Free Republic

In our time Christendom is dead and America is rapidly transitioning from post-Christian to actively hostile ‘woke’ secular paganism. America’s apostasy, subjectivism, idolatry, occultisms, pan sexuality, rampant abortion, drug use, sodomy, homosexual marriage, and other evils are similar to those of the post-flood generation of Babylon, Sodom and Gomorrah and Egypt.

Tony Award-nominated actor Chad Kimball, among Broadway’s first wave of performers to contract the coronavirus last spring, is finding little support among his Broadway colleagues after he pledged to “respectfully disobey” Washington State COVID-19 guidelines limiting religious services and participation. Kimball, a Seattle native, star of the hit, now-suspended, Broadway musical Come From Away and Tony-nominated for his performance in 2011’s Memphis, tweeted his opposition to Washington Governor Jay Inslee’s newly announced wide-ranging anti-COVID restrictions that, among other measures, limit religious services to 25% indoor occupancy or no more than 200 people, with face coverings required at all times. Kimball,...

When a student at a New Hampshire high school put items on his tray that he didn't have the money for, lunchroom employee Bonnie Kimball didn't think it was a big deal. She told the student to make sure to pay the next day. She wasn't worried as she had known the boy's parents since they were children, and had no doubt that the $8 lunch tab would soon be taken care of. And the next morning, she told CNN, that's exactly what happened. About a week later though, she was fired by the district manager of Café Services, the...

Donald Trump cleared up one thing in his speech in Charlotte, North Carolina, last night: he is running to win. Throughout this very odd election cycle, some pundits have periodically suggested that Trump wasn't serious in his run for the presidency. First, it was said that he got into the race simply to garner publicity, to burnish his "brand." He himself, it was said, was surprised that he did so well in the primaries. When it became clear that he was poised to win the nomination, the story changed slightly. Now, he was said to be playing the buffoon because...

The age that saw the advent of Jesus Christ was a dark age rich in nature religions, superstitions, open intercourse with demons as well as philosophical and ethical systems encompassing the animism, sex worship and human sacrifice of the vast majority of the world to the Atomism (physical materialism) and pantheist Stoicism (spiritual materialism) of Greek nature sages, the Roman pantheon of deities and the Greek mystery religions. The darkness of sin was everywhere. Into this putrid cesspool of unfettered libido and perverted revelation came the "light that shines in darkness" (Isaiah 9:2; John 1:5), the Son of God, fully...

Walt & Lillian Disney with Richard Nixon and his family at Disneyland, 1959 We tend to think of Hollywood as a bastion of leftism, and rightly so. Books like Ron Radosh’s Red Star Over Hollywood demonstrate the deep-seated left-wing dominance of the entertainment industry. Even with the leftism prevalent in Hollywood’s Golden Age, many unabashed conservatives found success without compromising their principles, including one of the most creative minds in the business — Walt Disney.Several biographers and writers that I’ve read have tried to declare that Walt Disney was apolitical, but I find this conclusion not to be true....

The question I have most often been asked the past few weeks is whether I stand by my prediction that John McCain would win in November. Way back in ancient times, that is, toward the end of August, 2008, I said that “Personally, I think John McCain is going to win, and I’m not talking about a hanging-chad squeakeroo. No, I think it will be a blow-out for McCain.” Interlocutors both anxious and gleeful have lined up to ask: Do I continue, after all we’ve been through these past weeks–the economy, the Palin-Katie Couric train wreck, the lackluster second debate,...

The famous writer Roger Kimball has issued a challenge: Name the silliest argument to be offered by a serious academic in the last 25 years and to be taken up and be gravely masticated by the larger world of intellectual debate. A leading contender is Global Warming. Kimball's own entry is Francis Fukuyama's "end of history" thesis. Kimball's rules of the contest: "I'll collect proposals for the next week or two and then announce the winner. (The decision, from which there is no appeal, will be determined by a committee staffed, overseen, and operated entirely by me.)" This tournament reminds...

A 62-year-old former priest convicted of molestation and assaulting a Chronicle photographer was found dead early today, according to Sonoma County authorities. After receiving a call for a welfare check, police found Donald Wren Kimball dead in his Windsor home. There was no evidence of criminal activity, according to Sonoma County Sheriff's Sgt. Tim Duke. An autopsy is scheduled to determine the cause of death. The Roman Catholic priest was defrocked after he was convicted in 2002 of two counts of lewd conduct for fondling a 13-year-old girl at St. John's Church in Healdsburg. His conviction was later overturned when...

WEST ORANGE, New Jersey -- The park is green and quiet. Pathways curve around lawns bordered by rosebushes, daisies and boxwood. Dogwoods shade the grass. A nice place, you think, for a Sunday picnic or an afternoon's stroll. And the view is spectacular, well worth the hour-long drive from New York City. From Lookout Point atop Eagle Rock Reservation, you can see New York City 25 kilometres away, the spiky skyline stretching across the horizon. On a clear day, you can make out the Empire State Building. You can see why George Washington set up an observation post here to monitor...

The Kolbrin Bible is truly special. This copy of the Kolbrin comes from the version from India. It was originally called the Bronze Book which survived the burning of the Glastonbury Abbey in 1184 AD. That is critical, because the Glastonbury Abbey is located squarely on the ground that was gifted to Joseph of Arimathea and the Virgin Mary by Christian King Avaragus after the crucifixion of Christ. The family of Avaragus launched all our western versions of Christianity, from Catholicism to Protestant churches. His family owned the Palace of the Britains in Rome, which still stands today across...

Encounter Books has named the New Criterion’s co-editor and co-publisher, Roger Kimball, as its new publisher. He will succeed Peter Collier, who recently retired after leading the San Francisco publishing entity since it began in 1998... ...[Collier] described Mr. Kimball as "the perfect person to bring this vision to fruition. Roger is the idea man par excellence, a provocative controversialist who is at heart a real intellectual with a passion for thought. He knows how to work with authors and with ideas."

     Leszek Kolakowski & the anatomy of totalitarianism by Roger Kimball    It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way.—Marx to Engels, 1857What socialism implies above all is keeping account of everything.—V. I. Lenin, 1917Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point.—Pascal, Pensées Born in Radom, in eastern Poland, in 1927, the philosopher Leszek Kolakowski is closing in on his eightieth year. He has...