Free Republic

“For us in Russia, communism is a dead dog. For many people in the West, it is still a living lion.” — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn In 1950 Congress passed the Internal Security Act and, four years later, the Communist Control Act. It condemned communism and the Communist Party of the United States. Today a sizeable portion of Congress actually belongs to the Communist Party U.S.A. or is sympathetic to it. In a recent poll, 40 percent of Americans prefer communism to capitalism.

On April 29, the Turkish government announced that it completely blocked Wikipedia over the online encyclopediaÂ’s refusal to delete articles and comments that suggest that Ankara is co-operating with terrorist groups such as the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda.Despite multiple requests by Turkish officials, Wikipedia refused to take down the content the Turkish government objected to. In response, Turkish authorities blocked online access to Wikipedia in all languages across the country.Wikipedia continues to be blocked in Turkey. But it is not the only restricted website in the country. An estimated 127,000-plus websites have been blocked in Turkey, along with another 95,000...

The Second Battle of the Alamo A second Texas Revolution is currently brewing in the Lone Star State. This all comes as a result of a seemingly laudable plan promoted to and passed by the state’s legislature some four years ago. The plan involved the rebuilding and improvement of the state’s most iconic shrine—the Alamo. The plan as promoted and approved would have rebuilt certain historic structures present at the time of the 1836 battle, as well as give visitors there a better and more complete understanding of the physical environment existing at the time of the conflict. Consequent to...

People in New Orleans, Louisiana, have been voicing their discontent about the intrusion of the Interstate 10, or I-10, Freeway in their lives ever since it was completed in 1990. After years of debating and studying, they are ready to repair the damage it has caused with what they are calling a Cultural Innovation District. The community will not remove the Interstate since the city cannot afford it, and in the end, the cost of removing it wouldn’t measure up to its value, according to studies conducted. As a result, the city and designers decided to meet halfway and resurrect...

Freeper SunkenCiv used to regularly post fascinating and learned articles on archeologicy and history topics. But no posts from SunkenCiv that I can remember for many months. Does anyone here know what happened?

The remains of a powerful viking — long thought to be a man — was in fact a real-life Xena Warrior Princess, a study released Friday reveals. The lady war boss was buried in the mid-10th century along with deadly weapons and two horses, leading archaeologists and historians to assume she was a man, according to the findings, published in in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology. Wrong. “It’s actually a woman, somewhere over the age of 30 and fairly tall, too, measuring around [5’6″] tall ,” archaeologist Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson of Uppsala University, who conducted the study, told The Local.

Many blacks and their white liberal allies demand the removal of statues of Confederate generals and the Confederate battle flag, and they are working up steam to destroy the images of Gens. Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee and President Jefferson Davis from Stone Mountain in Georgia. Allow me to speculate as to the whys of this statue removal craze, which we might call statucide. To understand it, we need a review of the promises black and white liberals have been making for decades. In 1940, the black poverty rate was 87 percent. By 1960, it had fallen to 47...

The fourth-grade tradition of building a California mission out of Popsicle sticks and sugar cubes is being pushed aside by the state as history lessons change to reflect all cultures and more accurately depict the past. A new framework for the curriculum at K-12 public schools means less research into the floor plans of the mission at say San Juan Capistrano, and more time looking at what life was like for both the missionaries and the native people of California. "What are students learning by building model missions?" asks Nancy McTygue, executive director of California History-Social Science Project and one...

If U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., gets her way, the names of three Confederate generals will be removed from street signs in Hollywood, Fla., and the statue of a Confederate general representing Florida will be removed from the National Statuary Hall in Washington.

Author, art professor, feminist, and cultural commentator Camille Paglia speaks on the current transgender mania, the wisdom of early medical & surgical intervention (calling it "child abuse"), and how the explosion of gender identities is a recurring sign of cultural collapse throughout the history of civilization.

Short but full three minutes

Scientists have uncovered lost ancient writings on parchment in Egypt, including ones jotted down in rare languages, that could give them a window into the past. The Times reported that researchers used imaging technology to illuminate words that were written onto parchment before the ink was washed and wiped away and new text written over it. The hidden text included words written in Caucasian Albanian, a language that had previously only been found on some stone inscriptions. Three medical texts written in ancient Greek were also brought to light, including some written by Hippocrates, the groundbreaking ancient Greek physician for...

The Mihailovich Monument in Chetnik Memorial Park at St. Sava Serbian Orthodox Monastery in Libertyville, IL on a beautiful Summer evening in Chicagoland. Photo by Aleksandra Rebic June 22, 2017 THE MIHAILOVICH MONUMENT: NO TAKING DOWN OF MONUMENTS TO LEGACYWith all the focus on monuments and statues in America recently forced upon us by people with a political agenda, none of us should be surprised that monuments dedicated to General Draza Mihailovich have become a target. It was inevitable. We cannot be apathetic or take anything for granted. "Initiatives" to "remove" the General Mihailovich Monument at St. Sava Serbian...

Even our U.S. presidents like to have an adult beverage every once in a while. In Mark Will-Weber’s book, “Mint Juleps with Teddy Roosevelt: The Complete History of Presidential Drinking,“ he details every president’s favorite alcoholic beverage and explores the stories behind the drink. Will-Weber’s book also reveals the more “human side” of our nation’s leaders, which is important for us all to see from time to time.

I am going through a large collection of stuff my late father had, and in addition to a bunch of his WWII ribbons and such, I found what looks like an Iron Cross with ribbon dated 1815 on one side and 1914 on the other. It's in good condition. I see these on Ebay at up to $1000. Does anyone know someone I can trust to evaluate it?

George Orwell’s dictum, "Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past," is often quoted, and for good reason. But it is usually quoted out of context. The passage begins: "And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed -- if all records told the same tale -- then the lie passed into history and became truth. " Then comes the aphorism, and Orwell continues: "And yet the past, though of its nature alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting. All that was needed was...

The tablet, known as Plimpton 332, was discovered in the early 1900s... Babylonian mathematics used a base 60, or sexagesimal system, rather than the 10 which is used today. Because 60 is far easier to divide by three, experts studying the tablet, found that the calculations are far more accurate. ... Hipparchus, who lived around 120BC, has long been regarded as the father of trigonometry, with his ‘table of chords’ on a circle considered the oldest trigonometric table. A trigonometric table allows a user to determine two unknown ratios of a right-angled triangle using just one known ratio. But the...

Despite attempts to shame Confederate history and symbols, sales of Confederate flags are booming, AL.com reports. Alabama Flag & Banner in Huntsville, Alabama is doing its best to meet the demand. It’s receiving up to 100 orders a day. Other manufacturers stopped producing the flag after the church shooting in Charleston, South Carolina and the subsequent decision by then-governor Nikki Haley to remove the Confederate flag from the state capitol building. Orders came streaming into the Flag & Banner store. After violence in Charlottesville and talks about removing historic monuments that are tied to the Confederacy, there was another increased...

I wrote and published this article on December 27, 2011. Providing historical perspectives on the constitutional ramifications of the war, it has had more than 46,000 views. Perhaps it may provide useful perspectives now, as we seem to be heading toward another potentially more deadly and divisive civil war.Only we can prevent another civil war. Will we?Formerly great universities, once bastions of constitutionally protected free speech, are now trying -- often successfully -- to kill it. Fake news abounds increasingly in our "mainstream" media, which neglect or minimize legitimate news. Our history, good and bad, are being relegated to the...

As we rewrite history and remove Confederate monuments deemed "offensive" when viewed through the prism of contemporary standards of morality, reasonable people ask: Where does one draw the line? The left, for example, reveres the Kennedy brothers, John, Robert and Edward. But if evaluated by today's standards of social justice, would these left-wing icons hold up? In Sen. Ted Kennedy's case, how does the monument-removing left feel about the kiss Kennedy blew Gov. George Wallace a mere 10 years after Wallace delivered what became perhaps that era's most infamous defense of segregation? At Wallace's request, Kennedy spoke in Alabama at...