Free Republic

Recently I watched an interview of Glenn Loury, a black professor of economics from Brown University, done by Peter Robinson of the Hoover Institution. In it, he makes a remarkable statement quoting his friend Shelby Steele, himself a black English professor who now writes books commenting on current affairs. Loury quotes Steele to the effect that “the problem before [blacks in America] now is not a problem of oppression. It is a problem of freedom. It is a problem of seizing opportunity, the problem of taking responsibility.” It echoed within me as I have been thinking similar thoughts about the...

...But is he right? I’m skeptical. I’m not certain the “puppet masters” are necessarily “ideologues.” Take George Soros, for example. Listen to any of his speeches and you’ll notice a theme: He’s obsessively driven by bitterness over his father’s “humiliation” by Nazis and Hungarian fascists during WWII (his father, a prominent lawyer, was driven out of his profession and forced into hiding). It confuses some on the right when Soros refers to his youth under Nazi occupation as “the happiest time of my life” and “a positive experience.” Just as any leftist would, rightists hear those words and unthinkingly go...

Peter Boghossian has taught philosophy at Portland State University for the past decade. In the letter below, sent this morning to the university’s provost, he explains why he is resigning.Dear Provost Susan Jeffords, ​​I’m writing to you today to resign as assistant professor of philosophy at Portland State University. Over the last decade, it has been my privilege to teach at the university. My specialties are critical thinking, ethics and the Socratic method, and I teach classes like Science and Pseudoscience and The Philosophy of Education. But in addition to exploring classic philosophers and traditional texts, I’ve invited a wide...

...By rigidly splitting Americans into two groups, white versus nonwhite, it reinvents the discredited 19th-century “one-drop rule” and applies it to a 21st-century society in which the color line is more fluid than it has ever been. In reality, racial diversity is increasing not only at a nationwide level but also within American families—indeed within individual Americans. Nearly three in 10 Asian, one in four Latino, and one in five Black newlyweds are married to a member of a different ethnic or racial group. More than three-quarters of these unions are with a white partner. For more and more Americans,...

The biggest sources of sex stereotypes and strict gender roles are the trans movement and its allies, insisting girls who like 'boy' things must actually be boys.Sometimes transgender propaganda is too honest for its own good. For example, Loudoun Now, a weekly newspaper in Virginia’s Loudoun County, just ran a horrifying story encouraging gender dysphoria in children. The piece focuses on seven-year-old Sophia, now pretending to be a boy named Max, and her mother Emily (the unnamed father is almost entirely absent from the article). It was meant to boost transgender ideology in an area that has become a battleground...

Here's the problem with communism (and sometimes socialism). If you study these subjects, you will encounter lots of abstract theories about how best to organize society, money, property, and so on. Some ideas might sound appealing. But they have little to do with communism as this ideology has existed in the real world. Better to think of these theories as maps and guidebooks for people who want to rule others. Communism appeals to dead souls hungry for power. These are not normal, healthy people. When they finally seize power, everyone else becomes a victim, even as never-ending propaganda promises the...

The ultimate goal of every totalitarian system is to establish complete control over society and every individual within it in order to achieve ideological uniformity and eliminate any and all deviation from it. This goal can never be achieved, of course, but it is the raison d’être of all totalitarian systems, regardless of what forms they take and ideologies they espouse. You can dress totalitarianism up in Hugo Boss-designed Nazi uniforms, Mao suits, or medical-looking face masks, its core desire remains the same: to remake the world in its paranoid image … to replace reality with its own “reality.” We...

Against all logic and against all historical rationality, that ideology has survived and, what is even more irrational, has in some respects even strengthened, augmenting its ranks throughout the Western world. SNIP After the collapse of the Soviet monster, that is of the great financier of communist movements all over the world, which were therefore deprived of considerable economic means, it seemed that communism in the West could die out or at least be reduced to small groups of nostalgics, as it had happened for National Socialism and for the few Nazis scattered around the world. In fact, the Soviet...

The attempted denigration of Jane Austen reveals how upscale, white elites view caring about anti-racism as a marker of status.The woke may regret going after Jane Austen. Last month it was reported that exhibits at the Jane Austen Museum were being revamped as staff are“re-evaluating Jane Austen’s place in ‘Regency-era colonialism’ in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests.” This attempt to evaluate Austen according to the American upper class’s current racial obsessions mostly reveals the blind spots those obsessions encourage. Many of Austen’s fans were furious at this attempted denigration of the great authoress. This anger was intensified by...

School districts across America are voting to include Black Lives Matter in their primary and secondary school curricula. Because whether BLM is taught at all should largely be dependent on how it is taught, it's important to get a handle on the factual and ideological premises behind it.In a February letter to his staff, Allen Bourff, the superintendent at Indiana's Hamilton Southeastern School, created a firestorm by instructing that BLM should be taught as a political issue, not as a social issue. Some BLM-supporters strongly objected. Indiana's Racial Equity Community Network released a statement: "The Black Lives Matter movement is...

In my meandering post from last night I theorized that the Left was using jim crow and the civil rights movement to initiate a process whereby the "unjust" laws of G-d would be superseded by the "just" secular laws of man. This is the root of the whole problem. Because there never was, is not now, and never will be an objective secular standard of morality/ethics/justice. Any system created by people is going to be arbitrary. Furthermore, the very purpose of morality/ethics/justice is submission to the Divine Will. Any system which by-passes this for mere utilitarian results is missing the...

President-elect Joe Biden had a little bit of a problem dealing with the English language when he announced his White House science team on Saturday. He used the verb "will" when he meant to say "is." "I've always said that the Biden-Harris administration will also going to lead, and we're going to lead with science and truth," Biden said, according to the video on CSPAN. "We believe in both," said Biden. As he said this, Biden turned to look at Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, who was standing behind him. He laughed. She returned the laugh and said: "That's right." But...

What should we think when every single Democrat voted against the Supreme Court nomination of Amy Coney Barrett? What does this say about their convictions and ideology? There were actually three Democrats who voted to confirm Neil Gorsuch in 2017 (Donnelly, Heitkamp, and Manchin). Even Brett Kavanaugh received one Democratic vote in 2018 (again, Manchin). But when it came to Barrett, not one Democrat voted for her. Not one. This happened despite her receiving a “‘Well Qualified’ rating from the American Bar Association (ABA) whose representatives relayed descriptions of her as ‘brilliant’ and an ‘intellectual giant.’” And this happened despite...

If you listen to the left, you would think that conservative Americans are primarily White racists who want to preserve a White America. These White nationalists, frightened by foreign immigration and terrified by the rising prominence of Black Americans, have aligned themselves with Donald Trump in order to “make America White again.” In reality, while this may speak for a tiny minority of conservatives, it does not speak for the masses. It is a destructive ideology we resist. Race is not the issue. Our universities have shifted dramatically to the left, to the point that, in 2016, a Harvard student...

...FBI Director Christopher Wray doesn’t necessarily find himself in the same company as Jong-Fast, but he’s also apparently not a believer in the notion that antifa groups pose any sort of serious threat. In fact, he’s not even necessarily a believer that antifa groups really exist. Instead, Wray indicated during a House Homeland Security Committee hearing on Thursday that antifa is more of a ideological view of the world.... To the extent it is an ideology, however, Texas GOP Rep. Dan Crenshaw thought Wray was “downplaying” the effects of it. “I’ve heard many members of this body, of this committee,...

I was in New York on that September 11, 19 years ago. The darkness that descended that day and the hope that rose from it are indelible parts of everyone who lived through the attacks, especially, of course, those who lost family or friends that day. The tragedy and the lessons we learned from it could come in handy at this difficult time in our nation's history. The coronavirus pandemic could help us remember our gifts and strive to live with renewed priorities, gratitude and zeal for life. Instead, we see a country in flames in more ways than one....

On July 20, Nancy Pelosi said that if President Trump refuses to accept the results of the November election, he will have to be "fumigated" out of the White House. Fumigation is a technique used against insects, and the idea that human beings are insects has a long history in totalitarian discourse. Hitler described Jews as "vermin" and "parasites," a form of dehumanization that is always just one step away from physical violence. Speaker Pelosi should apologize immediately, and profusely, for her use of this inappropriate rhetoric. Most thoughtful persons would agree that labeling another an "insect" is uncivil. A...

America is currently experiencing something of a revolutionary mood. The toppling of statues, the "cancelation" of journalists and public figures who stray from the new mainstream in their thought, and the speed with which CEOs and boardrooms have caved to online Twitter mobs indicate that a radical cultural shift is taking place. While much ink has been spilled debating the broader meaning of this moment, the seemingly outlandish suggestion by some that we are witnessing the rise of a quasi-spiritual movement, rather than one that is purely political, needs to be taken seriously, as it may help explain some of...

o I guess this is how it’s going to be everywhere, for the foreseeable future: More than 1,200 current employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have signed a letter calling for the federal agency to address “ongoing and recurring acts of racism and discrimination” against Black employees, NPR has learned. In the letter, addressed to CDC Director Robert Redfield and dated June 30, the authors put their call for change in the context of the coronavirus pandemic’s disproportionate impact on Black people and the killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and Rayshard Brooks. NPR obtained...

It’s not the content of your belief that makes you dangerous, it’s the way you believe it.