERICA'S MEMORIAL DAY Taking to the Ravna Gora hills of Serbia 75 years ago in May of 1941 with only a handful of men to mount the first real resistance to Hitler's occupying forces in Europe was impressive. The guts it took and the resolve necessary for these men and their leader to initiate such a courageous act against the Nazi war machine that in 1941 appeared to be invincible seems almost inconceivable now. But it was real, and the...

Contending that "so-called free speech is delusional," DePaul University sociology professor Dr. Shu-Ju Cheng has resigned her post in protest. The event that spurred Dr. Cheng's protest was the aborted speech of Milo Yiannopolis on the University's campus last week. Despite paying the University for security, student thugs were permitted to seize the stage and disrupt the speech. Cheng was outraged, not that thugs were allowed to drown out views with which they disagreed, but that Yiannopolis was invited "to air his anti-progressive message." "The whole concept of freedom of speech is an antiquated idea derived from dead white men,"...

In yesterday’s blog, I related the founding generation’s assumptions regarding the necessity of virtue in stable republics. Many conservatives today believe our early years after Independence was an idyllic era of strong private and public virtue. Some tend to disbelieve the 1787 Constitution was necessary. Resting on that belief, the same conservatives look about today, see nothing but corruption of public virtue, and throw their hands up in despair of ever returning the US to freedom. Contrary to common belief, the first dozen years after Independence were something of a governing and political mess. Right out of the chute in...

I recently dusted off an old friend: Gordon S. Wood’s The Creation of the American Republic 1776 – 1787*. His research in the newspapers, pamphlets and sermons of the Revolutionary era led him to appreciate how complicated the creation of American political and constitutional structure really was. The individualistic and rights-oriented culture of today was not emphasized at all in 1776. No, the radical republicanism of the era stressed hostility to corruption of all sorts, and emphasized the importance of virtue for the public good. Perhaps everyone in the eighteenth century could have agreed that in theory no State was...

Irritated that the media would dare to pose a question about the legality of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's unsecured email communications, President Obama refused to comment, suggesting that "whether she did anything that was really wrong is a matter for voters to decide. And from what I've seen so far, she's on her way to securing the Democratic nomination for president. I think that says the majority of Americans are okay with how she's handled it." The media's unwelcome inquiry was spurred by an 83-page State Department Inspector General's report calling Clinton's email operation an "inexcusable and willful...

All these threads about Hiroshima got me to do some thinking. What would have happened had by some miracle we didn't drop the nukes on Japan and they had surrendered after a the equivalent amount of firebombing but right before an invasion. Some libs would think this would have been the "best Case Scenario" but I think it would have been a disaster! This is why: After the two nukes hit Japan many news reels in the months and years after it showed off to the whole world the absolute horrors of what Nuclear Weapons could do. We saw images...

...So I crawled in the total darkness, and I got to the opening. And by the time I got there, the building was on fire. That meant most of the girls were burnt to death. Although that happened in the morning, it was already very dark, like twilight. And the two other girls managed to come out, and three of us looked around. And in the darkness, I could see some dark moving object approaching to me. They happened to be human beings shuffling from the center part of the city to where I was. They just didn't look like...

Image of rattus norvegicus from youtube A close friend and mentor revealed details of a world record rat hunt that he accomplished in 1957.  It was casually mentioned, but as I showed interest, the details were clear and extraordinary.  In the 1950's, dumps were unregulated in Wisconsin.  It wasn't until the 1970's that sanitary regulations and increased affluence led to the end of dumps as breeding grounds for rats and other vermin.  Hunting rats at dumps was a common pastime.  I shot rats at dumps into the early 1970's. It helped keep the rat population down and increased hunting and...

Obama and Ho Chi Minh: Embracing Evil Defending Communist terror and demeaning American sacrifices. May 27, 2016 Daniel Greenfield Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam. On his visit to meet with Communist leaders in Vietnam, Obama criticized the United States for having, “too much money in our politics, and rising economic inequality, racial bias in our criminal justice system.” He praised Ho Chi Minh’s evocation of the “American Declaration of Independence” and claimed that we had “shared ideals” with the murderous Communist dictator. Shortly after the “evocation”...

Wednesday, May 25, 2016 The Palestine Hoax Posted by Daniel Greenfield 150 years ago, Mark Twain visited Muslim-occupied Israel and wrote of “unpeopled deserts” and “mounds of barrenness”, of “forlorn” and “untenanted” cities. Palestine is “desolate”, he concluded. “One may ride ten miles hereabouts and not see ten human beings.” The same is true of the Palestinian Museum which opened with much fanfare and one slight problem. While admission is free, there’s nothing inside for any of the visitors to see except the bare walls. The Palestinian Museum had been in the works since 1998, but has no exhibits. The...

Sometimes the rigors of daily life just get too overwhelming, causing me to turn to other less stressful items of interest. So I am now reading, “Benjamin Franklin -- An American Life,” by famed biographer, Walter Isaacson. It is already an amazing story about an amazing man, and I am not half way through its 586 pages --- small type, no pictures! Benjamin Franklin: author, inventor, scientist, politician, raconteur. But he considered himself, first and foremost, to be a printer. And would generally sign his name, “Benjamin Franklin, printer.” For in that Colonial period, a printer was a person of...

The American dream is given its name in 1931 James Truslow Adams defined the American Dream in his book, The Epic of America. He wrote, “The American Dream is that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.”

The corruption of our great institutions has often been brought about by their location and nearness to the worst influences in our society. Georgetown University’s location in Washington DC, the heart of America’s political cesspool, raises an interesting question about which institution corrupted which. Did Washington corrupt the Jesuit school or was it the school and its disgusting history that helped corrupt the workings of our government? Recently uncovered historical records have revealed that during a financial crisis in its earliest days, Georgetown was forced to sell off one of the Jesuit Order’s most valuable assets to stay afloat. In...

When it comes to taxes, depending on whichever conservative you talk to they all have a different idea on what sort of tax plan would work best. Some want a national sales Tax, some want an income tax, and some even want a Tariff. So why not UNIFY under a plan that ALL of us can get behind? Here is an idea that I have been thinking about that i have never seen before. I call it the "10% Flex" Tax plan. Why is it flexible? It is flexible as it would allow congress to control what TYPE of taxes...

New Jersey Democratic Sen. Cory Booker is seeking a redefinition of "violent crimes." As a co-sponsor of the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act of 2015 (SRCA), Booker is urging "a candid conversation about how we determine whether crimes are violent or not." "For too long a racist mindset has dominated how we look at crime," Booker charged. "In white society stabbing or shooting someone is considered abnormal and violent. This unfairly stigmatizes Black culture. Sentencing a minority offender based on white standards disproportionately impacts a vibrant segment of society." Booker urged that "we recognize the longer term history of racial...

Black Powder - Invention to ExplosionIt is believed that the Chinese have been using black powder for about a thousand years and they are generally credited with its invention starting with fireworks. Around 700 years ago someone came up with the idea that if you put some black powder in a tube with a rock it would expel the rock out at sufficient velocity to make it a weapon. Another early idea was to use reinforced bamboo to shoot arrows and darts. No one knows who thought of this, but they did indeed change the world. The general consensus is...

Men naturally seek to better their conditions and protect what is theirs, among which is their country. I’m continually surprised that so many do not take a look at history, ours and that of other past republics, for clues to help reverse the despotism that is America 2016. Long-lived republics such as Rome and a few Greek city-states fell on hard political times in which freedom was threatened, yet they bounced back from the brink of ruin. No republic, including ours, just coasted along for hundreds of years on their original governing structures. When liberty was threatened, republican men went...